A Glimpse into my Zoo Job

You might already know that I work at a zoo for my day job.  I'm an educator, so I take animals schools to teach kids all about  the animals and their habitats and everything in between.  When schools take field trips to the zoo, I sometimes present educational programs at our amphitheater for the kids while they're visiting. Last week, I taught a program on endangered animals.  The kids got to see a chinchilla, a desert tortoise, and a peregrine falcon.  Here are a few shots from that presentation. 

Chinchillas really are very soft.  I mean, just check out this girl's face! She was amazed!

We try to use at least one touchable animal in our presentations.  We also use animal artifacts (what we call biofacts) like feathers, fur, bones, etc to enhance and compliment our topics.

Of course, I wasn't very mindful of when the photos where actually being taken, so we ended up with silly shots like this one.  (I was talking about how desert tortoises dig long tunnels.)

Duey the desert tortoise was a big hit!



Ha! Here's another silly photo.  I think at this point, I was talking about how the pesticide DDT affected facons' eggshells--it made them so thin that the falcon's couldn't sit on their eggs without breaking them.  This is apparently the face I make when explaining this point. :)

Cloud Dancer the Peregrine Falcon

All the animals that I work with are smaller like these guys.  Some have been rehabilitated, and some have been abandoned.  Some have even had previous lives as pets, but their owners were not able to care for them properly for one reason or another.  I can assure you that they ARE well cared for at the zoo. 

I consider myself a very lucky girl to have this job. Even if I get pooped on from time to time.