Let's continue the story:
It was the summer of 2007, I was seventeen, painfully shy, and seriously in love....with animals. I had just gotten into John Ball Zoo's Teen Volunteer Program and I was so excited, and nervous since human interaction isn't exactly my forte. I was first assigned to Keeper Andrea, who was intimidating to say the least. She had the South American run and was very particular about how things had to be done. Andy spent the better part of her morning showing three of us klutzy teens how to clean all her stalls, including....YEEK...the Guanaco stalls. For those of you who don't know, guanacos are in the Llama and Alpaca family, and their favorite potty spot was right over the drain in their stall. I ended up cleaning said drain with my bare hands before the Seasonal Keeper who was helping her laughingly showed me where the gloves were.
A few weeks later I was paired with Keeper Dave. He had the aquarium and coolest of all, the Magellanic penguins. Dave can come off at first as a very stoic person, not as intimidating as Andy, but still, so a shy teenager...you get the picture. The first thing he said to me after talking with our Teen Coordinator was, "Can you swim?" Of course I could swim, so he led me and one other Teen Volunteer to the aquarium, handed us each a plastic yogurt bucket filled with krill and other fishy delicacies to feed the huge fish tanks and left us to the work. Of course this was fantastic. I could sit and watch the fish and sharks eat in peace and quiet. All too soon Dave was there to retrieve us ready to hand out another task; he and I were to weigh out fish for the penguin diets. We both grabbed boxes of fish out of the freezer and set to work. The radio in the aquarium kitchen was set to some oldies station or other and so that filled the silence until Dave began to sing along. I wasn't expecting it so I sat there unsure of what to do for a few seconds, but Dave just kept singing along with the song replacing half the lyrics with animal or zoo related words.
...To Be Continued.
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