Fantasy Job

While we are still hung-over from our time in the Rockies and struggling with the triple digit reality of the desert summer, one constant high point of my week is my volunteer job. Growing up in San Diego I became enchanted with the idea of working at the zoo as a keeper, maybe in one of the huge walk-in aviaries or taking care of the baby animals at the Children's Zoo. It took me a few decades, but I finally made it, not at the San Diego Zoo but at another world renowned zoo, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.



When I decided to retire late last year the first thing I did, before writing my letter of resignation, was to check the Desert Museum's website for when the next docent class would start. In the first fifteen minutes of my first visit to the Desert Museum in 2001, before moving to Tucson, I knew I wanted to be one of the docents dressed in their desert sand and white,walking around with an elegant barn own on their arm, explaining the mysteries and intricacies of Sonoran desert ecology from a seemingly bottomless well of knowledge. During my years of working a job that was often not nearly challenging enough I'd dream of the future when I could spend a day a week sharing my passion for the desert with others. And yes, with an owl on my gloved hand.


Alas, there was no docent training this year, not until the late summer of 2010. Not to be deterred, I decided to look into other volunteer opportunities at the Desert Museum, of which there are many. Tucson is a mecca for folks wanting to donate their time, energy, expertise, and enthusiasms. Within a month of arriving in Tucson late in 2001 I was a volunteer ranger at Saguaro National Park, and have been now for over seven years, and I love my work there as well, primarily leading moonlight hikes in the cooler months. But that is another story for another post.

As I looked at the list of volunteer opportunities at the Desert Museum (they maintain a volunteer staff of about 300, and a volunteer docent staff of about 200), a position with the Interpretive Animal Collection, those very animals you see docents sharing with the visitors, sparked my interest.



For about half a year I've been reporting early one day a week for a six to seven hour day of checking on the animals well-being (as in snake handling), cleaning enclosures, preparing daily diets (down to the gram), feeding hungry kestrel's on the glove, and helping with the Wild and on the Loose show in the theater. It's physical and exhausting, but more fun than any one person should be allowed. I spend one day a week getting up close and personal to kestrels, screech owls, barn owls, a Harris hawk, snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, assorted rodents, salamanders, toads, tortoises, a military macaw, lilac crowned parrots, a pelican, a great blue heron, a porcupine, ring-tails, a coati, and a hooded skunk.

These animals all have personalities on top of their ingrained natural behaviors. Like us they have good days and temperamental days, and you quickly learn to read the cues and respect them. But it is fascinating and rewarding to get to know them, learn about them, and care for them.

It's a job that gives far more than any paycheck could.