Zookeeper's Confessional

We're Not Caging the Animals, We're Caging the Weirdness. Talking about real stories already happened in this world stories about animals.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Kayak Podcast. Hey animal lovers, Well everyone who
has ever looked at a pigeon and thought, what is
your deal? This is Zookeeper's Confessional. We are not caging
the animals. We are caging the weirdness. The only podcast
where we pull back the curtain on the zoo and
reveal the truly bizarre, the downright baffling, and the moments
that make you question whether you're working with wildlife or

(00:24):
just a cast of very hairy, improved comedians. I'm your host, Omer,
and I've spent the better part of a decade trying
to convince a kapabara that no, I am not a pillow.
And let me tell you the things I've read. The
stories I have to tell, they're not in the brochure,
So grab your headphones, get comfortable, and try not to
spill your coffee when I tell you about the time

(00:45):
our lemurs went on a crime spree. So let's dive
right in. This is a story i've been calling the
case of the Missing Sandwiches. Now you'd think that working
at a zoo, the biggest mystery you'd have to solve
is why did the giraffe suddenly decide to wear that

(01:06):
tree branch as a hat. But no, this was a
true who done it? We had a new in turn,
bless her heart. Let's see, we had a new in turn.
Bless her heart. Let's call her Brenda. Brenda was a
go getter. She was determined to be a zoo keeper,
and she was doing great except for one thing. Every day,

(01:27):
her perfectly packed, meticulously labeled lunch would disappear from the
breakroom fridge. First it was a turkey sandwich. We thought, okay,
maybe someone made a mistake. The next day, a hummus
rap a bit of a stretch, but maybe a coworker
is angry. Then a tupperware full of a lovingly prepared quino,

(01:47):
a salad with a balsamic vinegret. At this point it's personal.
We are talking about a cold case with a delicious,
healthy victim. We set up a little camera, a motion
activated spycam you juice, to try rackshy nocturnal animals. We
thought we'd catch a sneaky co worker, maybe one of
the groundskeepers with a secret sandwich addiction. What we caught

(02:08):
was something else. Entirely. We reviewed the footage. The break
room is empty, it's late afternoon. The camera clicks on
and then slowly, meticulously, a raccoon emerges from a crawl
space behind the soda machine. Not just any raccoon, a

(02:31):
raccoon that has clearly been doing this for a while.
He waddles over to the fridge, opens the door with
surprising dexterity, and his little raccoon paws start rummaging through
the contents. He pulls out Brenda's quino a salad, and
he doesn't just eat it. He opens the lid, takes
a careful sniff, and then with a look of utter
disdain on his face, he pushes the salad off the counter.

(02:53):
It clatters to the floor. The camera captures him looking
directly at it, as if to say, are you kidding
me with this? Where's the good stuff? He then proceeds
to find a half eaten bag of potato chips that
someone left out, and he sits on the floor, crinkles
the bag open, and just starts munching away like a tiny,
furry crime boss on his lunch break. Brenda, bless her heart,

(03:18):
was devastated not by the theft, but by the fact
that her kinoa salad was not a high priority target
for a criminal raccoon. She actually went out and bought
a bunch of leftover pizza to put in the break
room fridge, just to see if the raccoon would take that. Instead,
it did every single night, And that, my friends, is
a true story. The zoo's biggest food thief was a

(03:40):
raccoon with a sophisticated palate and a strong aversion to
healthy greens. Now for our next story, I want to
talk about our penguins. You think penguins are these cute,
waddling little guys in tuxedos, and they are, but they're
also so surprisingly dramatic and very, very dedicated to their grudges.

(04:05):
We have this one penguin, a rockopper named Skipper. Skipper
is not a fan of one of our other keepers,
a guy named Mark. We have no idea why. Maybe
Mark wore the wrong color shirt one day, Maybe he
looked at Skipper's fish just a little bit too long.
The point is, Skipper has decided that Mark is his
mortal enemy. So what does Skipper do? Every time Mark

(04:28):
is near the enclosure? Skipper will go to the highest
point he can find, usually a large rock, and start
a loud squawking and very pointed tirade. It's not a
normal penguin call. It sounds more like an angry old
time you see captain yelling about the price of fish.
But that's not the weirdest part. One day, Mark was
doing a routine cleaning of the enclosure. He's got his

(04:50):
back turned scrubbing away, and he hears this little tap
tap tap sound behind him. He turns around and sees Skipper.
Skipper is holding a pebble in his beak. He's standing
there staring at Mark with his little beady eyes, and
he just drops the pebble right on the ground, and

(05:12):
then he looks at Mark as if to say the
gauntlet has been thrown. Mark, being a good sport, just
shrugs and keeps cleaning. So Skipper goes and gets another pebble,
and another and another. Soon Mark is surrounded by a
perfect circle of tiny pebbles. Skipper has literally built a
little fence of tiny stones around his enemy, like a feathery, passive,

(05:35):
aggressive land surveyor. The other penguins, by the way, are
watching this whole thing with rapt attention. They're just standing
there looking like a little penguin audience at a tennis match,
turning their heads back and forth as Skipper retrieves another
pebble and Mark just keeps scrubbing. So the next time

(05:56):
you go to the zoo, remember this. The animals are
not just living in their habitats. They're living out their
own tiny sitcoms, their own low stakes crime dramas, and
their own inexplicably pettiturf wars. That's all the time we
have for today's zookeepers confessional. Join me next time when
I tell you about the time our Flamingos formed a
flash mob and refused to move until we played the

(06:17):
song Don't Stop Me Now. By Queen, it was a
whole thing. Thanks for listening, and remember always lock up
your sandwiches. You never know who's watching by listeners. See
next Kayak Podcast episode