Dear Mike, Two words: Wildlife Preserve. Every job at Chestatee Wildlife Preserve (Dahlonega, GA) is a dirty job. And everyone who works there is just as crazy as you- every one of us is an unpaid volunteer! We have a lot of animals (lions, tigers, leopards, cougars, bobcats, servals, lynx, bears, wolves, monkeys, lemurs, marmosets, wallabies, coatimundis, parrots, elk, ostrich, alligators, chimps, and even a camel and a yak), and they all LOVE to get dirty! As volunteers we need to clean up a lot of poop, which from watching the show you seem to be really fond of. We also clean and maintain habitats, clean food and water dishes, and clean food buckets. Even the animal's food gets us messy. All the cats get raw chicken, which tends to be bloody and greasy, and we prepare all the other animal's food by hand. Besides the basic dirty stuff, volunteers have wrestled wet muddy gators, pulled the remains of old eaten deer carcasses (a treat for the bigger cats) out of cages, and given tigers showers! We’re so dirty we even have our own trash dump! Even caring for baby animals can be dirty, you actually have to help many baby animals poop! We’d love for you to come down to Chestatee and get dirty with us and our great animals! Sincerely, Stephanie Sakoutis
FYI- Chestatee Wildlife Preserve is a Georgia 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and fully licensed rescue, exotic animal and wildlife preserve. The Preserve is funded through guest admission fees, corporate, and personal donations. www.chestateewildlifepreserve.org
This message has been edited. Last edited by: stephania27,
My name is Meghan Hennessy and I also am a volunteer at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve and I can verify that the jobs we do are very dirty! The worse job is definetly cleaning out our chimp habitat. Not only do they have near liquid poo but they throw it and rub it on virtally EVERY surface that they have access to. This includes the walls, food trays, every toy and even the ceiling. Once it dries it is very difficult to get off and needs to be scraped off the walls falling all over us. On top of the poo, they throw all their food when they are done with it which we then have search for and clean. This is only one dirty job we do!!! We have many many more!
I have visited the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve several times. The education and value of this preserve to our youth and culture is something tha cannot be measured yet is invaluable.
I have seen firsthand the effort put forth and the gross things endured but the staff. Without them Chestatee Wildlife Preserve would not be the same warm place it is.
I have visited this wildlife preserve, and i can say two words-Dirty Job! Not only is it exciting from the fact that you get to deal with animals, but the adrenaline from trying to clean up crap while also trying not to be eaten can be such a mess.
I can further confirm that Chestatee Wildlife Preserve is an extremely dirty job. I am a volunteer at C.W.P. who is not afraid to get dirty (most of the time). In addition to all the posts above, there is one job in particular that makes me gag. Did you ever wonder what bears do after hibernating all winter? They crap. Not only has this B.M. been waiting all winter to be cleaned up, it is enough stuff to fill up the bed of a pickup truck! Then, during the summer months, daily cleanup of sun-baked turds is a must. If you don't think that's dirty enough, at the end of the day the poo collected from all of the animals must be disposed of. I assure you it ranks as one of the dirtiest things a human can do.
If you are looking for a dirty job, I would have to agree that you can definitely find many dirty jobs at the Chestatee Wildlife preserve. I have only been up there once, and it was a wonderful experience. They have such a wide range of animals that create all kinds of different filth that needs a good cleaning. They could definitely use a hand that is not afraid to get down and dirty.
I have also put in hundreds of hours here at C.W.P, and there is a lot more than cleaning up processed biological matter. As crazy as it is running through a daily routine with a 2-3 person staff, these necessities (feeding, cleaning, raising and entertaining the animals) do not add up a full day. For instance, the preserve is under a heavy burden of never-ending landscaping that is also a daily chore squeezed in and around the day’s base-line routine. There is no such thing as normal when you are dealing with exotics. So, while a generic lawn service can weed-eat, they aren’t trained to weed-eat around a pond teaming with American Alligators during breeding season. I am also pretty sure that they can not comprehend how to approach the unthinkable idea of mowing grassy enclosures containing Wolves, Camels, Buffalo, Lions, Bears, and Tigers. However, if you still aren’t convinced with these jobs, how about shearing sheep? Or combing the winter coat off of a full grown female black bear just out of hibernation? We can also use your services to spread manure, fertilizer, grass seed and hay. If you would like to try a hand at herding hoof stock, we do that too. To sum it all up, we rarely experience a dull moment, so come on out to the North Georgia Mountains, and if you are looking for an even more eventful day, bring the rain, it takes a little more than a summer shower to shut us down from doing our job taking care of these magnificent wild animals.
