Zookeepers do it for love
by: Patricia Karvelas
The work is hard and pay low. But hopefuls still queue to work as zookeepers, reports Patricia Karvelas.
YOU NEED a love of animals to be a zookeeper. There’s also a lot of hard work involved. Zookeepers feed, water, brush, bathe and exercise animals. They also clean and fix their cages and maintain animal enclosures. Often they develop strong bonds with their charges and spend many hours observing their behaviour to note stress or ill health.
CAREER CHOICES: Zoo keeping
by: Aoife Rogers
Zoo keeping was one of the dream occupations for the under sevens. Bewitched by a heady combination of Babar and the Really Wild Show, we heard the call of the captive wild. As latter-day Johnny Morris’, we planned to stroll around the Futurezoo, making up stories about the animals, occasionally giving the underside of a camel a cursory wipe with a sponge on a stick.