Zookeeper Regeneration

Working with Amaranta, the
Safari Park's newest baby Okapi.
Amaranta was born January 2015.

Guess what? I'm a zookeeper again! As of Monday, July 20, 2015, I became the newest keeper at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I am working full-time on the HOA run: I care for lions, cheetahs, Sumatran tigers, ocelots, dholes, okapis, and red river hogs (coming soon)! I am absolutely loving my new job and am thrilled to finally be a keeper for San Diego Zoo Global.

As a keeper, my day starts at 6:00am and ends at 2:30pm. The HOA run is divided into four sections, and I work in one section per day: tigers/ocelots, lions/cheetahs, dholes, or okapis/red river hogs. Eventually I will specialize in one section, but for now I am learning a little bit of everything. My daily routine is very similar to my routine at the Binghamton Zoo. I clean the exhibits and bedrooms. I provide enrichment for all of the species to encourage natural behaviors. I feed the animals specialized diets determined by SDZG nutritionists; the okapis get alfalfa, browse, pellets, and chopped vegetables, while the carnivores get a ground meat diet, plus ribs, cow femurs, shank bones, or rabbits a few times per week. This past week, I have been hand-feeding the carnivores in protected contact situations to bond with them. As I gain experience and build relationships with these animals, I will start operant conditioning training sessions to maintain established behaviors and introduce new ones. Eventually I will even get to do keeper talks! That was one of my favorite aspects of zookeeping at the Binghamton Zoo and I'm excited to put my tour-guide training to good use.

Izu meeting his four cubs for the first time. The cubs,

born June 2014, are Ernest, Evelyn, Marion, and Miss Ellen.

They each have very different personalities!

(Photo courtesy of SDZG).

Learning to drive heavy equipment
during Roar Corps.

I believe that the Safari Park Roar Corps program helped me get this job. In the Roar Corps program, I met a lot of keepers and managers, and got a first-hand look at the management of the large field exhibits that the Safari Park is famous for. I enjoyed my taste of "cowboy" zookeeping; riding a four-wheel-drive truck across unpaved hills to track down a new baby oryx felt like cattle-driving in the Wild West. But I am very happy to be working with "kitties" again. Hearing the lions roar when I enter the lion house in the morning is one of the best parts of my day. They are so loud, the bones in my chest vibrate! And I am ecstatic to work as a keeper at the Safari Park, where Species Survival Plan breeding and conservation action plans are priorities.

That's all for now, because I have to get back to doing a happy dance around my living room!