Meet the Keeper Talks, Safari School, Wild Wheels, or Summer Camp, many of our programs depend on the animals exhibited at the zoo. After all, what would a class at the zoo be without animals? Most of the time, the animals are visible, the participants are happy, and the programs go well. Occasionally, the animal will even be eating, moving, making noise, or just really close to us, and those moments always make the classes extra-special.
But every once in a while, the animal decides not to show up. Maybe it has a vet appointment, or the weather is too cold, or the keepers need to do maintenance on the exhibit. Maybe the animal just feels like hiding in the back corner and taking a nap. Whatever the cause, it is then up to the presenter to make it work.
Giant Eland at the Houston Zoo
This was the case for my Wild Wheels yesterday. The cassowary was our first stop, and he had come to the front just long enough for everyone to see him. But then we got to the giant eland exhibit. There were zebras and nyala antelope, but no giant eland. At that point I realized that I should have stuck some zebra stuff in my cart (the zebra are almost always out) but I hadn’t and now I had to talk about eland with no eland to see.
Fortunately, I always bring a picture of every animal I plan to visit on our tour with me. This is mostly for the littlest ones, who often have a hard time noticing an animal if it isn’t moving. I said something along the lines of “Uh-oh, it looks like the eland are still inside” and showed the kids the picture of the eland. I wanted to include these animals mostly because this was the stop with the best biofact: horns! Everyone looked at the picture, felt the horns, and learned that eland are the biggest antelope in the world. Then we moved on, hoping for better luck at our next exhibit.
Against all odds, we did have luck. The next stop was the one I was the most concerned about: the giant anteater. Our anteaters are often not visible at all, or are moving around, barely visible, at the back of their very large exhibit. Yesterday, though, one of our anteaters was right up at the front, enjoying a snack from an enrichment tube on the front fence. We got to see her giant claws, her long but very narrow mouth, and the tiny nose on the end of her elongated face. We watched her for quite a while before we moved on to a few more exhibits. After that up-close adventure, the sleeping grizzlies and placid Komodo dragon were a bit anticlimactic.
When the animals don’t participate, it is still possible to have a teachable moment. Depending on the group, I have used these moments to teach about animal care or to describe natural behaviors such as sleeping or hiding. I’ve subbed in pictures or puppets for the actual animal, and for summer camp I’ve taken my class to an exhibit as many as 3 times on different days to try to find an animal. As unpredictable as live animals can be, I wouldn’t want to leave them out of a program or stop teaching at the zoo. Unlike a museum exhibit or a handling animal, our exhibit animals provide us with both the possibility of seeing nothing and the opportunity to see something amazing.
