A woman I shall call SP was what we had as a semi- vet before Dr S. She had her moments. Paul remembers: “I recall SP always wore white, I think because she wasn’t a vet but liked to correct people when they called her Dr. P. The main thing I recall was her constant …
Tag: Real Zoo
Real Zoo #7: Kimba
Kim was an African spot- nosed guenon, a really lovely little monkey and unlike many captive primates quite sane, but she was also a domineering little prima donna; she treated people the way Ataika tends to treat dogs, as lesser beings that were good as servants but who occasionally needed a good bite to keep …
Blind Cave Cockatoos: An Exchange (Real Zoo # 6)
The Real Zoo had a blind Cockatoo named Cookie, who did not live in a cave. In one of our discussions I mentioned The Incident of the Blind Cave Cockatoo. I should add that in those days I, Paul, and our supervisor Richard were the three people with the responsibility to teach the flock of …
Real Zoo #5: Squirrelly
From Other Steve: Every Spring, children living near the zoo would come in with baby squirrels that they had “found.” Chances are, they had been found after the children had knocked them out of their nests, but, each year, we’d take them in and the girls who made up the diets in the kitchen would …
Real Zoo # 4
Me on “My Scars”, or “Julian’s Dogs”. It was said that at a reunion (that none of us attended) that there was a scar show. Mine, at least the ones I still have all these years later, are not from the wolf or the alligators or even the otters or the gibbon who TRIED. “I …
Real Zoo # 3
Other Steve on the two baby black leopards, and television. (I– Steve B– found the cubs, still very small when Annie first introduced them to me, rather intimidating, unlike the much bigger but almost doglike, playful young tiger. They weren’t so much malevolent as little forces of nature, like animated thorn bushes who BIT. Hard. …
Real Zoo #2: Volunteer’s First Day
My old zoo group has responded so enthusiastically that I have enough material to fill the blog with nothing else for a while. I will restrain myself, but at least start with some of this irresistible material from Other Steve, who last gave us The Law, and a bit from me about what animal I …
Steve’s Law: Tales From the Real Zoo # 1
Far Away and VERY Long Ago, in a zoo on a most distant coast, a bunch of young people worked in a big(gish) municipal zoo. Annie D, who introduced me to Betsy of Querencia (who volunteered there, but I didn’t know her then), and who often comments here, was one, and I was another. We …