Adventures at the Zoo

I am living my childhood dream. When I was in second grade, we had to draw a picture of ourselves in our dream careers. I drew myself as a zookeeper, wearing that cool khaki uniform and pith helmet. Next to me was a tiny cage, filled up by an elephant. Yep, I was going to be the coolest grown-up ever!

Well, I can’t say that I take care of elephants, but I do work at a zoo!

Wait, Stefi… don’t you work at Disneyland?

Okay, I volunteer at the zoo. Maybe I’m exaggerating my awesome-ness. One morning a week I go to the Santa Ana Zoo to teach kids about animal adaptations and show them some really exotic animals… like bunnies and opossums!

That’s not that cool.

Of course it’s cool! And you know what the best part is? I get to work with a ROOSTER!

This little rooster is named Rip. He’s one of the first animals I learned to handle, and we fell in love immediately. He’s small enough to fit in one hand, with his feet dangling down. He just sits there and looks at me, making little clucking noises. He doesn’t give me much trouble when I try to catch him in his yard (much to the amazement of the other docents), and when I put him down and try to leave, he follows me to the gate. I’ll lean over the gate and say goodbye, and he just looks up at me sadly. Walking away, sometimes I hear him crowing.

The head of the zoo’s education department used to train orca whales at Marineland. Today I asked her if she thought Rip was trainable. “Absolutely!” she said excitedly. “Haven’t you ever seen those roosters at fairs that play the piano?” I’m still not sure if she was kidding. But if any rooster could play the piano, it would be Rip. Although, I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. Maybe I could just teach him to crow on command (“Rip, speak!”) and to follow me onstage. I’m envisioning an epic bird show like San Diego puts on. We’d have to get a couple of other birds to train too, so we can have some fly across the audience and perch on my arm. And then I’d say, “We can all help to protect endangered species… right, Rip?” And Rip would say, “Cockadoodledoo!”

Today I went to visit him, and the keeper was cleaning out the building. “There’s some mealworms in the fridge if you want to get him some,” she said. “He loves ‘em!”

I scurried out, passing Dora the Opossum on her giant hamster-wheel, and ran across the way to get Rip’s snack. When I came back, I think he must have recognized the little dish I was carrying. It was full of mealworms, most of which were still alive. Apprehensively, I reached into the dish and pulled out a wiggling bug. I bent down to offer it to Rip, hoping he’d take it soon so I wouldn’t have to hold it for too long. He took it from my fingers, but it fell to the ground. A couple of people leaned over the fence in awe, watching Rip peck at it and finally devour the rest. They smiled at me and talked to one another in Spanish, apparently pretty amused by me feeding a rooster.

I fed Rip one after another, and he started swallowing them more quickly, then looking at me imploringly. “This is the last one,” I told him. But he looked so sad that I continued to feed him.

The zoo’s miniature train chugged past, and the people aboard looked over the fence to see what I was doing. “Here’s one of the zoo’s brave trainers,” the engineer joked. “She’s feeding Rip the Rooster!”

I’m obviously not an actual trainer, but it still felt pretty badass. Today roosters, tomorrow elephants.