THE Bite

*warning: graphic description


I saved this one for today. Today is a special 20^th anniversary. Good or bad, depends on your perspective but none-the-less it was a life changing event and I have embraced it from the beginning.  I was brand new to the zoo field and had only been working at this particular place for less than a year. I wasn’t even full time animal staff (yet). I had to work my way up and did that by helping the animal staff as much as I possibly could. This particular day I was helping Dave feed the Chimpanzees.  It was just before the park closing and we were standing in front of the chimpanzee enclosure in the park.  This meant that visitors were standing behind us watching us feed them.  I dropped some food and reached down to pick it up to move it closer.  One of the chimps named Rosie reached out and grabbed my arm and pulled it into the cage biting down on my hand.  Dave instinctively grabbed my arm and Rosie’s face poking her in the eyes to get her to let go.  I didn’t scream or cry out.  In fact, I felt nothing.  I was focused on the fact that I could not feel a finger anymore, it wasn’t just numb; I actually felt nothing.  I have no way to explain it but I knew there was a void.  I immediately grabbed my hand so tight that Dave had to literally pry my fingers apart to get a look at it.  All he said was that we need to get to the hospital.  I don’t remember what we talked about but he kept talking and managed to keep me from going into shock.  At the hospital I had several doctors looking at my hand.  They had me go through a series of movements to see if any mobility was left.  The truth was there would never be any mobility.  In fact, although the bones were there absolutely nothing was left on them. I was never able to look it straight on. I could see it out of the corner of my eye and was able to stay detached. It was like something out of a movie, a horror movie no less.  I was told my choice was a series of extremely painful skin grafts or to amputate.  I chose amputation.  It was the better choice especially since we were dealing with an animal bite.  It was only then that I started to cry. 

Stories

There are countless “little” moments that happen that touch the heart and rarely get remembered, let alone recorded. Then there are the moments that keep people laughing for years to come.  All of these little things are about the people as much as they are about the animals.  I have been educating people about animals and conservation for just as long as I have been caring for the animals. I have always loved the expressions on children’s faces when they see and especially touch an animal for the first time.  But when I hear that I have really made an impact on a child; that touches the heart.  Years ago I was working in Florida and I was leading a group around an island and one parent came up to me.  She told me that she remembered me from the year before when she was there with her children. Her young son was later out on a boat and stopped the men fishing from throwing the discarded fishing line overboard. The mother said he specifically remembered my talking about the permanent damage it caused the pelicans and told these men all about it.  I still get tears in my eyes thinking about it to know the difference I made that day. 

There are always the people that make off the wall comments or questions that come from left field.  At one of our table set ups we had some earrings for sale to raise some money to support the animals.  These earrings were made of feathers that were shed by our birds. One day a woman had come up and had been talking to us for a while, she came across as a bit of know-it-all, but half way through the conversation she looks at the earrings and asks what we thought about people using feathers for jewelry, etc.  Glenda was with me and we looked at each other and then at her a bit puzzled and she went on to mention that “people were getting birds just for their feathers”. I explained to her that the birds just shed them naturally and that we pick ours up, clean them off and then our volunteers make things out of them.  The woman looked at me as if she didn’t believe me and was slightly horrified like we would pluck our birds for their feathers. I don’t think I ever convinced her that it was a natural occurance. You can’t win them all.

I have worked with thousands of individual animals but there are always a few that really touch your heart.  Some of the best moments are with the birds. When you work with animals that talk it opens up a whole different world that just adds a lot of comic relief to your life.  Especially when they catch you saying something you don’t want them to hear.  We had a very intelligent African Gray that seemed to have great timing with everything he said.  One day Nigel was coming into the house from the bird area (aka our garage) and he tripped up the stairs. Nigel ‘claims’ he tripped over shoes I left there, but I don’t know about that. ;-)  As he was catching himself while going into the house he yelled (picture it with an English accent) “for f*^k’s sake”. Not 15 minutes later I was in the kitchen and Nigel was on the front porch and we both hear very loudly from Garrett “for f*^k’s sake”.  We’ve had a great laugh over that for years now. Fortunately, Garrett decided not to repeat it more than a couple times. These are just a couple moments out of thousands that I have experienced they make you laugh and touch your heart.