Working at the Houston Zoo is a pretty awesome job. But some days are even better than others…
Like last week when I got to take KPRC Channel 2′s Traffic Reporter Jennifer Reyna around the Zoo for a day. That’s right – the Jennifer Reyna who gets you to work on time every morning.
Hangin' out with giraffes
I met her in the employee parking lot and golf-carted her over to film a piece on our newly renovated jaguar exhibit. If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s pretty incredible – new mesh for clearer viewing, new waterfall, and new pool. In fact, it looks so different (and much, much better) that you probably won’t even recognize it next time you’re at the Zoo.
You know, I’ve always thought that it’s gotta be tough for a news reporter to focus during a video shoot outside and with people everywhere – but Jennifer made it look easy. Here’s a shot of her filming an interview at jaguars for the news broadcast.
Jennifer Reyna w/ Carnivore Keeper Angie Pyle
After that we headed over to giraffes for some more fun and a behind-the-scenes tour. Feeding giraffes is my favorite thing to do at the Zoo. There’s just nothing else like being face-to-face with a 15+ foot giraffe that takes your breath away.
I think male giraffe Kiva has found himself a new girlfriend...
When you take a behind-the-scenes tours at giraffes, they will walk right up to you and even take food right out of your hands – it’s so cool. After Jennifer interviewed Hoofstock Keeper Kim Siegl (and after the giraffes were nice and fed), we looked at the new weather cam that KPRC will start airing live shots of during their weather portion of news broadcasts. So watch for Frank Billingsley, Khambrel Marshall, and the rest of the KPRC Weather Crew panning to shots of the Zoo’s Masai giraffes soon.
I don’t know what was more fun – feeding our giraffes or hanging out with Houston’s Favorite Traffic Reporter. Tough choice…
Check out Jennifer’s Bumper 2 Bumper blog here for some off-camera looks at how news stories are created and also for some very important traffic updates for the Zoo during Spring Break.
So that’s how the magic is made. Click on the video below to watch the final news segment that aired on the Channel 2 News:
