1. I’m impressed that a Zookeeper one of these exists!!
2. It’s all true.
Though I will offer three caveats:
a) Re: “what I really do” - yes, a LOT of my job involves cleaning in every form (shoveling, hosing, scrubbing, dish washing, window washing, squeegeeing, pitchforking, etc.), but it’s not miserable like people think it is. I actually enjoy most of my daily cleaning routine - I like zoning out and letting my mind wander while I clean, it’s therapeutic. Also, animal excrement is WAY less gross than human excrement, so I roll my eyes at people who squeal, “EEEWWW, you have to clean their POOP?!?!” Yes. Yes I do. And it gets in my hair and on my face and all over my hands and clothes, and I don’t care. It’s not that gross. Move on.
b) Re: “what I wish I was doing” - I do get to do the cool stuff. Quite a lot, actually. It’s just that people are often surprised to learn that 100% of my job is not bottle-feeding baby giraffes. Zookeeping is like… 80% difficult, exhausting, dirty work, and 20% awesome moments that make other people jealous. Yeah, I get to feed penguins and hug flamingos and have tiny cute parrots crawling in my hair and kiss elephants on the trunk and pet rhinos, but in exchange for that I spend innumerable hours washing dishes and scrubbing floors and sorting buckets of fish and crawling awkwardly in tiny, filthy spaces and hosing feces off of every surface imaginable. Worth it? Definitely. But it’s not for everyone.
c) Finally, there’s also a lot about zookeeping that isn’t reflected in this particular meme. Zookeepers do more than just clean and occasionally pet animals. We make the animals’ food, give them their medications, treat their injuries, design their exhibits, monitor their behavior with a level of hawk-eyed observation that would stun you, keep records, train the animals in precise and complex ways, educate the public, fix things when they break, and many other things. There’s a routine to it for sure, but there’s also something different every day. I love it. A lot.
That was tl;dr for a meme, sorry. I just have a lot of thoughts on this subject.
