Brooke and Sifaka Infant "Sebastian"
Hometown: College Station, TX
Department/Title: Clinic Keeper
How long have you worked at the Houston Zoo?: 5 years
How long have you been in the your field?: 7 years
Favorite animal: Okapi. When I was an intern at White Oak Conservation Center, we had a couple of young okapi that were being weaned. Tulia was the youngest of the three and very sweet and small. It was always my favorite part of the day to go see the calves. After I had been at Houston a few years, we received Tulia into Quarantine. I was amazed at how large she had gotten! She has grown into quite the young lady. Now I get to see a whole new side to her and it will be exciting when she has her own babies!
Quote: “Winning hearts and minds for animals” – Jack Brown SFCC Director
Special interests/hobbies: Reading, Knitting badly, hiking and camping, kayaking, and I am also AAZK Vice President of the Greater Houston Chapter
What made you want to work at a zoo?: I was trying to find my niche so I had a lot of different jobs, several of which involved working with animals. During one of my quests to find my niche, I was working as a Disney College Program student at Disney’s Animal Kingdom as a custodian when I happened to see a keeper feeding produce to the gorillas. I had never considered zoo keeping as a career because I’d always assumed that your family had to teach you the skills, like a trapeze artist. It just so happened that this particular keeper’s parents were zookeepers! Awhile later, I asked a different keeper how she got into the field, and they told me about the Teaching Zoo.
Education/training: Associates of Science in Zoo Animal Technology from Santa Fe Teaching Zoo – Gainesville, FL
Previous related jobs: Pet sitting, vet clinics, animal shelters
Advice to anyone wanting to enter the your field: Work or volunteer anywhere with animals. Be prepared to get down and dirty! If you need to be clean or can’t handle dirt, you won’t be happy in this field no matter how much you love animals.
What is unique about being a clinic keeper: The clinic is a little known area by zoo guests because we are behind the scenes. We are the ones who take care of the sick, new arrivals, geriatric, and injured. We are able to give special attention to specific animals that really need it at critical times in their life. We have the ability to rearrange an entire enclosure for just one animal’s needs, whereas that is difficult to do for a whole enclosure full of different animals that may need it another way!
Why you like this department: I like working in the clinic because it is trying to find the order in chaos. Every day is different. We work with so many different animals that I get to use all the knowledge I learned from school every day. I love the challenge and thinking outside the box!
