Animal Care

By Jimmy Black, Program Intern


Caring for pets is almost every kid’s dream, be it a vet, zookeeper, or cute puppy owner. I still dream of a career in pet care, making the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center a perfect opportunity for me to discover where my passion for nature truly lies. Right now I am leaning toward vet school, so being assigned to the animal care rotation first is exactly where I wanted to be. Many of the skills I have been acquiring in animal care are directly transferable to vet school: animal handling, animal diet, animal hygiene, and of course, the horrid animal smells.

I knew coming into this internship that dealing with animals is not all bottle feeding the cute baby deer or scratching the hard to reach places on the lions like you see on most zoo's summer intern programs, but many people have this rose colored glasses view about interning at a zoo. As expected, the first thing I did in animal care was clean an animal's enclosure. What was not expected was the extent that animals can decimate an area. The opossum is a fine example of an animal that will test your squeamishness. Unlike the skunk, opossums spread their feces not just on ever surface of their cages, but all over themselves as well. I clean up after them every day and the repetition and smell of this is definitely a struggle for me.

Smells have always been important to me whether it's the type of deodorant I put on every morning, the glade plug-ins I buy for my room, or the perfume a girl wears, so the eye-watering smells I come across in this position are difficult. The opossums are one thing, but if you don't gag cleaning up after them I'd like to see how you handle the otters after they are fed vast amounts of fish. That is as bad as the smell gets in animal care. I was gagging the whole time wondering why I ever found them to be cute.

I joke a ton about the smells that animal care has introduced me to, but there is so much more to it. Every morning I prepare food for the raptors and help clean the animal enclosures. One of the most tedious tasks is picking up feathers in the raptor exhibits. This is something that gets overlooked by most visitors, but is unknowingly appreciated. It reminds me of working at Dick's Sporting Goods and putting items on the right shelf after customers put things back in the wrong place. They don't think about the associate who makes a minimum hourly wage needing to put everything back in its rightful place. Now whenever I go to a store I recognize how things seem to be right above the correct price. Relating back to the feathers, I'll be sure to take note on how feather-free a bird exhibit is at any zoos I visit in the future.

My favorite parts of animal care would have to be preparing the animal diets, running errands such as transporting animals to Fish and Game, or going to the vet's office, and oddly enough cleaning the bear exhibit. Cleaning the bear exhibit includes hiding food all over their night pens, washing down the floors of the night pens, and scooping poop in their exhibit. Call me a little kid, but every time I scoop bear poop I laugh to myself about the amount of waste these animals produce. It's hilarious and smells more like my compost at home than I had thought.

All and all, even though animal care has its challenges and I know that a career in zoo keeping is not for me, it is full of great experiences. I am enjoying and learning a lot from the time I've spent!

A Day in Animal Care

By Alexa Cushman, Program Intern

A day spent in animal care begins bright and early at 8:00 a.m. . Diets need to be made for the animals on the trail first and foremost. The diets get made and collected; then it is time to hit the trail. Animal care staff doesn’t use the same trails that you use, but instead employ trails behind the exhibits that lead to enclosures where the animals stay in at night. While the animals are still inside, the animal care staff goes into the exhibit where we then clean. We clean the windows, so that you all can have the best view of the animal, and anything else that needs to be cleaned up and straightened out. Once the exhibit is clean, the animal is shifted out into the exhibit. We take this time to clean up their indoor enclosure and to put out their food for the evening. We make sure that all the animal exhibits have been cleaned, the animals have been fed, and are out on the trail by 9:30 a.m.. This ensures that you can see the animals as soon as the Science Center opens in the morning.

Once the trail is open, the animal care staff then moves back indoors to the animal care room, where many of our program animals are located. Cleaning, feeding, and providing enrichment for the program animals then begins. There are two different enrichment areas within the animal care room; one indoor and one outdoors. All of the program mammals spend at least a half hour either in the outdoor or indoor enrichment room every day. Enrichment is extremely important for captive animals. Animals in captivity do not live in their natural environment and to make sure that they are mentally and physically healthy, enrichment is provided to incorporate behaviors that are more natural. In the enrichment rooms we have placed many different logs, tunnels, toys, scents, and other activities to help provide space for the animals to run, climb, jump, and explore; all of the things that these animals would normally be doing in their natural environment.

Another activity that takes place in the afternoon in between cleaning and enriching the program animals is training. Training is very important for both the program and exhibit animals. Animal care staff does not train the animals here like you may train your dog or cat at home; instead all of the training serves a specific purpose. The program mammals are trained to move in and out of a crate onto a table, and are trained to stay there because they are used in many educational programs. When the animals are able to move by themselves, it is a lot less stressful for both the animal and the staff. The program birds are trained to follow whistle signals both on and off the glove. If the bird will easily move onto the glove, it is less stressful once again for the bird and the staff. Some of our larger program animals have been trained to do other tasks such as sit and give paw. These seemingly mundane tasks are important for routine nail clippings or visits from the veterinarian. The animals on exhibit have been trained to move on and off their exhibit so the animal care staff can perform maintenance and cleaning.


When all of the cleaning, feeding, enriching, and training has been completed, usually around 4:30 p.m., the animal care staff goes back to the exhibit trail to shift all the animals into their indoor enclosures for the evening. Eventually the animal care staff also go home, after a long, but rewarding day, ensuring that you were brought a little nearer to nature!