I pick up all kinds of poop! WBS, you have nothing on me. (Some of your folks are at my zoo now). I feed pounds of raw meet, rats,worms, inscects. a few cow heads in the past to big carnivores. I pick up bird, horse, llama, canine, feline, rhino, bats,primate, (some of the worst) and even the people gargage that people leave laying in a zoo. Elephants can leave 300 pounds a day, from ONE! I get peed on, craped on, spit on, bit, stung, licked and occasionally, "loved". Oh yes, lets not forget the pest control. Ant, Rodents and roaches run rampant. I once went to a freinds resturant for lunch and he found the roach on my shoulder. Then there is the grand duty of picking up the dead things that occasionally find there way into carnivore exhibits. People think this job is glamorous, I once had to come home with chimp crap and mud after needing to find a burried pump in a chimp moat! Me and my truck smelled for weeks! Cleaning windows that childen druel on, unfreezing locks in the ice, sweating in the heat, hauling hay, grain, and food. I still wouldn't trade it for anything though!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: kim g,

I completely agree with you, I am also a keeper and have experienced most or all of the things that you have listed. I started out cleaning up after elephants, rhinos, giraffes, and hippos, which was definitely no picnic. Elephants go a lot, and it is extremely heavy...the giraffe room has a horribly designed drain, so you had to rinse everything towards it, then walk through ankle deep nasty water to go clean it out. Although no animal waste smells good, I must say that rhino urine is way up there on my worst smelling list, nothing reeks quite like raking up urine and feces soaked hay in the morning inside a hot, humid, poorly ventilated room.
I then moved on to work gorillas, two of which seem to have chronic loose feces. There was usually very little to shovel up, or it would splatter everywhere, you pretty much just had to hose it all away. Then there were the juveniles, who left it smeared it every imaginable place from which you have to scrub it off.
Finally, I now work the night shift where I clean the barn. It's the worst during the winter, the cattle spend all of their time inside during zoo hours, so when they are out to pasture at night and I come in to clean, there is not a spot anywhere on the floor that is not covered in feces. They are cattle, so it's loose, it's been standing all day, so it's smeared, and of course, it's freezing in there and it's frozed to the floor. When you rinse, the floors often ice over because it's so cold. The worst part, and in many people's opinion the worst job in the zoo, is when you have to clean out the drains, which occurs 1-2 times per week. You walk into the gutter part, which is ankle to shin deep black nasty water, have to get this special hook and pull the cover off, then proceed to shovel, little by little, the nasty "sludge" which collects at the bottom of the drain. It is heavy, slimy, takes forever and it STINKS! These are some of the specifics of what our keepers and myself go through, along with all of the things listed in the message before this. Many of them are not so much fun to do, but it is a job I also would not trade for anything and that I love. I also notice that most of the people on this show are men, it'd be a nice change to see some more women with dirty jobs too, although perhaps it's just because more men do these dirty jobs than women...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: kacy_lynn,