A Zookeepers Life #9 Saying Goodbye

Working with animals has both its pros and cons, today I want to share the most heart-breaking side of the job because it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

It is completely impossible as a keeper to not have your favourites and not get excited over seeing them every day. When an animal responds to you in the same way as your cat or dog would at home it is the most rewarding feeling you can have. Sadly, this comes with a complete heartache when you must say those awful words – goodbye.
With saying goodbye we are also dealing with the sensitive sides of keepers that have worked day in day out with those animals, Ensuring their welfare needs are met, developing new enrichment for them to interact with, monitoring their behaviour, developing training plans, ensuring that they have had both dinner and breakfast then full on panicking when they don’t eat, giving up your days off to attend vet visits or to just get some medication into them, giving up your lunch breaks and any sort of free time you have to wait with them whilst they come round from anaesthetic.

2015

In November 2015, we had been awaiting the arrival of four very late in the year goat kids. The keepers came in the morning to do their normal checks when they came across a scene they wish they could forget. One of the nannies had given birth over night to her first set of twins but sadly they were still born.

It was clear she had cleaned them and she spent the next few days calling for them. We spent time giving her special enrichment and care to help her through the grieving process, this made us worry for our other nanny who was looking like you could stick a pin in her and she’d pop. The morning of the 26th I heard the news on the radio that she had finally gone into labour and was separated from the group to ensure her safety. After a few hours of the first call she still hadn’t given birth and on a check, we had found that she had become exhausted so we, under the vet’s guidance stepped in.

My head of section has done this thousands of times so she was very confident with what she had to do, she got hold of the kid’s legs and began to encourage it out. It was obvious the process was painful and I gathered a load of straw and placed it below my colleague as she continued to pull the kid. After a few minutes, the kid was out but he was covered in blood as was the nanny I stood back and watched as the kid was swung upside down and

rubbed down with straw to get him to make any noise. It was very unresponsive and my boss handed him to me to rush him into the house and to continue the process. Every time we cleaned him down there was more blood and we couldn’t work out who it was from, as my boss is on the phone to the vets I am now in the house trying to get this kid to make noise. My boss came in and showed me how to hold the kid to encourage the fluids out of its lungs which was by holding his head down and rubbing its neck, after what felt like a lifetime she then told me to wrap him and get straight down to the staff room as quickly as possible. I gathered the kid up and ran with blood all over me and him, I can only feel for how the visitors felt seeing that scene I tried to explain quickly what was happening to not cause them too much worry. By the time I got to the staffroom I whacked up all the radiators and grabbed every item of clothing and wrapped the kid in it.

Every so often I would touch near the eyes to check the response which was incredibly slow. Another radio call went out to say she had given birth naturally to another kid that was male but sadly she was not interested in feeding it and that the vet was on their way. I sat in the staffroom chatting to this little kid, the one I had been waiting for as I was given permission to name them Rosemary and Pepper so I was hoping that this one was a girl!

When the vet arrived, he took the kids temperature and confirmed that it was quite cold and asked me to take it to a warmer place which would be our tortoises building which is 26-28 degrees in there! He then confirmed that the kid was a boy – Pepper it is!

At the back of tortoises, we were waiting for the vet to come back with colostrum as it had now been nearly 2 hours since he was born and he had not yet stood up nor fed, he was very unresponsive only the small eye response was the confirmation he was still with us. The vet showed my bosses how to stomach feed him for the next 24 hours until he learns how to suckle and gave us the tools we needed. After this point I had to leave him there whilst the other kid was still with mum to try and encourage her to take to him which sadly she didn’t.

This meant we now had two kids to hand raise and it was touch and go, 4 hours later he finally stood up – what a moment and it’s when we realised how big he was up against the 2nd kid he was HUGE.

It was decided as a group we would call him Patch and his brother Dill, my boss took them home for the first night and they fed perfectly through the night, the next day I had the opportunity to take them home and it was scary. I live quite far from the zoo so I was worried that if something was to go wrong I would be quite limited to what I could do but my boss had no concerns.

Watching two goat kids spring around your house was awesome but they hadn’t fully learnt that the jump meant they needed to land on their feet- that comes after! From this point onwards they turned into the sweetest funniest naughty little pair! Escaping their home regularly to follow the keepers because at the end of the day we were their mums and dads, they are an awesome pair.

Harriet

Although this is a nice ending to a stressful time we must face one of the most difficult aspects of our job which is death. When your favourite animal becomes unwell you cannot bare the thought of saying goodbye and you try and do everything you can to try and encourage them to live but sometimes they just can’t carry on.

Having nearly lost Basil this year I have found myself to come less attached to the animals on the section because how he made me feel I don’t want to go through again. However, there is always an animal that takes your heart and recently I had to say goodbye to a Chicken I had named Harriet, she would often escape her home by walking across the centre of the cattle grids to steal food off children.

I won’t forget how upset this mum was, she stormed up to me and demanded that I “got rid” of the chicken that just came “out of nowhere” flew at her son (it’s an Orpington chicken it can’t fly) and stole the sandwich from his hand. Seeing this big fat chicken leap in the air for a sandwich was the funniest day of my life but I had to remain professional and get Harriet back into her exhibit not before praising her.

Sadly, we had found her very unwell one morning and took the decision under the vets advise to euthanise as she was too far gone for help. I will miss my sandwich stealing friend!

What I love about the zoo community, is when we lose an animal all the sections and the zoos worldwide band together to support the keepers directly affected. Having recently lost an iconic member of our goat herd unexpectedly, a neighbouring section came and supported every member of staff, giving us a big hug each, taking gentle care of his body and placing him carefully on the back of their vehicle covering him up to not cause further upset. Then, we as a team all banding together hugging one another and supporting the girl who had just lost her best friend carry on for the rest of the animals. Because that’s just it, we lose one and its heart-breaking but there are over 150 more on our section that still need us. Yes, we shouldn’t have favourites but we wouldn’t be animal lovers or keepers if we didn’t. I will be devastated when it is Basil’s time, but for now he will have everything he needs to have a fantastic life.

Hug your animals tight, give them everything they need because one day they will need you to make that decision to let them go. Have no regrets.

If you enjoyed this edition of A Zookeepers Life you may be interested in some of my previous posts:

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