July 26, 2024 • 54 mins
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In this eye-opening episode, Matt sits down with a former volunteer from a nonprofit roadside zoo to uncover the hidden truths and unique challenges faced by such establishments. From the bizarre history of the zoo's location to the gritty realities of animal care on a shoestring budget, this conversation sheds light on the passion and dedication required to keep these places running. Hear firsthand accounts of working with exotic animals, the ethical dilemmas, and the heartbreaking moments that come with the territory.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's kind of a dumb animal, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Oh, hilariously dumb.
You can find hours and hours ofvideos online of seeing pandas
falling out of trees, breaking,snapping bamboo and just like
fall into their early death.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Clutzy pandas, Thank you.
(00:52):
Okay, thanks for tuning in tothe Redacted Podcast.
I'm your host, Matt Bender, andwe got a guest here on the show
today that worked at and knowsquite a bit about what you would
call I think you said it was aprivate roadside zoo.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Actually, Matt, it was a non-profit roadside zoo.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Non-profit.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Quite literally.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It was quite literally on the side of the
freeway.
You could see it from thefreeway, from the interstate.
It's quite literally a roadsidezoo.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
That's kind of crazy.
I don't know if I've ever seenanything like that.
Did it have buildings?
I mean, obviously it was like apermanent structure, right.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Oh, yes and no actually.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
The whole history of the location it's gone.
It's had so many iterations ofdifferent sort of things, like
what it was before a zoo, likebefore it was a zoo it was a
brothel before a brothel.
It was sort of like acorrectional halfway house.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Holy shit, holy shit, yeah, a brothel.
A brothel turned into a zoo,it's like two different things
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It's just had so many different sort of life life
cycles and it ended up being azoo.
Uh, 30, 40 years ago, uh, but Ididn't get into it until I was
a high schooler.
Um, this roadside zoo you got inin high schools when you
started working there I did, yes, um, somewhere around high
school we were required to havecommunity service hours sort of
(02:24):
logged so we can graduate withanother diploma, and I didn't
know what to do.
But I saw nearby where I livedwas an animal sanctuary,
something beautiful and out andabout, and I applied there and
they instantly denied me.
But here was this nonprofitroadside zoo that immediately
took me in.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Wow so they just and that sounds so weird, like a
nonprofit roadside zoo, like, um, it does paint the picture, but
yeah, and were you kind of like, well, what the heck is this
about them?
Was it, was it weird, or wereyou excited or were you like, is
it like a tourist thing?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh, it's absolutely a tourist attraction for the town
we were in and when I got thereI was immediately sort of
confused.
Like this is a zoo.
You wouldn't expect it to be azoo.
It's just a big building andyou see a sign that just says
the word zoo on it, nothing else.
And it's sort of old anddecrepit because of how old it
is and how little money they hadto spend on renovations that
(03:26):
didn't involve the animals.
So immediately off the gate Iwas sort of, you know, having my
reservations whether or not Iwanted to work there or
volunteer there.
And the staff didn't make itany better.
They were kind of like nothicks, I'd say, but they weren't
, like you know, sophisticatedzookeepers.
They were just people who arepassionate about animals and
(03:47):
just love animals in general.
So they worked there for yearsand they have all the experience
they need.
But I wouldn't call themzookeepers, I would just call
them experienced animal handlers.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, so the looks were a little deceiving because
you're maybe thinking you'regoing to see these people like
you saw on Jack Handy or youknow something.
You know a zoo shirt and somekind of a college background,
and then you know this wasn'tquite that.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Absolutely.
It wasn't that I expected tosee those, like khaki shirts and
khaki shorts, they say everyzookeeper classically wears
these guys' khaki.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
The safari outfit.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
The safari look.
Yeah, these guys didn't havethat.
They had T-shirts with jeans on.
It was more like a Tiger Kingstyle.
Oh, actually, tiger King issuch a common occurrence in
different parts of the country.
We were no different.
We were similar in a lot ofdifferent aspects.
Thankfully, we didn't have thegun-toting, you know, I don't
(04:44):
know the guy who was running forpresident, or anything.
We didn't have those sort ofambitions.
We kept to ourselves.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
We were a small, tight-knit community Okay, and
you say there's a lot of that.
That goes on.
There's a lot of like kind ofnon-profit, like I've seen a lot
of big cat stuff likespecifically.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So here's the crazy thing in every state, in every
city, there are differentregulations for like having wild
exotic animals, whether they'renative or whether they're
endangered.
You can have it with sort oflike the right paperwork and the
right accreditation, but thereare hundreds of roadside zoos
that aren't even non-profit.
Ours is a non-profit, but noteveryone is.
Usually they're cash grabs orskis, where know.
(05:27):
Let you take pictures ofkittens, of tigers, and it's
like the tiger team aestheticand like there are like the wwf
I forgot the.
It's like an organization thatsort of like works on me, you
know, it's sort of yeah, it'sthe world wildlife foundation
thank you so much.
Yeah, exactly Blank in there.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Wrestling had to give it up because of them.
Wrestling used to be the WWFand then they had to go to the
WCW.
That makes sense.
Or WWE?
I think too.
Yeah, crazy.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Well, it's crazy because the WWF they estimate
that there are at least 10,000tigers in captivity.
Those are just tigers.
I'm not including lions, lynx,leopards, all the other crazy
cats out there.
But there are 10,000 tigers inthe United States and under less
than 5% of them are even inaccredited zoos and sanctuaries.
Most of them are just privatelyowned, whether they are
(06:20):
purchased illegally and youreally can't purchase tigers
legally there's a whole likeendangered species act that
prohibits you from purchasing.
You know exotic animals thatare endangered and the way zoos
function is they trade betweenthemselves through the whole
accreditation.
You know zoos sort of worktogether like San Diego and
other guys, I can't think of anyother big zoos, it's like
(06:41):
reciprocal.
It's absolutely reciprocal.
It's sort of promoting aethical breeding program to help
boost the numbers in the wild,like some, like, uh, san diego
will take in some pandas andthen they'll breed them and then
they'll send them back, orthey'll take in some cheetahs
same thing and or they'll take,like orphaned animals in the
wild, you know, rehabilitatethem and then, if not,
(07:02):
potentially you know back wherethey came from.
They'll just keep them on theircollection and just trade them
around for years.
But it's all ethical and it'sall nice and it's sort of like
all documented.
It's very neat.
We were not that as a nonprofitzoo we had to worry about, you
know, money and how we couldfeed the animals, how we could
keep the lights on the buildlights on, cause we were paying
(07:23):
for the land.
It was sort of a struggle fromday one from me getting there.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
And you were taking I assume this place was taking
either donations or, you know,like an entrance fee from people
who wanted to come and see it,and that was a primary source of
revenue.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
It was their only source of revenue.
All they had were ticket salesand donations from the community
.
Donations didn't just come inmoney.
Most often enough, you'd seedonations being in the form of
feed or raw meat.
(08:02):
And they had a batch that wasnot safe for human consumption
and I remember we got like acargo container worth of like
raw venison raw, I think, turkey, but mostly venison and so that
was a huge deal for us, gettinglike a cargo container full of
just you know, boxes of meatthat we can't eat but the
animals wouldn't have any issueeating.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Well, that's that's, and that's good to see, that
it's, that it gets used, um, tosomething beneficial, and I'm
sure that I mean, if you'retalking about, you know, big
cats and these big animals andstuff, I mean they, they put
down some chow man, they, theyneed a lot.
I don't know what it is, butI've just, from things I've seen
(08:44):
, like the amount of pounds orsomething that they eat in a day
is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yep, they eat like five, depending on the size of
the cat, from five to ten poundsof meat and that's every day,
maybe minus one or two days sothey can fast, because in
captivity you can't just feedthem every day.
They typically in the wild.
They don't have food every daygiven to them, so they have to
sort of stimulate the same sortof environment they have,
stimulate the same environmentthey have in the wild in
(09:12):
captivity.
So almost every day we'd haveto prepare over 30 to 40 pounds
of meat and then like 20 to 30pounds of vegetables and fruit.
I mean, we weren't a big zoo.
We had a wide selection ofdifferent animals.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
We didn't a big zoo but we had a wide selection of
different animals.
We didn't just have big cats.
Yeah, why don't you walkthrough?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I mean I know stuff probably changed, but what was
the basic kind of lineup ofanimals when I got there?
We hosted different speciesfrom big cats to small cats to
primates, some hoofstock animalthat weren't native to our area.
Exotic birds are our rescues,same with the reptilesiles, like
an alligator I'll get into thatin a second.
And then we also had hyenas,which are their own little class
of animal species.
(09:55):
We had so many sort of likebarn animals sort of next to
these exotic animals.
We had zebras next to donkeysand we had leopards next to
baboons.
I guess they're in the samesort sort of environment but
like it's crazy to see camelsnext to baboons.
We weren't organized by by ademographic, by geography, like
africa or asia, or even by likespecies like reptiles and
(10:17):
amphibians.
We just had animals whereverthey fit, whatever cage suited
for them.
And was fda?
Fda approved, sorry, fda.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
I don't know.
I don't know who regulates that.
I'm sure somebody does USDA?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
It's the USDA.
I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Okay, yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yes, usda, they have specific guidelines on the
enclosure size, the catch cagesize, the fences, whether
there'd be one or two, and so wejust had a mishmash of animals
in different areas, and most ofthem had been there their entire
life, whether they were bredthere or they were acquired very
young in their life.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Wow, so they knew nothing other than captivity.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, Most of them were rescues.
A lot of them had their ownunique sort of rescue story or
their own purchase story,because 30 years ago rules and
regulations were a lot lessstrict than they are now.
You could easily buy a hyenafrom an auction in Texas or
Missouri.
Those are huge states fortrading and selling wildlife or
(11:23):
exotic animals you know, tradingand selling wildlife, you know,
or exotic animals.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Okay, and then I imagine I've seen before that
some of the places like yourswill actually come to obtain
them from people who illegallyown them, and maybe they were
seized or something, so that's.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Exactly, we have.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
That's kind of the rescue aspect of it.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It is.
It's the surrendering ofanimals that you're not legally
allowed to have.
We had an alligator whobelonged to a drug dude, and
this alligator was confined to abathtub, so she was severely
stunted and gross.
She was a small alligator butwe took her in and she's like
30-plus years now.
If she's still there at the zoo, I'm not sure where she is now,
but you know know we havestrange sort of acquisitions,
(12:06):
from birds to even our tigers.
Some of our tigers weren'tpurchased or even traded, they
were just kind of donated to uswow.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And what was the animal with the the biggest kind
of draw, like what I imagine ithad to be, the big cats yeah,
it was.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
It was the tigers and lions.
When we had them it was thelions.
I mean, we have, we've alwayshad tigers.
Oh wow, the lions we had forfor a while and they all passed
away from old age.
But then we got a new set oflines, but uh, that's later on
the story.
Um our tigers.
We had two tigers, I won'tspecify which kind.
Uh, they were actually owned bya magician in las vegas.
(12:47):
I won't go into which magicianyeah, that's kind of well okay.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Okay, go on yeah, these.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
This guy was crazy.
He had two tigers, but theissue was one had neurological
issues, she wasn't fit for stagetime, and she, she was too
aggressive, she wasn't trainable.
Pretty much she served nofunction.
So rather than rather than sellit to someone who wouldn't buy
her, you know, they just donatedto our zoo and we had two
tigers on exhibit, one withsevere, you know, anxiety issues
(13:16):
and but me and her I mean thatme and that one tiger we
actually grew a very strong bond.
I wasn't sure if it was becauseof who I was or because it just
did not.
Time spent the third, but overtime, after hours or before
hours, you'd see she wasn't sostressed out, but during hours,
that's what you saw she was notfit to be in a zoo what was she
like?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
pacing or just acting strange, or you know, I'm sure
you could tell just with all thepeople you know walking around,
little kids screaming and andall that exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I mean all these different stress factors from,
like, the people, from the music, it's where an extra freeway,
so like there's a lot of noise,and so having this, you know,
tiger and display, and it's not,like I said, it's not a big zoo
, so like the distance betweenyou and tigers quite, you know,
quite small.
He could almost reach forwardto the, to the second fence
where the tiger is at, and soshe wouldn't eat.
(14:11):
Sometimes she would pace a lotand she'd be extra aggressive.
Those are all signs of sort oflike, uh, just stress issues
with being, you know, on exhibit.
But they knew early on that shejust had neurological issues.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Okay, and then was the other tiger pretty mellow.
Was that one a little moreacclimated?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I'd say he was rambunctious, but he was
definitely acclimated.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Now, were you guys actually touching these animals
or anything like that, or?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
was it kind of all arm's length.
So because we weren't anaccredited zoo, we didn't have
sort of like strict rules sayingwe couldn't or we couldn't.
We were pretty much justplaying it by ear and by saying,
if you're there long enough andif you are safe, you could pet
the tigers through the fence oryou could hold a capuchin monkey
on your shoulder or you can getan enclosure with a hyena.
(15:10):
It just depends on the animaland the sort of comfort that
they have with the zookeeper.
A lot of the zookeepers or thevolunteers who worked at this
nonprofit have been there for atleast a decade or more.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I've been there for at least a decade or more, okay.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
And then was there ever any issues with the
volunteers being attacked ormaybe harming the animals or
something like that?
I mean, myself included.
I was grabbed by a camel andthey wouldn't let go.
And then my friend, thankfully,just bopped it on the nose and
they let go.
But I got off easy, because ayear prior a friend of mine,
very lanky, small skinny she,was picked up by the ankle by
(15:55):
the same camel.
So there had been sort of thisdocumented sort of a case of
aggression with this camel.
We couldn't go in there alonewithout sort of like a rake or a
wheelbarrow to keep between youand the end.
Um, and some animals are, ofcourse, just you know, they're
by nature, they just bite orthey scratch.
But uh, there are so manyanimals camels can be aggressive
(16:17):
.
I've heard that oh, absolutely,they're scary.
They don't just kick backwards,they kick to the side too so
wherever you are, they couldeasily kick you yeah, yeah, yeah
, that's great.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
And then they are camels, the one that do that
spit thing they like sneeze onyou they don't spit on you.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
That's the alpaca.
That's a pack, oh okay okay, butcamels, they just sort of like
slobber and they just have a lotof slobber drop, you know, just
dribbling down their face.
They already have that.
A lot of I'm trying to think ofthe name of the class of
species, anyways, a lot ofcamels, most camel species, they
just drool just like theynormally do.
(16:58):
I'm trying to think there wereno major attacks, like there
were no, like no one died, noone was mauled to death.
Like no one lost an arm, like atiger came.
The farthest we got was someonelost a finger.
Because we got as far as wecould with volunteers but it
(17:19):
wasn't enough to do all thenitty gritty work, like picking
up the pen with all the deer forthe petting zoo it's like a lot
of poop and it takes hours ofour time to do it or even just
like picking up rocks orcleaning up the general paths.
So we would often get thesepeople who need to do community
service for the various thingsthey did to society, whether
(17:40):
they broke a law or they neededit for school, and so we took in
a lot of people who just neededto do hours of community
service.
We gave them the grunt work.
Well, this one one individual.
He jumped the secondary fenceand then got real up close with
the tigers and he was trying tocut the tigers to their fence.
(18:01):
And he, just because it's thetiger grabbed on, wouldn't let
go.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
And the tiger just because the tiger grabbed on,
wouldn't let go and oh no, thetiger just pulled the finger.
Shirt off holy cow, just I meanwith its mouth, obviously, just
kind of he's sticking hisfinger in it, trying to touch
him, and then the tiger justgoes nap, just yanks.
Exactly, jeez, were you there?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
and here's the thing.
Oh, I was, but I wasn't therewith the tigers.
I just heard about it.
Oh man, I had to run down there.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
That had to be so painful.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I can't imagine how painful it was.
It's just the pulling rightBecause it wasn't like a clean
chop, yeah, like a clean chop.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Sounds bad enough, but like a yank your finger out,
oh my God.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Thankfully we didn't incur any sort of uh
consequences.
The tiger wasn't put down, theywere just quarantined for a
while yeah, well, that's goodyeah there were so many
different aspects of working ata small zoo that just were
weren't sort of pretty.
Every day, every week, everyyear, we're worried we might not
have enough money to keep going.
There was no game plan for incase we didn't have the money.
(19:07):
There was no backup Like if wedidn't have the money to keep
the lights on or to feed theanimals.
We'd have to scramble to sellor even donate our animals to
other facilities in the nearbystates.
Because our area didn't haveany zoos, we were the only zoo.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
It was like living paycheck to paycheck yeah,
that's kind of tough, like aconstant cloud of worry, and I
mean that probably means thatthe animals I mean, were the
animals getting everything theyneeded, or I'm sure there had to
be shortcuts um, I'm thankful Ican report that there were no
(19:45):
actual shortcuts Once thatendangered the animals or put
them in sort of like a weirdspot.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
We were never negligent.
We were always putting in theextra hours, working 50, 60 hour
weeks just for free.
Sometimes, I mean eventually.
I never told you actually how Igot started there.
Really.
I mean, after I started workingthere as a volunteer in high
school I quickly loved it andeventually kind of went up the
ranks and started working there.
And so I mean eventually I wasbeing paid, but I was being paid
(20:10):
very little because we justdidn't have the funds.
But when I was being paid to bea zookeeper, I was putting in so
many hours where I would wakeup really early, pick up some of
those community service workersI was talking about, take them
to the zoo, work the zoosometimes in the hottest parts
of the summer, and thenafterwards I would take those
(20:31):
people who I picked up back towhere they needed to be dropped
off, whether it be a sheriff'soffice or other locations.
And then this is high school,so I also had a regular job on
top of that job, and so I'd gofrom job to job like one after
the other and then I take thecompany vehicle to my other job.
Sleep at work, night shift,sleep in the parking lot, wake
(20:53):
up and repeat the same cycle,pick up the community service
workers and take them to the zoo.
And it wasn't because I had to,it was purely for the love and
the passion of working at anon-profit zoo.
The passion of working at anon-profit zoo.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
You know a lot of people.
I mean there's an incrediblekind of volunteer community for
animals that I've noticed, andwhether that be pets or you know
the different kind of zoo-likeanimals you're talking about, I
mean a lot of people we havedown here in Florida.
I mean I got a cat rescue rightdown the street.
(21:28):
I got a exotic bird rescueright down the street.
I mean we have a ton of thoseand they're not for profits and
they're kind of um, heavilyvolunteer based.
So it's um, you're 80%volunteer.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Exactly, we're 80 percent volunteers wow, what's
um?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
how long did you end up working there for?
Speaker 2 (21:55):
so I was there from freshman year high school, oh, I
think freshman year college, soaround four to five years,
maybe a little bit longer.
Um, towards the end we kind ofwe kind of got phased out by
another facility that kind oftook over, but um, that's more
towards the end of the story,you know, more towards the end
of me being there, because inbetween there were so many
(22:16):
different things going on and Iwanted to touch on something
else.
You said the communityvolunteers are so strong, it is,
but it's also very strange.
It's sort of reminiscent oftiger king and you have these
various characters who are like,sort of like I wound up here by
accident and he gave me a joband now I live on this place and
he feeds me and I just workwith tigers all day, sort of a
(22:37):
similar thing, you know.
We don't really deny anybody tovolunteer.
If you're sane and you're safeand you have a good head on your
shoulders, we'll take you in.
You're sane and you're safe andyou have a good head on your
shoulders, we'll take you in.
And if you work your way up, Imean by the third, fourth year,
you're pretty much running theplace, you're working with all
the animals.
But the people we had, wecouldn't, you can't, cure stupid
(22:59):
.
We just had people who werelike, who thought differently
than they would need to.
In the sort of situationthey're in, they are the act
first, think after need to.
In the sort of situationthey're in, they are the act
first, think after they.
Uh, you know they would make,they would make a decision, a
big decision, and then, you know, ask for forgiveness.
And in a zoo like this, wheremoney is literally so finite, it
it really is so hard to like toto even like fix a situation
(23:22):
where someone buys something forthe zoo and go, hey, I need to
be reimbursed because we did alot of that.
A lot of the maintenance wasreimbursement.
We had a vehicle that wepurchased that was reimbursed.
But it's so bad because, eventhough we want to get rid of
these people that are just notso good for the zoo in terms of
like the, the overallinteraction between people, like
just the day-to-day community.
(23:44):
Even though we couldn't, eventhough we couldn't, even though
they were not great, we justcouldn't get rid of them because
we absolutely needed their hardwork.
We needed them to be there, tobe doing the hard work of
feeding, cleaning andmaintaining the zoo.
There were days where I just Icould not stand being here
because of the people around,but solely because we needed
their help.
They were there and so itwasn't a picnic all the way
(24:08):
through.
There were sort of niches thatI fell into and even a mentor I
had found, thankfully, and I'dstuck with them and we kind of
were a little bit higher on thetotem pole up until four or five
years into the whole ordeal notordeal, the whole experience,
this zoo in Oregonregon theseguys were kind of shady.
(24:30):
These guys are really shady,more shady than we are.
Not we weren't shady, they wereactually shady.
They would take certain animalslike tigers, lions and other
small cats and crazy venomoussnakes and they would pack them
and a trailer like a.
You know, those 16 wheel track,the 16 wheelers, those trailers,
big trucks yeah, yeah I meanthere were small cages and then
(24:52):
they tore them around thecountry and they pretty much
would find like carnivals, fairs, conventions, and they would
put them in these like prettymuch these boxes where you could
see them from afar.
But they were all temporaryenclosures and so for most of
the year they they didn't havegrass, they didn't have like a
pond plain.
They were a big cat.
It wasn't until this zoo wasshut down and sort of run out of
(25:14):
their city in Oregon.
It wasn't until then that theone tiger, another tiger, we had
more tigers added to the zoo.
It was the first time in like10 it was really young, seven to
ten years that he had ever seena pod.
That that was our, that was oursize and we had a small pod.
So even then it was still likecrazy to see this tiger get to
(25:37):
play in this big bath of waterfor the first time that's kind
of cool, and the tiger was happy, I assume oh, absolutely happy,
he was chuffing like free atlast.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Free at last exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, it was no longer concrete jungles.
Uh, for him, for the facility.
I remember looking up on googlemaps and seeing that it was all
concrete in the facility.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
It was sort of smaller than ours or around the
same size, but it was allconcrete at least we had, you
know, like plants sprung throughthe, through the dirt yeah, I
mean we didn't have like grasseverywhere, but we had enough
greenery that the animalsweren't suffering yeah, yeah, I
can't imagine that would be nicejust hanging out with concrete
and metal cages and I meanthat's got to be horrible.
(26:21):
So that had to be you know,seeing that tiger one of those
like fulfilling moments whereyou're like, okay, what I, what
I do matters absolutely everyday you went home with the sense
of like I'm going to call whatwould you say gratification or
satisfaction.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
You went home knowing you didn't just do something
good, but you did something thatyou were passionate about and
that it's like it just dropped.
It drove me like there were hotdays and cold winters and so
many steps.
You know it was a five acre,five to six acre property, so
it's like a lot of walking.
It was a lot of hard work but Inever felt tired never ever.
It's just it was a wonderfulfeeling you got for working, for
(27:05):
working there, and I wouldn'ttrade that experience for
anything in the world.
I'm so glad I accidentallyfound them online looking for
volunteers.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah, now, was there any kind of dark underbelly
stuff that you'd seen, or you'dseen others do, or other
organizations, what's kind ofthe?
I know there's a big dark sideto it.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, there's a dark side to it for sure, like even
these big accredited zoos sortof have like chapters in their
history where they weren'tacting the right way or they
hadn't known how to handlecertain animals.
For example, and some zoo incalifornia I forgot which one
exactly uh, they don't use bullhooks.
And for, for those of youlistening, what a bull hook is?
It's this really thick rod witha very pointy end and a hook
(27:51):
next to it, sort of like theprod and poke elephants.
It's to move them around.
It's sort of for safety for thezookeepers too.
If they charge you or they gettoo close, you can poke them.
It won't stab them through thethick skin, but it's enough to
scare them off.
(28:13):
But there was one zoo incalifornia and there was a fire
in that area and they had to beevacuated.
However, because of their, uh,strict rule to not use bull
hooks which is admirable forsure, um, they couldn't evacuate
their elephants, so theseelephants were left in harm's
way.
If the fire had, you know,potentially gotten there to the
zoo, they would have been toast.
They wouldn't have been movedanywhere because of their strict
sort of rules as to nevermoving an elephant with the bull
.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And there are stories .
Well, that's good intention.
That's good intention at least.
It may be maybe negligent, ormaybe not thinking it through
all the way, but good intentiongood intention, for sure, but I
mean bullhooks are mostly forsafety.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
They're not really to like move the animals, they're
just, you know, for your safety.
But I mean bullhooks are mostlyfor safety.
They're not really to like movethe animals, they're just you
know for, for your safety.
But I mean it's sort of like,in a situation like that, most
people would side on this wouldbe most people would side on the
side of bullhooks.
Yeah, like, let's get them out,no matter what it takes.
Um, but there were otherexamples too, like before I get
to our zoo, there was anotherzoo where they didn't even know
a red panda had died until, like, the carcasses fell out of the
(29:06):
tree.
I mean, they're so prone todying from heat exhaustion
during the summer they have toget coats, uh.
So, like, sometimes they'rejust, you know, the red panda
just fell out of the tree dead,decomposed, not like decomposed,
but starting to decomposearen't those like super rare, is
that?
Speaker 1 (29:22):
a panda's, not thankfully, they're not, oh, not
the red panda yes, you'rethinking of the regular chinese
panda the black and white ones.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Oh, not the red panda .
Yes, you're thinking of theregular Chinese panda, the black
and white ones, Ah I understand.
Yeah, and those guys I mean.
No zoo technically owns one ofthose pandas, a black and white
panda.
No one owns one.
They're all property of Chinaand if you have one you probably
have it legally.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
But most zoos are all zoos.
Where it's on loan or something, yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Exactly.
If you have one, you probablyhave it legally, but most zoos
are all zoos when it's on loanor something Until they're done
breeding.
Yeah, exactly, yeah, china'sreally adamant about having all
their pandas back in theircountry after they're done
breeding, or whatever.
So you could breed a panda andthen have a panda at your zoo.
You would think so, but no thatbaby panda is still the property
of China.
Oh, I get property.
All pandas in the world belongto China.
(30:07):
It's a strict rule.
If, for example, someone had apanda illegally and they
surrendered it in Texas, thenthat panda would go straight to
China.
It wouldn't stay in Texas.
I wonder who makes that rule,you'll never see a rest.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Where did that rule come from?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Pandas were really at this brink of extinction a
while ago.
It wasn't until captivebreeding programs and then the
AZA, that's, the AmericanZoological Association.
It wasn't until they stepped inand started breeding them
outside of the country.
Additionally, that they broughtthem back.
But back then it was like ifyou have a panda, we want that
(30:47):
back so bad.
We would kill to have our pandaback because of how rare they
are and how endangered they are.
They're impossible to breed,really Not impossible, but
they're really hard to breed.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Do they exist in the wild anywhere or no?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
They still do.
Yeah, they still live in bambooforests I don't know exactly
where in China.
I'd have to look up thegeography of China.
I'd have to look up thegeography of China.
I'd imagine colder climates,higher elevation.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
That's crazy, I know it's likethe I mean the panda's like the
poster for the World WildlifeFoundation or the World Wildlife
Fund, maybe it is.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, they're the poster child for all endangered
species because they're the mostlike recognizable species.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, it's kind of a dumb animal, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Oh, hilariously dumb.
You can find hours and hours ofvideos online just seeing
pandas falling out of trees,breaking, snapping bamboo and
just falling to their earlydeath.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Clutzy pandas.
They really are Like the dodobird.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I'm surprised the pandas had gotten this far.
I mean, of course we intervened, but before that I'm surprised
they got that far In life downthe timeline of species In terms
of how long they've existed.
I'm surprised they've existedthis long in terms of how long
they've existed.
I'm surprised that they'veexisted this long.
I mean, they're not all stupid,but it's just hilarious how the
(32:11):
stereotype sort of holds upwith pandas.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah, did you guys ever have a sloth?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
We actually did have a sloth.
We had a two-toed sloth, Ithink.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
That's a hilarious animal.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Hilarious animal, but they're so strong when it comes
to their nails, their fingers,the nails mostly.
They're strong and they canpuncture you.
It's scary if you don't have aDoss House Loss, because there
are plenty of aggressive slothsout there Like their grip.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
You're talking about their grip, basically.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, their grip.
They rely on their grip to stayalive, to be hanged by trees.
The majority of their lifetimeis spent in the trees, so they
have to hang.
So those are some gnarlyfingers.
They're some gnarly claws, somegnarly nails.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
And you guys had like a pretty docile sloth.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
You said I'd never got to meet the sloth, but from
the pictures and stories beforeI got there it just painted
pictures of a wonderful, slowlittle guy who just was a great
ambassador to cook everywhere.
Sort of you know, educate youngpeople, educate kids about you
know animals that are endangeredor animals that are, you know,
animals that are beingthreatened to endangerment,
(33:19):
because there's lots.
Their number one sort of threatis just, you know, um
reforestation down in SouthAmerica.
So it's a great.
It's a great learning.
I wouldn't say learning tool,I'm not objectifying the end,
but it's like it's a great sortof way to you know, it's a
hands-on way to learn, and ifyou're a kid you see a slot and
get to touch a slot.
That might spark an interest inbeing a zookeeper eventually.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Yeah, no, and that education is kind of I mean,
that's the point of zoos, iskind of educating and including
the next generation of peopleinto, you know, being interested
in animals and maybe trying tosave them, preserve them, you
(34:01):
know, work with them.
I mean it's kind of a treasurewe have to keep around for
future generations to be able tosee.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Exactly as long as humans have been around, we've
killed off such a largepercentage of wildlife species,
just from our growth and ourexpansion.
I would argue that the mainpurpose of any well-intentioned
(34:35):
zoo, accredited or not, is thatthey are just there as a
teaching instrument, as a way toeducate the public about what's
going on around the world,because when you walk into a zoo
, you're instantly looking atthe world through a lens, a lens
of animals.
You get to see differentanimals from Africa, you get to
hear stories of differentcommunities, like in Madagascar
and whatnot.
It's really all it's there for.
I mean other.
If you didn't have that oneintention, then it would just be
to have cool animals around andthat's sort of unethical.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Well, that's probably those people who illegally have
tigers, like.
It's always like hey look, Igot a tiger.
Like you see, mike tyson hadone.
Right, he had one for a while,I think he did yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, and he was even .
It wasn't even.
It was even in one of the oneof the movies from what's that
movie with Ed Helm?
But hangover, it was in thehangover.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Mike Tyson's tiger.
Oh, they kind of.
Yeah, they portrayed it orsomething, didn't they?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Exactly yeah.
There was like a whole, likethere's a huge tiger scene in
Vegas too, and not just privatecollections.
You know magicians.
Who are those two magicians?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Siegfried and Roy.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yeah, exactly yeah, siegfried and Roy oh he got
attacked right.
He did.
He got mauled on stage, wow.
And then afterwards they took adifferent approach to having
tigers and they were like weshould sort of advocate for no
one having tigers in the areaexcept for us.
What we have now, we'll justkeep in a sanctuary, but no one
else should have tigers.
So they went kind of on the onthe.
(36:01):
They flipped, they really,really flipped the coin.
They went from like lovingtigers and using them as props
in their show to going you knowwhat?
No one shot tigers.
We take this as a learningexperience and maybe down the
line this doesn't happen again.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Wow, yeah, I mean that's.
That's always kind of a weirdlife for an animal where you're
like reforming down in Floridathey used to have like I don't
know if you've ever heard thatlike alligator wrestling.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah.
So I mean I'm in South Floridaand I mean there's a lot of
stories from way back in the daywhen they used to put on these
like like in a parking lot orsomething like an alligator
wrestling demonstration.
Um, yeah, and they've.
This happened a lot.
I think they found that to bekind of cruel, um, but then you
(36:53):
know, I think the the umSeminole Indians are still like
somewhat allowed to do that,because we saw, like I guess, a
demonstration, but they're allrescue alligators, or nuisance
alligators they called them.
So the Seminole Indians willtake what they call a nuisance
alligator, which is like peoplewill feed them.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
You know like.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
I have one that lives in my pond and my backyard Um,
and he just kind of chills thereand doesn't bother anyone.
But I guess they become anuisance once people start
interacting, or sometimes peoplefeed them and then they start
coming up to the houses, whichis kind of a nuisance.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, a lot of people will feed wildlife and then the
wildlife will be comfortablewith people and humans and then
they'll just be around.
But you can't forget,alligators are dangerous.
They have this super strongfight grip and they do the death
roll.
And if you want to survive froman alligator attack you got to
really be strong, you really gotto fight the alligator.
Their skulls are thick.
If you want to penetrate it tokill it, it's entirely tough.
(38:03):
So I mean the seminoles, itmakes sense.
You know, taking these nuisancealligators and working with
them.
I don't doubt the seminolesaren't experienced, or I doubt
they're.
Yeah, I doubt they're notexperienced.
I I bet you they're highlyeducated.
I mean they're educated enoughto you know, have necessary
permits to have alligators anddo shows.
But in that sense I would sayit's more.
You know, it's sort of similarto the horse racing or camel
(38:27):
racing or using horses forhorse-drawn carriages in
downtown Austin or whateverthey're being used, but they're
being used somewhat ethicallyand definitely within the
confines of the law.
But you still see illegalcockfights.
You still see illegal alligatorwrangling.
You see people going out thereand picking native species that
(38:51):
are either endangered or they'rethreatened, or even the
opposite.
You have people introducingnon-native species that compete
with the native species,destroying their population.
It's just, you can be reallynegative or you can be very
disastrous, as a human, towardsyour environment with these
animals.
We have such a huge influenceon these animals.
(39:12):
It's not just that we share ourhomes with them, we share our
land with them.
You said you have an alligatorin your pond.
Where I grew up, we had coyotes, we had snakes and tarantulas.
We just had to look at them.
You have a respectful.
You want a respectfulrelationship.
Is what you want?
The Seminoles?
They have a respectfulrelationship with the alligators
(39:32):
.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Well, yeah, and that was a big food source for them
too.
I mean, they hunted them.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
I mean, they hunted them.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
I mean you kind of, if you're depending on them, you
kind of learn to respect them.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Absolutely.
It's sort of like the NativeAmericans and buffaloes.
You respected them.
You didn't hunt them toextinction.
You just you followed them.
You naturally just you followedthem.
You respected them.
You didn't just raise them,followed them.
You, you respected them.
You didn't just raise them andhunt them, kill them, just throw
away everything.
They used everything, from thebones to the organs, the
intestines.
(40:09):
They used everybody becausethey respected the animal.
It died for their nourishment,for the survival.
You know.
It's it's sort of arelationship they have with them
.
But if you just want a tiger inyour backyard, that's not a
relationship, in my opinion.
That's just you wantingsomething cool to have back in
your backyard to show people.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, it is fucking cool, but it's not right.
I mean, it's pretty damn cool.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
It's pretty damn cool .
Yes, I mean I never felt proudtelling people I worked at a zoo
because our zoo specifically,if they had asked which zoo was
sort of gross.
It didn't have the appeal likethe San Diego Zoo had.
So I never felt proud saying Iworked at a zoo, but I was proud
of working there because I knewwhat I was doing.
It took a lot of education toget people to understand what I
(40:54):
was doing.
But when I worked at the zoo youmentioned earlier what some of
the nitty gritty things havehappened there, some gross sort
of underbelly things.
Well, I told you about whathappened in some other zoos in
California, but some major zoos.
But in our zoo there wereinstances where, like because
we're a nonprofit, we can't havea veterinarian on staff, so a
(41:15):
lot of things go sort of treatedlike as we go we see an animal
injured or animals get mowed anddie.
We just have to wait until itgets to a critical point before
we have to call in aveterinarian and pay them to
either euthanize or even justanesthetize them so we can work
on them.
But there was a terrible storyabout one of our lions, a female
(41:36):
lion.
She had gotten so old and shestarted getting lethargic
towards the end of it we kind ofknew she was on her last legs,
but what we didn't know is howmuch in pain she was.
It wasn't until after shepassed away we were allowed to
go into the enclosure with herand what we saw was that she
completely sort of degraded herelbows, her front legs, and so
(41:57):
she had pretty much worn awaythe meat and muscle and just was
straight to bone.
And it was horrific sight tosee.
Not only that, but she had, youknow, magnets eating at her
necrotic flesh.
And this is all minutes aftershe passed away.
Like we were done, mourning ornot, that we were finishing
mourning, you know, the maindeath because she was euthanized
(42:17):
.
But after that we saw what herfixated.
It wasn't anyone's fault.
We couldn't have known what shewas going through.
We can't go into the enclosureand poke her and see what she's
going through.
We have to observe her.
So while, yes, it was a grossscene I almost threw up for sure
but I knew at the end of theday that we couldn't have done
(42:43):
anything to ease her pain early.
We didn't know, but that's onlybecause we didn't have the
necessary resources to afford aveterinarian on staff or on call
, 20%.
There are such scarier storiesthat happened before I got there
where you'd hear a couple, wehad a couple primates, we had a
couple species of primates and,uh, we had a group of well, I
(43:06):
won't say which one specifically, because it's kind of obvious
we had those a lot um, these,these monkeys just were breeding
prolifically and year afteryear to have babies, and but one
year because we we were, weweren't a concrete jungle but we
were a chain link jungle, wejust had chain link everywhere.
So our monkeys lived in chainlink enclosures and small baby
(43:27):
monkeys are small, they can fitthrough that chain link and so
it's hard to say, it's hard tobelieve it actually happened.
But there are stories where ababy monkey would get out out of
the bounds of the fence and themother would anxiously or sort
of like, uh, quickly try toretrieve the baby and she would
just pull it from the fence,like you know, pull her, she'll
(43:49):
put her arm, you know, outsidethe fence to grab her baby and
she'd just pull it instantly.
And there were stories, or onestory at least, where a one baby
just lost its head completelyand that wasn't our fault
because the monkeys oppositeeach other.
However, because of theenclosure, it's sort of our
fault.
If we had an enclosure withsmaller chain link or enclosure
(44:10):
with glass or just regular wallsand nets, that wouldn't have
been an issue.
And so often enough you'd seethese sort of scary situations
be a result of our inability tosort of have the right
conditions for animals, theright enclosures, the right
veterinary treatment.
There are stories like that.
(44:31):
And then there are storieswhere, like I can't remember so
hyenas, female hyenas, theircloaca is sort of like this
oblong penis shaped thing.
It's not a penis per se, but itlooks like a penis, sort of
accident penis.
But I just get first.
I've never paid attention tothat oh, believe me, you'll see
(44:54):
female hyenas having biggerpenises than male hyenas.
It's's a predominantlymatriarchal sort of species
where the females are strongerand they're higher up in the
totem pole than the males are.
So we had a female hyena andshe passed away and we just
didn't know what happened to her.
(45:14):
Oh, she just up and went andpassed away, but then, as we got
closer, we noticed that, oh,she had actually given birth and
she had died giving birth.
So some hyenas havecomplications with giving birth
because they're giving birth tothis penis, this shaft like sort
of cloaca or not cloaca, thisshaft like what's the word for
females.
And then we down there let'ssee Female.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Man, I'm lost on that .
Speaker 2 (45:42):
There you go.
I'll just say vagina forlayman's terms, just it's.
It's like this penis shapedvagina magic.
And so they give birth to thatand often, sometimes, they die
because it's just a painful andit's a horrific sight.
But they didn't know whathappened until after they got
closure with the dead hyena.
They see a baby hyena lying onthe ground and that's when they
go.
Okay, now we know why they died, but wouldn't you like to know
why they died beforehand or whatled up to them dying?
And I just had animals droppingdead.
(46:04):
We lost all our zebras withinlike a couple months.
We had three zebras.
One by one, they just droppeddead.
We have no clue as to why.
We still don't know why.
We didn't know why years afterwell, any thoughts, theories?
(46:24):
was it like the water bacteria,some kind of illness,
communicable disease?
Like it couldn't have been thewater we have such a good well,
but it could have been the feed.
From what we heard because webuy feed we don't just like buy
a lot of us buy their feedspecifically, like from a
distributor or from like acompany called Missouri Diet.
We just got our feed from thenearest feed store.
Or, for the zebras morespecifically, their feed came
(46:47):
from a distributor, but it waslike sort of one batch for every
six months.
So we had it stocked up for awhile.
So it could have been the feed,but it also could have just been
the ground.
There could have been thingsgrowing or just bacteria in the
dirt.
We, just after one passed away,we're like, okay, that's sort
of a weird incident, there'snothing to worry about.
But then when the second onepassed away, we were like okay,
(47:09):
really got to reconsider howwe're feeding them and how we're
watering them, make surethey're not stressed out.
And then third one passed awayand we were like you know what,
we can't do anything about itanymore, we're out of zebras.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah, that's.
Oh sorry, and then you justweren't doing any more after
that.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
No, it's like why, why go through the trouble of
getting more zebras when we canput something else there or sort
of break down the wall inbetween that closure and the one
with the other species, likeour zebus, which are these cows,
that we can give them morespace and then also, you know,
have to not worry about havingall these animals to feed.
It's sort of a few less mouthsto feed.
(47:49):
But at a young age, around 16,17, or 14, 15, me as a young, I
had to quickly become acquaintedwith death because death was a
common occurrence.
It's actually an application.
How do you handle death?
Just ask the questionapplication you take, and I, I'm
like, I'm cool with you know,endless time I've seen, I've
(48:11):
seen the aftermath, a couple ofhorses dying, because we grew up
with horses.
But you know, I didn't prepareme for what would happen because
month after year after year,because I've been there for a
while, I had seen all theseanimals die.
So I had this sort of notindifference, but I have a
respectful indifference towards,you know, death.
Now it freaks out my friendswhen they talk about death, when
someone close to them dies.
(48:32):
To me it's.
I trained myself or I just wasraised in an environment where
death was sort of commonplace.
Animals or I just was raised inan environment where death was
sort of commonplace.
I almost died.
That's where all this is notjust ours.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Yeah, well, I mean that's, and there's different
lifespans and obviously not mostof them don't live as long as
humans.
I mean most animals, just ingeneral.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Yeah, most animals don't Like tigers, have 20 years
tops in captivity or 20 sorry,20 years tops in captivity in
like 10 years or 12 years in thewild.
It's rare for an old yeah, foran ally to get really old like
it's.
It's so rare that when a femalelion gets so old they actually
start, they stop producingestrogen and they start to
(49:17):
produce testosterone.
That's just what I was told andit makes sense because those
beautiful means you see malelions with that stuff that big,
beautiful mane.
Well, that can make sense ifthat was produced by
testosterone that all male lionshave it because of their
testosterone.
Well, our lioness got so oldbecause she was treated very
(49:37):
well from the beginning.
She grew a mane.
So it's kind of rare for afemale to grow a lion's mane and
so that's just kind of a showhow old, she got it's good on
our part.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
The process on aging exactly.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
It's beautiful and I was lucky to grab a lock of her
hair the day she passed away.
Um, but when it comes toworking at a zoo, you have to be
.
When it comes to having anyanimal, whether you own a dog or
cat, you just have to becomfortable with the idea that
they might die.
But they're going to diesomeday, probably sooner than
you.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Yeah.
So after you know, having thisexperience and seeing all these
things, what's kind of your, Iguess, final thought, or your
lessons or your prognosis on thefuture of keeping animals and
protecting animals and I guessthe whole zoo business, what's
(50:30):
your?
It seems like funding is aproblem, obviously it's the
biggest problem when it comes toany zoo it's not the care,
because there's a lot of peoplethat care and that would help,
but you know funding absolutely.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
Who wouldn't want to take an opportunity to work with
a tiger or a lion?
Who would, they know, to thatopportunity?
It's really just the money tofeed the tiger, to house a tiger
, to keep the facility running.
But your question was what'sthe takeaway for zoos and their
existence?
I think for as long as humansare going to be around, zoos are
(51:08):
going to be absolutelynecessary Because as our
population gets bigger, we'llexpand into different
environments, some places thatmay not be protected forever,
like the Amazon rainforest oreven different parts of Africa.
So I believe that zoos play acritical role in education, but
also in propagating species thatare endangered or critically
(51:30):
endangered.
Like who like?
If we can avoid having, forexample I'm trying to think like
elephants if we can avoidhaving them go extinct, we
should try our hardest.
Or rhinos Rhinos are thebiggest one.
You often see rhinos beingpunched with their ivory and
their populations are decimated.
We've seen some subspecies ofrhino go extinct in our lifetime
(51:50):
just from the poaching.
So zoos play such a criticalrole in propagating the species,
whether they're in or out ofthe country they're from.
Propagating the species whetherthey're in or out of the
country they're from, but at thesame time.
It's only people who know howto have the credentials and the
education to take care ofanimals should be the one taking
care of animals.
As a young kid growing up, Ididn't know what the laws or
(52:13):
rules were in my city, orregulations.
I didn't know what they wereuntil I started working at a zoo
, because every year I'd begoing down to the county
commissioner's office orwhatever you call that, or
pretty much our city hall, andfighting on behalf of advocating
for zoos but the roles theyplay in society, even if you're
(52:35):
just a young kid like me, itopened me up to a whole other
world.
It opened me up to the entireworld.
I wouldn't be so knowledgeableabout the species had I not
worked for five years, and itwas such a an incredible
experience that I would want foranybody to have, whether
they're, you know, already anadult or whether they're young.
It's never too late to get intoanything.
You can always be a zookeeper.
(52:57):
You.
You're doing a great thing.
You're helping educate thefuture about these animals that
may not be around forever.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Well, it's definitely important work and there's a
lot of people out there that areinterested and I'm sure there
could be more.
But you know we thank you forcoming on and sharing the story
and talking about it andeducating our listeners and it's
it's something that a lot ofpeople don't know a lot about
(53:25):
how it is to operate those fromthe inside and maybe they don't
understand the fundingshortfalls.
And you know people hear thisand this gets out.
You know, maybe they startparticipating more and paying a
little bit more attention towildlife rescue and animal and
zoues and stuff like that.
So we appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
No worries.
Thank you for having me on,Matt.
I really appreciate thisopportunity.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
All right, thanks.
The Redacted Podcast isproduced by myself, mattender,
and my wife, pamela bender.
Make sure to go out there andgive us a like, a share, share
it with your friends, rate us.
(54:09):
Every little bit helps.
Thanks for tuning in you.
It's kind of a dumb animal, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Oh, hilariously dumb.
You can find hours and hours ofvideos online of seeing pandas
falling out of trees, breaking,snapping bamboo and just like
fall into their early death.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Clutzy pandas, Thank you.
(00:52):
Okay, thanks for tuning in tothe Redacted Podcast.
I'm your host, Matt Bender, andwe got a guest here on the show
today that worked at and knowsquite a bit about what you would
call I think you said it was aprivate roadside zoo.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Actually, Matt, it was a non-profit roadside zoo.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Non-profit.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Quite literally.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It was quite literally on the side of the
freeway.
You could see it from thefreeway, from the interstate.
It's quite literally a roadsidezoo.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
That's kind of crazy.
I don't know if I've ever seenanything like that.
Did it have buildings?
I mean, obviously it was like apermanent structure, right.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Oh, yes and no actually.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
The whole history of the location it's gone.
It's had so many iterations ofdifferent sort of things, like
what it was before a zoo, likebefore it was a zoo it was a
brothel before a brothel.
It was sort of like acorrectional halfway house.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Holy shit, holy shit, yeah, a brothel.
A brothel turned into a zoo,it's like two different things
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It's just had so many different sort of life life
cycles and it ended up being azoo.
Uh, 30, 40 years ago, uh, but Ididn't get into it until I was
a high schooler.
Um, this roadside zoo you got inin high schools when you
started working there I did, yes, um, somewhere around high
school we were required to havecommunity service hours sort of
(02:24):
logged so we can graduate withanother diploma, and I didn't
know what to do.
But I saw nearby where I livedwas an animal sanctuary,
something beautiful and out andabout, and I applied there and
they instantly denied me.
But here was this nonprofitroadside zoo that immediately
took me in.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Wow so they just and that sounds so weird, like a
nonprofit roadside zoo, like, um, it does paint the picture, but
yeah, and were you kind of like, well, what the heck is this
about them?
Was it, was it weird, or wereyou excited or were you like, is
it like a tourist thing?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh, it's absolutely a tourist attraction for the town
we were in and when I got thereI was immediately sort of
confused.
Like this is a zoo.
You wouldn't expect it to be azoo.
It's just a big building andyou see a sign that just says
the word zoo on it, nothing else.
And it's sort of old anddecrepit because of how old it
is and how little money they hadto spend on renovations that
(03:26):
didn't involve the animals.
So immediately off the gate Iwas sort of, you know, having my
reservations whether or not Iwanted to work there or
volunteer there.
And the staff didn't make itany better.
They were kind of like nothicks, I'd say, but they weren't
, like you know, sophisticatedzookeepers.
They were just people who arepassionate about animals and
(03:47):
just love animals in general.
So they worked there for yearsand they have all the experience
they need.
But I wouldn't call themzookeepers, I would just call
them experienced animal handlers.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, so the looks were a little deceiving because
you're maybe thinking you'regoing to see these people like
you saw on Jack Handy or youknow something.
You know a zoo shirt and somekind of a college background,
and then you know this wasn'tquite that.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Absolutely.
It wasn't that I expected tosee those, like khaki shirts and
khaki shorts, they say everyzookeeper classically wears
these guys' khaki.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
The safari outfit.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
The safari look.
Yeah, these guys didn't havethat.
They had T-shirts with jeans on.
It was more like a Tiger Kingstyle.
Oh, actually, tiger King issuch a common occurrence in
different parts of the country.
We were no different.
We were similar in a lot ofdifferent aspects.
Thankfully, we didn't have thegun-toting, you know, I don't
(04:44):
know the guy who was running forpresident, or anything.
We didn't have those sort ofambitions.
We kept to ourselves.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
We were a small, tight-knit community Okay, and
you say there's a lot of that.
That goes on.
There's a lot of like kind ofnon-profit, like I've seen a lot
of big cat stuff likespecifically.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So here's the crazy thing in every state, in every
city, there are differentregulations for like having wild
exotic animals, whether they'renative or whether they're
endangered.
You can have it with sort oflike the right paperwork and the
right accreditation, but thereare hundreds of roadside zoos
that aren't even non-profit.
Ours is a non-profit, but noteveryone is.
Usually they're cash grabs orskis, where know.
(05:27):
Let you take pictures ofkittens, of tigers, and it's
like the tiger team aestheticand like there are like the wwf
I forgot the.
It's like an organization thatsort of like works on me, you
know, it's sort of yeah, it'sthe world wildlife foundation
thank you so much.
Yeah, exactly Blank in there.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Wrestling had to give it up because of them.
Wrestling used to be the WWFand then they had to go to the
WCW.
That makes sense.
Or WWE?
I think too.
Yeah, crazy.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Well, it's crazy because the WWF they estimate
that there are at least 10,000tigers in captivity.
Those are just tigers.
I'm not including lions, lynx,leopards, all the other crazy
cats out there.
But there are 10,000 tigers inthe United States and under less
than 5% of them are even inaccredited zoos and sanctuaries.
Most of them are just privatelyowned, whether they are
(06:20):
purchased illegally and youreally can't purchase tigers
legally there's a whole likeendangered species act that
prohibits you from purchasing.
You know exotic animals thatare endangered and the way zoos
function is they trade betweenthemselves through the whole
accreditation.
You know zoos sort of worktogether like San Diego and
other guys, I can't think of anyother big zoos, it's like
(06:41):
reciprocal.
It's absolutely reciprocal.
It's sort of promoting aethical breeding program to help
boost the numbers in the wild,like some, like, uh, san diego
will take in some pandas andthen they'll breed them and then
they'll send them back, orthey'll take in some cheetahs
same thing and or they'll take,like orphaned animals in the
wild, you know, rehabilitatethem and then, if not,
(07:02):
potentially you know back wherethey came from.
They'll just keep them on theircollection and just trade them
around for years.
But it's all ethical and it'sall nice and it's sort of like
all documented.
It's very neat.
We were not that as a nonprofitzoo we had to worry about, you
know, money and how we couldfeed the animals, how we could
keep the lights on the buildlights on, cause we were paying
(07:23):
for the land.
It was sort of a struggle fromday one from me getting there.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
And you were taking I assume this place was taking
either donations or, you know,like an entrance fee from people
who wanted to come and see it,and that was a primary source of
revenue.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
It was their only source of revenue.
All they had were ticket salesand donations from the community
.
Donations didn't just come inmoney.
Most often enough, you'd seedonations being in the form of
feed or raw meat.
(08:02):
And they had a batch that wasnot safe for human consumption
and I remember we got like acargo container worth of like
raw venison raw, I think, turkey, but mostly venison and so that
was a huge deal for us, gettinglike a cargo container full of
just you know, boxes of meatthat we can't eat but the
animals wouldn't have any issueeating.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Well, that's that's, and that's good to see, that
it's, that it gets used, um, tosomething beneficial, and I'm
sure that I mean, if you'retalking about, you know, big
cats and these big animals andstuff, I mean they, they put
down some chow man, they, theyneed a lot.
I don't know what it is, butI've just, from things I've seen
(08:44):
, like the amount of pounds orsomething that they eat in a day
is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yep, they eat like five, depending on the size of
the cat, from five to ten poundsof meat and that's every day,
maybe minus one or two days sothey can fast, because in
captivity you can't just feedthem every day.
They typically in the wild.
They don't have food every daygiven to them, so they have to
sort of stimulate the same sortof environment they have,
stimulate the same environmentthey have in the wild in
(09:12):
captivity.
So almost every day we'd haveto prepare over 30 to 40 pounds
of meat and then like 20 to 30pounds of vegetables and fruit.
I mean, we weren't a big zoo.
We had a wide selection ofdifferent animals.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
We didn't a big zoo but we had a wide selection of
different animals.
We didn't just have big cats.
Yeah, why don't you walkthrough?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I mean I know stuff probably changed, but what was
the basic kind of lineup ofanimals when I got there?
We hosted different speciesfrom big cats to small cats to
primates, some hoofstock animalthat weren't native to our area.
Exotic birds are our rescues,same with the reptilesiles, like
an alligator I'll get into thatin a second.
And then we also had hyenas,which are their own little class
of animal species.
(09:55):
We had so many sort of likebarn animals sort of next to
these exotic animals.
We had zebras next to donkeysand we had leopards next to
baboons.
I guess they're in the samesort sort of environment but
like it's crazy to see camelsnext to baboons.
We weren't organized by by ademographic, by geography, like
africa or asia, or even by likespecies like reptiles and
(10:17):
amphibians.
We just had animals whereverthey fit, whatever cage suited
for them.
And was fda?
Fda approved, sorry, fda.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
I don't know.
I don't know who regulates that.
I'm sure somebody does USDA?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
It's the USDA.
I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Okay, yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yes, usda, they have specific guidelines on the
enclosure size, the catch cagesize, the fences, whether
there'd be one or two, and so wejust had a mishmash of animals
in different areas, and most ofthem had been there their entire
life, whether they were bredthere or they were acquired very
young in their life.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Wow, so they knew nothing other than captivity.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, Most of them were rescues.
A lot of them had their ownunique sort of rescue story or
their own purchase story,because 30 years ago rules and
regulations were a lot lessstrict than they are now.
You could easily buy a hyenafrom an auction in Texas or
Missouri.
Those are huge states fortrading and selling wildlife or
(11:23):
exotic animals you know, tradingand selling wildlife, you know,
or exotic animals.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Okay, and then I imagine I've seen before that
some of the places like yourswill actually come to obtain
them from people who illegallyown them, and maybe they were
seized or something, so that's.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Exactly, we have.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
That's kind of the rescue aspect of it.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It is.
It's the surrendering ofanimals that you're not legally
allowed to have.
We had an alligator whobelonged to a drug dude, and
this alligator was confined to abathtub, so she was severely
stunted and gross.
She was a small alligator butwe took her in and she's like
30-plus years now.
If she's still there at the zoo, I'm not sure where she is now,
but you know know we havestrange sort of acquisitions,
(12:06):
from birds to even our tigers.
Some of our tigers weren'tpurchased or even traded, they
were just kind of donated to uswow.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And what was the animal with the the biggest kind
of draw, like what I imagine ithad to be, the big cats yeah,
it was.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
It was the tigers and lions.
When we had them it was thelions.
I mean, we have, we've alwayshad tigers.
Oh wow, the lions we had forfor a while and they all passed
away from old age.
But then we got a new set oflines, but uh, that's later on
the story.
Um our tigers.
We had two tigers, I won'tspecify which kind.
Uh, they were actually owned bya magician in las vegas.
(12:47):
I won't go into which magicianyeah, that's kind of well okay.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Okay, go on yeah, these.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
This guy was crazy.
He had two tigers, but theissue was one had neurological
issues, she wasn't fit for stagetime, and she, she was too
aggressive, she wasn't trainable.
Pretty much she served nofunction.
So rather than rather than sellit to someone who wouldn't buy
her, you know, they just donatedto our zoo and we had two
tigers on exhibit, one withsevere, you know, anxiety issues
(13:16):
and but me and her I mean thatme and that one tiger we
actually grew a very strong bond.
I wasn't sure if it was becauseof who I was or because it just
did not.
Time spent the third, but overtime, after hours or before
hours, you'd see she wasn't sostressed out, but during hours,
that's what you saw she was notfit to be in a zoo what was she
like?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
pacing or just acting strange, or you know, I'm sure
you could tell just with all thepeople you know walking around,
little kids screaming and andall that exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I mean all these different stress factors from,
like, the people, from the music, it's where an extra freeway,
so like there's a lot of noise,and so having this, you know,
tiger and display, and it's not,like I said, it's not a big zoo
, so like the distance betweenyou and tigers quite, you know,
quite small.
He could almost reach forwardto the, to the second fence
where the tiger is at, and soshe wouldn't eat.
(14:11):
Sometimes she would pace a lotand she'd be extra aggressive.
Those are all signs of sort oflike, uh, just stress issues
with being, you know, on exhibit.
But they knew early on that shejust had neurological issues.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Okay, and then was the other tiger pretty mellow.
Was that one a little moreacclimated?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I'd say he was rambunctious, but he was
definitely acclimated.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Now, were you guys actually touching these animals
or anything like that, or?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
was it kind of all arm's length.
So because we weren't anaccredited zoo, we didn't have
sort of like strict rules sayingwe couldn't or we couldn't.
We were pretty much justplaying it by ear and by saying,
if you're there long enough andif you are safe, you could pet
the tigers through the fence oryou could hold a capuchin monkey
on your shoulder or you can getan enclosure with a hyena.
(15:10):
It just depends on the animaland the sort of comfort that
they have with the zookeeper.
A lot of the zookeepers or thevolunteers who worked at this
nonprofit have been there for atleast a decade or more.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I've been there for at least a decade or more, okay.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
And then was there ever any issues with the
volunteers being attacked ormaybe harming the animals or
something like that?
I mean, myself included.
I was grabbed by a camel andthey wouldn't let go.
And then my friend, thankfully,just bopped it on the nose and
they let go.
But I got off easy, because ayear prior a friend of mine,
very lanky, small skinny she,was picked up by the ankle by
(15:55):
the same camel.
So there had been sort of thisdocumented sort of a case of
aggression with this camel.
We couldn't go in there alonewithout sort of like a rake or a
wheelbarrow to keep between youand the end.
Um, and some animals are, ofcourse, just you know, they're
by nature, they just bite orthey scratch.
But uh, there are so manyanimals camels can be aggressive
(16:17):
.
I've heard that oh, absolutely,they're scary.
They don't just kick backwards,they kick to the side too so
wherever you are, they couldeasily kick you yeah, yeah, yeah
, that's great.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
And then they are camels, the one that do that
spit thing they like sneeze onyou they don't spit on you.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
That's the alpaca.
That's a pack, oh okay okay, butcamels, they just sort of like
slobber and they just have a lotof slobber drop, you know, just
dribbling down their face.
They already have that.
A lot of I'm trying to think ofthe name of the class of
species, anyways, a lot ofcamels, most camel species, they
just drool just like theynormally do.
(16:58):
I'm trying to think there wereno major attacks, like there
were no, like no one died, noone was mauled to death.
Like no one lost an arm, like atiger came.
The farthest we got was someonelost a finger.
Because we got as far as wecould with volunteers but it
(17:19):
wasn't enough to do all thenitty gritty work, like picking
up the pen with all the deer forthe petting zoo it's like a lot
of poop and it takes hours ofour time to do it or even just
like picking up rocks orcleaning up the general paths.
So we would often get thesepeople who need to do community
service for the various thingsthey did to society, whether
(17:40):
they broke a law or they neededit for school, and so we took in
a lot of people who just neededto do hours of community
service.
We gave them the grunt work.
Well, this one one individual.
He jumped the secondary fenceand then got real up close with
the tigers and he was trying tocut the tigers to their fence.
(18:01):
And he, just because it's thetiger grabbed on, wouldn't let
go.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
And the tiger just because the tiger grabbed on,
wouldn't let go and oh no, thetiger just pulled the finger.
Shirt off holy cow, just I meanwith its mouth, obviously, just
kind of he's sticking hisfinger in it, trying to touch
him, and then the tiger justgoes nap, just yanks.
Exactly, jeez, were you there?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
and here's the thing.
Oh, I was, but I wasn't therewith the tigers.
I just heard about it.
Oh man, I had to run down there.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
That had to be so painful.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I can't imagine how painful it was.
It's just the pulling rightBecause it wasn't like a clean
chop, yeah, like a clean chop.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Sounds bad enough, but like a yank your finger out,
oh my God.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Thankfully we didn't incur any sort of uh
consequences.
The tiger wasn't put down, theywere just quarantined for a
while yeah, well, that's goodyeah there were so many
different aspects of working ata small zoo that just were
weren't sort of pretty.
Every day, every week, everyyear, we're worried we might not
have enough money to keep going.
There was no game plan for incase we didn't have the money.
(19:07):
There was no backup Like if wedidn't have the money to keep
the lights on or to feed theanimals.
We'd have to scramble to sellor even donate our animals to
other facilities in the nearbystates.
Because our area didn't haveany zoos, we were the only zoo.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
It was like living paycheck to paycheck yeah,
that's kind of tough, like aconstant cloud of worry, and I
mean that probably means thatthe animals I mean, were the
animals getting everything theyneeded, or I'm sure there had to
be shortcuts um, I'm thankful Ican report that there were no
(19:45):
actual shortcuts Once thatendangered the animals or put
them in sort of like a weirdspot.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
We were never negligent.
We were always putting in theextra hours, working 50, 60 hour
weeks just for free.
Sometimes, I mean eventually.
I never told you actually how Igot started there.
Really.
I mean, after I started workingthere as a volunteer in high
school I quickly loved it andeventually kind of went up the
ranks and started working there.
And so I mean eventually I wasbeing paid, but I was being paid
(20:10):
very little because we justdidn't have the funds.
But when I was being paid to bea zookeeper, I was putting in so
many hours where I would wakeup really early, pick up some of
those community service workersI was talking about, take them
to the zoo, work the zoosometimes in the hottest parts
of the summer, and thenafterwards I would take those
(20:31):
people who I picked up back towhere they needed to be dropped
off, whether it be a sheriff'soffice or other locations.
And then this is high school,so I also had a regular job on
top of that job, and so I'd gofrom job to job like one after
the other and then I take thecompany vehicle to my other job.
Sleep at work, night shift,sleep in the parking lot, wake
(20:53):
up and repeat the same cycle,pick up the community service
workers and take them to the zoo.
And it wasn't because I had to,it was purely for the love and
the passion of working at anon-profit zoo.
The passion of working at anon-profit zoo.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
You know a lot of people.
I mean there's an incrediblekind of volunteer community for
animals that I've noticed, andwhether that be pets or you know
the different kind of zoo-likeanimals you're talking about, I
mean a lot of people we havedown here in Florida.
I mean I got a cat rescue rightdown the street.
(21:28):
I got a exotic bird rescueright down the street.
I mean we have a ton of thoseand they're not for profits and
they're kind of um, heavilyvolunteer based.
So it's um, you're 80%volunteer.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Exactly, we're 80 percent volunteers wow, what's
um?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
how long did you end up working there for?
Speaker 2 (21:55):
so I was there from freshman year high school, oh, I
think freshman year college, soaround four to five years,
maybe a little bit longer.
Um, towards the end we kind ofwe kind of got phased out by
another facility that kind oftook over, but um, that's more
towards the end of the story,you know, more towards the end
of me being there, because inbetween there were so many
(22:16):
different things going on and Iwanted to touch on something
else.
You said the communityvolunteers are so strong, it is,
but it's also very strange.
It's sort of reminiscent oftiger king and you have these
various characters who are like,sort of like I wound up here by
accident and he gave me a joband now I live on this place and
he feeds me and I just workwith tigers all day, sort of a
(22:37):
similar thing, you know.
We don't really deny anybody tovolunteer.
If you're sane and you're safeand you have a good head on your
shoulders, we'll take you in.
You're sane and you're safe andyou have a good head on your
shoulders, we'll take you in.
And if you work your way up, Imean by the third, fourth year,
you're pretty much running theplace, you're working with all
the animals.
But the people we had, wecouldn't, you can't, cure stupid
(22:59):
.
We just had people who werelike, who thought differently
than they would need to.
In the sort of situationthey're in, they are the act
first, think after need to.
In the sort of situationthey're in, they are the act
first, think after they.
Uh, you know they would make,they would make a decision, a
big decision, and then, you know, ask for forgiveness.
And in a zoo like this, wheremoney is literally so finite, it
it really is so hard to like toto even like fix a situation
(23:22):
where someone buys something forthe zoo and go, hey, I need to
be reimbursed because we did alot of that.
A lot of the maintenance wasreimbursement.
We had a vehicle that wepurchased that was reimbursed.
But it's so bad because, eventhough we want to get rid of
these people that are just notso good for the zoo in terms of
like the, the overallinteraction between people, like
just the day-to-day community.
(23:44):
Even though we couldn't, eventhough we couldn't, even though
they were not great, we justcouldn't get rid of them because
we absolutely needed their hardwork.
We needed them to be there, tobe doing the hard work of
feeding, cleaning andmaintaining the zoo.
There were days where I just Icould not stand being here
because of the people around,but solely because we needed
their help.
They were there and so itwasn't a picnic all the way
(24:08):
through.
There were sort of niches thatI fell into and even a mentor I
had found, thankfully, and I'dstuck with them and we kind of
were a little bit higher on thetotem pole up until four or five
years into the whole ordeal notordeal, the whole experience,
this zoo in Oregonregon theseguys were kind of shady.
(24:30):
These guys are really shady,more shady than we are.
Not we weren't shady, they wereactually shady.
They would take certain animalslike tigers, lions and other
small cats and crazy venomoussnakes and they would pack them
and a trailer like a.
You know, those 16 wheel track,the 16 wheelers, those trailers,
big trucks yeah, yeah I meanthere were small cages and then
(24:52):
they tore them around thecountry and they pretty much
would find like carnivals, fairs, conventions, and they would
put them in these like prettymuch these boxes where you could
see them from afar.
But they were all temporaryenclosures and so for most of
the year they they didn't havegrass, they didn't have like a
pond plain.
They were a big cat.
It wasn't until this zoo wasshut down and sort of run out of
(25:14):
their city in Oregon.
It wasn't until then that theone tiger, another tiger, we had
more tigers added to the zoo.
It was the first time in like10 it was really young, seven to
ten years that he had ever seena pod.
That that was our, that was oursize and we had a small pod.
So even then it was still likecrazy to see this tiger get to
(25:37):
play in this big bath of waterfor the first time that's kind
of cool, and the tiger was happy, I assume oh, absolutely happy,
he was chuffing like free atlast.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Free at last exactly.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, it was no longer concrete jungles.
Uh, for him, for the facility.
I remember looking up on googlemaps and seeing that it was all
concrete in the facility.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
It was sort of smaller than ours or around the
same size, but it was allconcrete at least we had, you
know, like plants sprung throughthe, through the dirt yeah, I
mean we didn't have like grasseverywhere, but we had enough
greenery that the animalsweren't suffering yeah, yeah, I
can't imagine that would be nicejust hanging out with concrete
and metal cages and I meanthat's got to be horrible.
(26:21):
So that had to be you know,seeing that tiger one of those
like fulfilling moments whereyou're like, okay, what I, what
I do matters absolutely everyday you went home with the sense
of like I'm going to call whatwould you say gratification or
satisfaction.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
You went home knowing you didn't just do something
good, but you did something thatyou were passionate about and
that it's like it just dropped.
It drove me like there were hotdays and cold winters and so
many steps.
You know it was a five acre,five to six acre property, so
it's like a lot of walking.
It was a lot of hard work but Inever felt tired never ever.
It's just it was a wonderfulfeeling you got for working, for
(27:05):
working there, and I wouldn'ttrade that experience for
anything in the world.
I'm so glad I accidentallyfound them online looking for
volunteers.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah, now, was there any kind of dark underbelly
stuff that you'd seen, or you'dseen others do, or other
organizations, what's kind ofthe?
I know there's a big dark sideto it.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, there's a dark side to it for sure, like even
these big accredited zoos sortof have like chapters in their
history where they weren'tacting the right way or they
hadn't known how to handlecertain animals.
For example, and some zoo incalifornia I forgot which one
exactly uh, they don't use bullhooks.
And for, for those of youlistening, what a bull hook is?
It's this really thick rod witha very pointy end and a hook
(27:51):
next to it, sort of like theprod and poke elephants.
It's to move them around.
It's sort of for safety for thezookeepers too.
If they charge you or they gettoo close, you can poke them.
It won't stab them through thethick skin, but it's enough to
scare them off.
(28:13):
But there was one zoo incalifornia and there was a fire
in that area and they had to beevacuated.
However, because of their, uh,strict rule to not use bull
hooks which is admirable forsure, um, they couldn't evacuate
their elephants, so theseelephants were left in harm's
way.
If the fire had, you know,potentially gotten there to the
zoo, they would have been toast.
They wouldn't have been movedanywhere because of their strict
sort of rules as to nevermoving an elephant with the bull
.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And there are stories .
Well, that's good intention.
That's good intention at least.
It may be maybe negligent, ormaybe not thinking it through
all the way, but good intentiongood intention, for sure, but I
mean bullhooks are mostly forsafety.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
They're not really to like move the animals, they're
just, you know, for your safety.
But I mean bullhooks are mostlyfor safety.
They're not really to like movethe animals, they're just you
know for, for your safety.
But I mean it's sort of like,in a situation like that, most
people would side on this wouldbe most people would side on the
side of bullhooks.
Yeah, like, let's get them out,no matter what it takes.
Um, but there were otherexamples too, like before I get
to our zoo, there was anotherzoo where they didn't even know
a red panda had died until, like, the carcasses fell out of the
(29:06):
tree.
I mean, they're so prone todying from heat exhaustion
during the summer they have toget coats, uh.
So, like, sometimes they'rejust, you know, the red panda
just fell out of the tree dead,decomposed, not like decomposed,
but starting to decomposearen't those like super rare, is
that?
Speaker 1 (29:22):
a panda's, not thankfully, they're not, oh, not
the red panda yes, you'rethinking of the regular chinese
panda the black and white ones.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Oh, not the red panda .
Yes, you're thinking of theregular Chinese panda, the black
and white ones, Ah I understand.
Yeah, and those guys I mean.
No zoo technically owns one ofthose pandas, a black and white
panda.
No one owns one.
They're all property of Chinaand if you have one you probably
have it legally.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
But most zoos are all zoos.
Where it's on loan or something, yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Exactly.
If you have one, you probablyhave it legally, but most zoos
are all zoos when it's on loanor something Until they're done
breeding.
Yeah, exactly, yeah, china'sreally adamant about having all
their pandas back in theircountry after they're done
breeding, or whatever.
So you could breed a panda andthen have a panda at your zoo.
You would think so, but no thatbaby panda is still the property
of China.
Oh, I get property.
All pandas in the world belongto China.
(30:07):
It's a strict rule.
If, for example, someone had apanda illegally and they
surrendered it in Texas, thenthat panda would go straight to
China.
It wouldn't stay in Texas.
I wonder who makes that rule,you'll never see a rest.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Where did that rule come from?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Pandas were really at this brink of extinction a
while ago.
It wasn't until captivebreeding programs and then the
AZA, that's, the AmericanZoological Association.
It wasn't until they stepped inand started breeding them
outside of the country.
Additionally, that they broughtthem back.
But back then it was like ifyou have a panda, we want that
(30:47):
back so bad.
We would kill to have our pandaback because of how rare they
are and how endangered they are.
They're impossible to breed,really Not impossible, but
they're really hard to breed.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Do they exist in the wild anywhere or no?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
They still do.
Yeah, they still live in bambooforests I don't know exactly
where in China.
I'd have to look up thegeography of China.
I'd have to look up thegeography of China.
I'd imagine colder climates,higher elevation.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
That's crazy, I know it's likethe I mean the panda's like the
poster for the World WildlifeFoundation or the World Wildlife
Fund, maybe it is.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, they're the poster child for all endangered
species because they're the mostlike recognizable species.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, it's kind of a dumb animal, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Oh, hilariously dumb.
You can find hours and hours ofvideos online just seeing
pandas falling out of trees,breaking, snapping bamboo and
just falling to their earlydeath.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Clutzy pandas.
They really are Like the dodobird.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I'm surprised the pandas had gotten this far.
I mean, of course we intervened, but before that I'm surprised
they got that far In life downthe timeline of species In terms
of how long they've existed.
I'm surprised they've existedthis long in terms of how long
they've existed.
I'm surprised that they'veexisted this long.
I mean, they're not all stupid,but it's just hilarious how the
(32:11):
stereotype sort of holds upwith pandas.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah, did you guys ever have a sloth?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
We actually did have a sloth.
We had a two-toed sloth, Ithink.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
That's a hilarious animal.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Hilarious animal, but they're so strong when it comes
to their nails, their fingers,the nails mostly.
They're strong and they canpuncture you.
It's scary if you don't have aDoss House Loss, because there
are plenty of aggressive slothsout there Like their grip.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
You're talking about their grip, basically.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, their grip.
They rely on their grip to stayalive, to be hanged by trees.
The majority of their lifetimeis spent in the trees, so they
have to hang.
So those are some gnarlyfingers.
They're some gnarly claws, somegnarly nails.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
And you guys had like a pretty docile sloth.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
You said I'd never got to meet the sloth, but from
the pictures and stories beforeI got there it just painted
pictures of a wonderful, slowlittle guy who just was a great
ambassador to cook everywhere.
Sort of you know, educate youngpeople, educate kids about you
know animals that are endangeredor animals that are, you know,
animals that are beingthreatened to endangerment,
(33:19):
because there's lots.
Their number one sort of threatis just, you know, um
reforestation down in SouthAmerica.
So it's a great.
It's a great learning.
I wouldn't say learning tool,I'm not objectifying the end,
but it's like it's a great sortof way to you know, it's a
hands-on way to learn, and ifyou're a kid you see a slot and
get to touch a slot.
That might spark an interest inbeing a zookeeper eventually.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Yeah, no, and that education is kind of I mean,
that's the point of zoos, iskind of educating and including
the next generation of peopleinto, you know, being interested
in animals and maybe trying tosave them, preserve them, you
(34:01):
know, work with them.
I mean it's kind of a treasurewe have to keep around for
future generations to be able tosee.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Exactly as long as humans have been around, we've
killed off such a largepercentage of wildlife species,
just from our growth and ourexpansion.
I would argue that the mainpurpose of any well-intentioned
(34:35):
zoo, accredited or not, is thatthey are just there as a
teaching instrument, as a way toeducate the public about what's
going on around the world,because when you walk into a zoo
, you're instantly looking atthe world through a lens, a lens
of animals.
You get to see differentanimals from Africa, you get to
hear stories of differentcommunities, like in Madagascar
and whatnot.
It's really all it's there for.
I mean other.
If you didn't have that oneintention, then it would just be
to have cool animals around andthat's sort of unethical.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Well, that's probably those people who illegally have
tigers, like.
It's always like hey look, Igot a tiger.
Like you see, mike tyson hadone.
Right, he had one for a while,I think he did yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, and he was even .
It wasn't even.
It was even in one of the oneof the movies from what's that
movie with Ed Helm?
But hangover, it was in thehangover.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Mike Tyson's tiger.
Oh, they kind of.
Yeah, they portrayed it orsomething, didn't they?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Exactly yeah.
There was like a whole, likethere's a huge tiger scene in
Vegas too, and not just privatecollections.
You know magicians.
Who are those two magicians?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Siegfried and Roy.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yeah, exactly yeah, siegfried and Roy oh he got
attacked right.
He did.
He got mauled on stage, wow.
And then afterwards they took adifferent approach to having
tigers and they were like weshould sort of advocate for no
one having tigers in the areaexcept for us.
What we have now, we'll justkeep in a sanctuary, but no one
else should have tigers.
So they went kind of on the onthe.
(36:01):
They flipped, they really,really flipped the coin.
They went from like lovingtigers and using them as props
in their show to going you knowwhat?
No one shot tigers.
We take this as a learningexperience and maybe down the
line this doesn't happen again.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Wow, yeah, I mean that's.
That's always kind of a weirdlife for an animal where you're
like reforming down in Floridathey used to have like I don't
know if you've ever heard thatlike alligator wrestling.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah.
So I mean I'm in South Floridaand I mean there's a lot of
stories from way back in the daywhen they used to put on these
like like in a parking lot orsomething like an alligator
wrestling demonstration.
Um, yeah, and they've.
This happened a lot.
I think they found that to bekind of cruel, um, but then you
(36:53):
know, I think the the umSeminole Indians are still like
somewhat allowed to do that,because we saw, like I guess, a
demonstration, but they're allrescue alligators, or nuisance
alligators they called them.
So the Seminole Indians willtake what they call a nuisance
alligator, which is like peoplewill feed them.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
You know like.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
I have one that lives in my pond and my backyard Um,
and he just kind of chills thereand doesn't bother anyone.
But I guess they become anuisance once people start
interacting, or sometimes peoplefeed them and then they start
coming up to the houses, whichis kind of a nuisance.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, a lot of people will feed wildlife and then the
wildlife will be comfortablewith people and humans and then
they'll just be around.
But you can't forget,alligators are dangerous.
They have this super strongfight grip and they do the death
roll.
And if you want to survive froman alligator attack you got to
really be strong, you really gotto fight the alligator.
Their skulls are thick.
If you want to penetrate it tokill it, it's entirely tough.
(38:03):
So I mean the seminoles, itmakes sense.
You know, taking these nuisancealligators and working with
them.
I don't doubt the seminolesaren't experienced, or I doubt
they're.
Yeah, I doubt they're notexperienced.
I I bet you they're highlyeducated.
I mean they're educated enoughto you know, have necessary
permits to have alligators anddo shows.
But in that sense I would sayit's more.
You know, it's sort of similarto the horse racing or camel
(38:27):
racing or using horses forhorse-drawn carriages in
downtown Austin or whateverthey're being used, but they're
being used somewhat ethicallyand definitely within the
confines of the law.
But you still see illegalcockfights.
You still see illegal alligatorwrangling.
You see people going out thereand picking native species that
(38:51):
are either endangered or they'rethreatened, or even the
opposite.
You have people introducingnon-native species that compete
with the native species,destroying their population.
It's just, you can be reallynegative or you can be very
disastrous, as a human, towardsyour environment with these
animals.
We have such a huge influenceon these animals.
(39:12):
It's not just that we share ourhomes with them, we share our
land with them.
You said you have an alligatorin your pond.
Where I grew up, we had coyotes, we had snakes and tarantulas.
We just had to look at them.
You have a respectful.
You want a respectfulrelationship.
Is what you want?
The Seminoles?
They have a respectfulrelationship with the alligators
(39:32):
.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Well, yeah, and that was a big food source for them
too.
I mean, they hunted them.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
I mean, they hunted them.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
I mean you kind of, if you're depending on them, you
kind of learn to respect them.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Absolutely.
It's sort of like the NativeAmericans and buffaloes.
You respected them.
You didn't hunt them toextinction.
You just you followed them.
You naturally just you followedthem.
You respected them.
You didn't just raise them,followed them.
You, you respected them.
You didn't just raise them andhunt them, kill them, just throw
away everything.
They used everything, from thebones to the organs, the
intestines.
(40:09):
They used everybody becausethey respected the animal.
It died for their nourishment,for the survival.
You know.
It's it's sort of arelationship they have with them
.
But if you just want a tiger inyour backyard, that's not a
relationship, in my opinion.
That's just you wantingsomething cool to have back in
your backyard to show people.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, it is fucking cool, but it's not right.
I mean, it's pretty damn cool.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
It's pretty damn cool .
Yes, I mean I never felt proudtelling people I worked at a zoo
because our zoo specifically,if they had asked which zoo was
sort of gross.
It didn't have the appeal likethe San Diego Zoo had.
So I never felt proud saying Iworked at a zoo, but I was proud
of working there because I knewwhat I was doing.
It took a lot of education toget people to understand what I
(40:54):
was doing.
But when I worked at the zoo youmentioned earlier what some of
the nitty gritty things havehappened there, some gross sort
of underbelly things.
Well, I told you about whathappened in some other zoos in
California, but some major zoos.
But in our zoo there wereinstances where, like because
we're a nonprofit, we can't havea veterinarian on staff, so a
(41:15):
lot of things go sort of treatedlike as we go we see an animal
injured or animals get mowed anddie.
We just have to wait until itgets to a critical point before
we have to call in aveterinarian and pay them to
either euthanize or even justanesthetize them so we can work
on them.
But there was a terrible storyabout one of our lions, a female
(41:36):
lion.
She had gotten so old and shestarted getting lethargic
towards the end of it we kind ofknew she was on her last legs,
but what we didn't know is howmuch in pain she was.
It wasn't until after shepassed away we were allowed to
go into the enclosure with herand what we saw was that she
completely sort of degraded herelbows, her front legs, and so
(41:57):
she had pretty much worn awaythe meat and muscle and just was
straight to bone.
And it was horrific sight tosee.
Not only that, but she had, youknow, magnets eating at her
necrotic flesh.
And this is all minutes aftershe passed away.
Like we were done, mourning ornot, that we were finishing
mourning, you know, the maindeath because she was euthanized
(42:17):
.
But after that we saw what herfixated.
It wasn't anyone's fault.
We couldn't have known what shewas going through.
We can't go into the enclosureand poke her and see what she's
going through.
We have to observe her.
So while, yes, it was a grossscene I almost threw up for sure
but I knew at the end of theday that we couldn't have done
(42:43):
anything to ease her pain early.
We didn't know, but that's onlybecause we didn't have the
necessary resources to afford aveterinarian on staff or on call
, 20%.
There are such scarier storiesthat happened before I got there
where you'd hear a couple, wehad a couple primates, we had a
couple species of primates and,uh, we had a group of well, I
(43:06):
won't say which one specifically, because it's kind of obvious
we had those a lot um, these,these monkeys just were breeding
prolifically and year afteryear to have babies, and but one
year because we we were, weweren't a concrete jungle but we
were a chain link jungle, wejust had chain link everywhere.
So our monkeys lived in chainlink enclosures and small baby
(43:27):
monkeys are small, they can fitthrough that chain link and so
it's hard to say, it's hard tobelieve it actually happened.
But there are stories where ababy monkey would get out out of
the bounds of the fence and themother would anxiously or sort
of like, uh, quickly try toretrieve the baby and she would
just pull it from the fence,like you know, pull her, she'll
(43:49):
put her arm, you know, outsidethe fence to grab her baby and
she'd just pull it instantly.
And there were stories, or onestory at least, where a one baby
just lost its head completelyand that wasn't our fault
because the monkeys oppositeeach other.
However, because of theenclosure, it's sort of our
fault.
If we had an enclosure withsmaller chain link or enclosure
(44:10):
with glass or just regular wallsand nets, that wouldn't have
been an issue.
And so often enough you'd seethese sort of scary situations
be a result of our inability tosort of have the right
conditions for animals, theright enclosures, the right
veterinary treatment.
There are stories like that.
(44:31):
And then there are storieswhere, like I can't remember so
hyenas, female hyenas, theircloaca is sort of like this
oblong penis shaped thing.
It's not a penis per se, but itlooks like a penis, sort of
accident penis.
But I just get first.
I've never paid attention tothat oh, believe me, you'll see
(44:54):
female hyenas having biggerpenises than male hyenas.
It's's a predominantlymatriarchal sort of species
where the females are strongerand they're higher up in the
totem pole than the males are.
So we had a female hyena andshe passed away and we just
didn't know what happened to her.
(45:14):
Oh, she just up and went andpassed away, but then, as we got
closer, we noticed that, oh,she had actually given birth and
she had died giving birth.
So some hyenas havecomplications with giving birth
because they're giving birth tothis penis, this shaft like sort
of cloaca or not cloaca, thisshaft like what's the word for
females.
And then we down there let'ssee Female.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Man, I'm lost on that .
Speaker 2 (45:42):
There you go.
I'll just say vagina forlayman's terms, just it's.
It's like this penis shapedvagina magic.
And so they give birth to thatand often, sometimes, they die
because it's just a painful andit's a horrific sight.
But they didn't know whathappened until after they got
closure with the dead hyena.
They see a baby hyena lying onthe ground and that's when they
go.
Okay, now we know why they died, but wouldn't you like to know
why they died beforehand or whatled up to them dying?
And I just had animals droppingdead.
(46:04):
We lost all our zebras withinlike a couple months.
We had three zebras.
One by one, they just droppeddead.
We have no clue as to why.
We still don't know why.
We didn't know why years afterwell, any thoughts, theories?
(46:24):
was it like the water bacteria,some kind of illness,
communicable disease?
Like it couldn't have been thewater we have such a good well,
but it could have been the feed.
From what we heard because webuy feed we don't just like buy
a lot of us buy their feedspecifically, like from a
distributor or from like acompany called Missouri Diet.
We just got our feed from thenearest feed store.
Or, for the zebras morespecifically, their feed came
(46:47):
from a distributor, but it waslike sort of one batch for every
six months.
So we had it stocked up for awhile.
So it could have been the feed,but it also could have just been
the ground.
There could have been thingsgrowing or just bacteria in the
dirt.
We, just after one passed away,we're like, okay, that's sort
of a weird incident, there'snothing to worry about.
But then when the second onepassed away, we were like okay,
(47:09):
really got to reconsider howwe're feeding them and how we're
watering them, make surethey're not stressed out.
And then third one passed awayand we were like you know what,
we can't do anything about itanymore, we're out of zebras.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah, that's.
Oh sorry, and then you justweren't doing any more after
that.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
No, it's like why, why go through the trouble of
getting more zebras when we canput something else there or sort
of break down the wall inbetween that closure and the one
with the other species, likeour zebus, which are these cows,
that we can give them morespace and then also, you know,
have to not worry about havingall these animals to feed.
It's sort of a few less mouthsto feed.
(47:49):
But at a young age, around 16,17, or 14, 15, me as a young, I
had to quickly become acquaintedwith death because death was a
common occurrence.
It's actually an application.
How do you handle death?
Just ask the questionapplication you take, and I, I'm
like, I'm cool with you know,endless time I've seen, I've
(48:11):
seen the aftermath, a couple ofhorses dying, because we grew up
with horses.
But you know, I didn't prepareme for what would happen because
month after year after year,because I've been there for a
while, I had seen all theseanimals die.
So I had this sort of notindifference, but I have a
respectful indifference towards,you know, death.
Now it freaks out my friendswhen they talk about death, when
someone close to them dies.
(48:32):
To me it's.
I trained myself or I just wasraised in an environment where
death was sort of commonplace.
Animals or I just was raised inan environment where death was
sort of commonplace.
I almost died.
That's where all this is notjust ours.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Yeah, well, I mean that's, and there's different
lifespans and obviously not mostof them don't live as long as
humans.
I mean most animals, just ingeneral.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Yeah, most animals don't Like tigers, have 20 years
tops in captivity or 20 sorry,20 years tops in captivity in
like 10 years or 12 years in thewild.
It's rare for an old yeah, foran ally to get really old like
it's.
It's so rare that when a femalelion gets so old they actually
start, they stop producingestrogen and they start to
(49:17):
produce testosterone.
That's just what I was told andit makes sense because those
beautiful means you see malelions with that stuff that big,
beautiful mane.
Well, that can make sense ifthat was produced by
testosterone that all male lionshave it because of their
testosterone.
Well, our lioness got so oldbecause she was treated very
(49:37):
well from the beginning.
She grew a mane.
So it's kind of rare for afemale to grow a lion's mane and
so that's just kind of a showhow old, she got it's good on
our part.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
The process on aging exactly.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
It's beautiful and I was lucky to grab a lock of her
hair the day she passed away.
Um, but when it comes toworking at a zoo, you have to be
.
When it comes to having anyanimal, whether you own a dog or
cat, you just have to becomfortable with the idea that
they might die.
But they're going to diesomeday, probably sooner than
you.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Yeah.
So after you know, having thisexperience and seeing all these
things, what's kind of your, Iguess, final thought, or your
lessons or your prognosis on thefuture of keeping animals and
protecting animals and I guessthe whole zoo business, what's
(50:30):
your?
It seems like funding is aproblem, obviously it's the
biggest problem when it comes toany zoo it's not the care,
because there's a lot of peoplethat care and that would help,
but you know funding absolutely.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
Who wouldn't want to take an opportunity to work with
a tiger or a lion?
Who would, they know, to thatopportunity?
It's really just the money tofeed the tiger, to house a tiger
, to keep the facility running.
But your question was what'sthe takeaway for zoos and their
existence?
I think for as long as humansare going to be around, zoos are
(51:08):
going to be absolutelynecessary Because as our
population gets bigger, we'llexpand into different
environments, some places thatmay not be protected forever,
like the Amazon rainforest oreven different parts of Africa.
So I believe that zoos play acritical role in education, but
also in propagating species thatare endangered or critically
(51:30):
endangered.
Like who like?
If we can avoid having, forexample I'm trying to think like
elephants if we can avoidhaving them go extinct, we
should try our hardest.
Or rhinos Rhinos are thebiggest one.
You often see rhinos beingpunched with their ivory and
their populations are decimated.
We've seen some subspecies ofrhino go extinct in our lifetime
(51:50):
just from the poaching.
So zoos play such a criticalrole in propagating the species,
whether they're in or out ofthe country they're from.
Propagating the species whetherthey're in or out of the
country they're from, but at thesame time.
It's only people who know howto have the credentials and the
education to take care ofanimals should be the one taking
care of animals.
As a young kid growing up, Ididn't know what the laws or
(52:13):
rules were in my city, orregulations.
I didn't know what they wereuntil I started working at a zoo
, because every year I'd begoing down to the county
commissioner's office orwhatever you call that, or
pretty much our city hall, andfighting on behalf of advocating
for zoos but the roles theyplay in society, even if you're
(52:35):
just a young kid like me, itopened me up to a whole other
world.
It opened me up to the entireworld.
I wouldn't be so knowledgeableabout the species had I not
worked for five years, and itwas such a an incredible
experience that I would want foranybody to have, whether
they're, you know, already anadult or whether they're young.
It's never too late to get intoanything.
You can always be a zookeeper.
(52:57):
You.
You're doing a great thing.
You're helping educate thefuture about these animals that
may not be around forever.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Well, it's definitely important work and there's a
lot of people out there that areinterested and I'm sure there
could be more.
But you know we thank you forcoming on and sharing the story
and talking about it andeducating our listeners and it's
it's something that a lot ofpeople don't know a lot about
(53:25):
how it is to operate those fromthe inside and maybe they don't
understand the fundingshortfalls.
And you know people hear thisand this gets out.
You know, maybe they startparticipating more and paying a
little bit more attention towildlife rescue and animal and
zoues and stuff like that.
So we appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
No worries.
Thank you for having me on,Matt.
I really appreciate thisopportunity.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
All right, thanks.
The Redacted Podcast isproduced by myself, mattender,
and my wife, pamela bender.
Make sure to go out there andgive us a like, a share, share
it with your friends, rate us.
(54:09):
Every little bit helps.
Thanks for tuning in you.
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