And I don’t understand how these days, this is gonna sound horrible, alright, we ha we have, we, we are offering counseling to the animal staff because this animal or that animal has died, or we’ve needed to make the decision to put it down because it became so debilitated. Read More
Explain that. And second part of that is what’s your philosophy for dealing with the death of an animal in a zoo?… Read More
Oh God. This is where I come across as some out of touch older individual who doesn’t really understand modern society. You work with livestock, you work with dead stock is basically is, you’re right, is a farmer’s expression. But you know, you work with animals, they will die on… Read More
And when I heard about it, it was like not on my watch. I’d only just been promoted to collection manager here at the zoo. And basically myself and a few other key colleagues, in particular, a woman called Sarah Christie. And in partnership with a select group of the… Read More
You’ve used the farmer expression, you work with livestock, you work with dead stock, certainly. Read More
I said, oh, really? Oh, yeah. You know? Yeah. It’s, it’s that constant sponge of absorbing as much information as you can and being prepared to absorb it every day. The amounts will, will diminish in time, but it will never disappear. So it’s maintaining that open mind being, maintaining… Read More
The, the, the UK Zoo Association was threatening to create a UK keeper training course for many years. Nothing ever happened. And so myself and three other colleagues from Scotland, Graham Law, Billy Matheson and and Mike Clark, we decided, right, we’re gonna do it. You know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll… Read More
Oh yeah, I was, I was, you know, I was working the bison the other day and, and you know, that dominant female was doing something weird, you know?… Read More
Or am like, oh, right, noted that the wolverine had been m I’ll make sure the keepers are aware of that. So it’s this constant looking, this constant keeping your eyes open, this constant listening to your colleagues at whatever level. Read More
And I might be going from A to B, but I want to look at, you know, I’m, I’m looking at whatever I’m walking past because one, you know, has there someone climb that safety barrier and do I see them putting themselves in danger or the animals doing something… Read More
Ba basically, you know, the, the one thing that I used to hate, and I used to constantly pull staff up on it, is the, the car park at Highland Wildlife Park was in the middle of the zoo, weirdly. And, and so I, I’d see keepers going from their… Read More
Also, your decision making, your ability to decide stuff in extreme circumstances accelerates because you’ve done stuff like this before. This is gonna sound warped. I love emergencies. For whatever reason or the way my brain works, I’m able to just roll straight into taking charge of the situation and… Read More
You, now, this may be the same, but you talk about professionals being on a constant, somewhat learning curve. What does that mean?… Read More
Right. What’s the decision making process?… Read More
And I’ve done this with a, with a numer, numerous zookeeper classes, part of the Spar College zookeeper course. None of them hadn’t occurred to them. They all knew the story, but they didn’t understand the variables. And it’s been in the game long enough that you’ve seen enough stuff… Read More
What if the ricochet kills the kid?… Read More
Because here’s two other examples where a kid fell into gorilla enclosures, the kid didn’t get harmed, the gorillas never got harmed. They dealt with it a different way. Maybe you do need to shoot the gorilla, but you got concrete all over there. Read More
What if the gorilla goes down on top of the kid and you can see no one in the class?… Read More
Did you do your zoo history?… Read More
Do you shoot the gorilla? Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah. Really?… Read More