Zookeeper - Inside Job

Polish presents inside job extraordinary women making their dreams come true my name is Lindsay cook and I'm the assistant curator of ectotherms at the Santa Barbara Zoo I take care of all the reptiles and amphibians invertebrates and fish here at the zoo we're in charge of cleaning up after the animals making the exhibits look really nice feeding the animals by giving them enrichment which means giving them something that stimulate their mind so that could be hiding food around the exhibit or giving them a ball to play with or they might even put food inside the ball and training as well and we don't do any training for tricks here it's all all of our training has a purpose behind it I'd say about 50 years ago it was very male based and that was because I think it was an old idea of thinking I was more using brute force and that was in the era of the cages and now as we're learning more about the animals and trying to transition everything into this nicer freer environment there are a lot more women in the industry I think it's mostly because we have more of a nurturing aspect but with reptiles in particular I still think that that part of the job is still very male driven like here at the zoo I'm the only female on our reptile team right now I'm not really afraid of singing so it took me a while to get used to our large tarantulas I take care of I think three different tarantulas right now as well as cockroaches millipedes centipedes scorpions piranhas ever since I was young I loved animals I always had pets interestingly I never had any reptiles the closest thing I ever had was a hermit crab so I knew it very young I wanted to work with the animals I have a bachelor's degree in marine biology from Ohio University in college I one of my professors needed help taking care of his hatchlings for his grad students so I sort of just fell into taking care of about 200 baby turtles which were very cute of course so that got me hooked in the beginning after doing that work with him I got a job as a zookeeper in Pennsylvania I do there and work there for about two years before I came out here at Santa Barbara going from working in a cubicle which working in a cubicle for two years I knew that wasn't for me it took me a while to yet find an opportunity there's not too many zoos and aquariums in the country it's a pretty small field and everybody is very close-knit but once you do get some experience it's then pretty easy to move around every day is different we're about to have two drafts born any day now so that's always exciting and every single person here is very passionate about the animals that they take care of including myself we we get out of bed for them because they they make our day worthwhile it's gotta find something that you like and if you can get paid to do that go with that part of my job here at the zoo is to train the animals so I take care of one bird at the zoo and his name is Jackson and he is a sulphur crested cockatoo our dwarf came in that we have here her name is muffin and I named her and when she got here shouldn't have any training whatsoever so we wanted to get her on a training program so we felt one of the best ways we could train her is to target trained her we give her a board and we trained her to touch her nose to that board so whenever that happens she gets a reward that helps us move her around the exhibit so we don't have to go in and grab her it lets us move her around give her a little bit of exercise I developed the training regimen for that and it took about six months so I'm really proud of that process they do get cranky they do have personalities so they have good days and bad days it's not always fun stuff like giving animals toys and feeding them it's a lot of very hard work it's a dirty job it's a sweaty job just never know what the day is going to bring feeling inspired click below for more extraordinary stories

Channel: Polished

Views: 104,952

Rating: 4.9092283 out of 5

Keywords: Polished, Polished channel, inside job, polished inside jobs, extraordinary women, zookeeper, zoo keeper, zoo keeping, zoos, zoo animals, zoo jobs, animal jobs

Id: JYdQ_AWEg8k

Length: 4min 37sec (277 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 16 2014