Not only expanded the paid staff, ‘cos she could show me that adding these staff members, we’d generate this much more money to pay for it, but she saw it and knew how to use volunteers and became a greater outreach. You know, there’s no question, the public that come to the zoo would rather hear about the rhinos from the keeper than they would from me ‘cos they wanna hear the stories. They wanna know the names. They wanna know about the personalities and nobody can be expected to know all that except for the person who is working directly with them. And you know, after the keeper, if there’s a trained docent that’s in that area regularly that knows those animals and knows the keepers. You know, whether you call ’em keeper chats or whatever or spontaneous, I mean, I think that’s the greatest thing was to see people that really liked it. They could see somebody was seeing something neat and they’re on their way to break and stop and take that minute or two to say what you’re seeing is really cool. It’s that connection with the people at the zoo.
