Zoo Tampa at Lowry Park
November 21st, 2024 -
July 14th, 2025 - April 3rd, 2026 - Keeper
While I was finishing my research on the rhesus macaques in Ocala. I was able to get an animal care internship at Zoo Tampa with orangutans and monkeys. I completed my three-month internship with 40 hours a week and was asked to extend. I extended for one day a week until July 2025 when I was offered a temporary keeper position.
November 21st, 2024 - March 10th, 2025 - Intern
As an intern, I worked 4 days a week from 7:15 am - 6 pm that included a 15-minute snack break in the AM and an hour lunch break from 12 pm - 1 pm.
7:15 am - 7:30 am
As soon as I arrived, I would put my lunch in the fridge and get my boots on and begin by getting baboons diets and lemur greens in the fridge and placing them on the golf cart outside so the keepers have them. Then while the sink is filling up with water and soap, I start to set colobus and guenon habitats.
Colobus - I always did colobus first, because it took longer. I started by getting 6 buckets to separate their diet in and went outside to their habitat to the pully systems where each buckets go on a carabiner attached to seat beat and you pull and pull until the bucket reaches the top and twist the seat beat so the monkey do not get their fingers stuff in it than attached to an eyebolt on the pole. After all buckets are finished, I go back inside and get browse and hang them around the habitat and lastly, go back inside and get the hose so I can fill up the water bowl and lastly check the surrounding habitat to secure no branches are growing too much. then I go back inside and lock the habitat door and start guenon side.
7:30 am - 7:40 am
Guenon - I start by getting enrichment and put their diet in the enrichment than go to their habitat and hide the enrichment and spread out the rest of the diet and romaine lettuce than go back inside to get the hose to fill up the pool. then I check on Pineapple the tortoise in her hunt to make sure she is okay. lastly, I check the hotwire and write it down on the whiteboard inside than I close the door and start washing the diet dishes.
7:40 am - 8:00 am
After dishes are clean, I start by looking what enrichment each primate has and start planning what I want to do while I waited for the keepers to be done in their office. This involved going outside to our enrichment shed or walking over to baboons shed where you could all times of cardboard, sheets, blankets, larger enrichment ideas, and project things such as paint and makers.
8:00 am - 9:00 am
Once the keepers were finished, they came to get their intern for a day to go to their building and start. Each day I was assigned to a run that was my responsible to set habitat, make enrichment, clean dishes, clean night dens, set night dens, and clean habitat. The building runs were colobus/guenon/patas, baboon/siamang, and orangutan/lemur. You usually start from easier runs to hardest and taking 2-3 weeks to learn each building than get checked off and move on to the next one. For my intern semester, I was the only intern, so I started off by learning colobus/guenon/patas than baboon/siamang, and orangutan/lemur last.
Once my keeper was ready, we headed on the golf cart to go to patas and stopped at baboon to drop off diets and lemur green. The patas building was the only primate building that was across the zoo, so we always had to drive there on the cart. Once I arrived with my keeper, she unlocked habitat door so I can begin spreading out their diet while she stayed in the building doing meds for two of the older patas girls. Once I was finished spreading out their diet I checked the surrounding habitat to secure there were no holes in the mesh and went back inside and put the water on for the pool outside. Once the keeper was finished with meds she went outside to double check everything before locking up and letting the patas outside. Now it was time to clean. While I cleaned the keeper leaves to go to colobus/guenon to do their meds and let them outside. It usually took me about 30-45 mins to clean patas but if it was a disinfectant day an hour. Patas disinfect days were wednesdays. My first day disinfecting patas I was there for almost 2 hours because I was scrubbing the mesh from leftover food. Patas has four night dens to clean. I started by sweep out the leftover food and enrichment from all of the dens than began hosing every den from top to bottom. The patas building has a lot of standing water, so it was important to really squeegee the water from the dens into the drain. After I was done cleaning, I washed the dishes and locked everything up before heading back to colobus and guenon on the golf cart.
9:00 am - 9:15 am
Back at colobus and guenon to take my morning snack break.
9:15 am -
After I was finished with my snack break, I started cleaning colobus and guenon. Colobus and guenon both had 3 night dens each and were very easy to clean. It would take me 45 mins to clean both but an hour if It was an disinfect day. Colobus and guenon disinfectant days were Mondays and Thursdays. I would start by hosing out the bathroom because the night dens were right next to the bathroom than begin by hosing all of the leftover diet and taking out enrichment and putting it in the sink. If I was disinfecting that I would hose everything, disinfect and scrub than go to guenon and start hosing because the disinfect had to seat for 10 mins before I hose it down. But if I wasnt than after everything was hosed I would hose the hallway than refill the browse water bucket with fresh water than squeegee the dens and hallway and clean the drains than lock all of the dens and move to guenon.
Before starting guenon I had to score all of the faeces in the dens and count how many of each grade. The grade went from grade 1 to grade 5. Grade 1 being bullet like crumbles with little pressure and grade 5 being entire liquid stool. I was scoring these for one of the guenons named Njau in order to keep track. A grade 2.5 to 3.5 was normal. After