Day One

My first day at the Center actually went very well! To be honest, I was a little bit nervous. Even though I had experience working with exotics from the zoo, the Center seemed to be a different ball game. For one, the zoo had a collaboration with RIT and the keepers and staff had a full understanding that any intern at the SPZ would most likely be inexperienced. The Center seemed to welcome interns from all walks of life with a variety of experience.

Even though I felt that working at the zoo gave me an advantage - I knew how to work around tigers and had actually handfed Katya the Amur Tiger once (under a keeper's supervision, of course!) - I was worried that I would get too cocky or that someone else might have had once been a zookeeper and would see the errors of my ways.

I honestly had nothing to worry about. Sitting in that conference room full of complete strangers, we were all on the same footing. Some, like me, had experience. Others had never seen a tiger up close, let alone fed one. We were all clueless, but excited.

I was also mildly nervous because the Center is not AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums) accredited. I was wondering why it was not accredited, since my one-day-a-week class for my zoo internship held such a huge emphasis that the SPZ was AZA accredited. After learning more about the Center I have come to realize that accreditation does not really mean much at all when it comes to the quality of animal care. The Center takes exemplary care of its animals, and each animal is a sweetheart in its own way.

This is the Center's official statement and explanation on why it is not AZA accredited.

We respect the work performed by AZA-accredited institutions and believe they do a great job entertaining people through exhibiting animals. We support some of the same conservation programs and deliver some of the same educational messages.
 
AZA does a lot of work to manage the very limited gene pools of the different species under their species survival plans (SSPs). We work with a large variety of other facilities around the world to manage some of the tens of thousands of species that are not included in the AZA's restrictive breeding programs.
 
In addition, AZA accreditation requires a lot of resources that are more important for visitors than for the animals who live here. The AZA takes management of the animals away from a facility, meaning they control what animals can live at a site, and what is bred at a site. And they do not allow rescue. While we have many overlapping goals with the AZA, that organization is not a good match for our current goals.
 
Any accrediting agency is mostly a business model. It can focus on good husbandry practices and smart population management decisions. For that reason, we think the Zoological Association of America (ZAA) is a better accreditation for us to strive for. That would allow us to manage our population in coordination with other facilities that have the same high standards we do.

While chatting with Mandy, our communications director, over e-mail, I brought up my concerns that the Center was not AZA accredited even though it offered exemplary care and the animals were more than happy. She responded with the following,

I am not suggesting that your concern about us being AZA was unfounded from your perspective before arriving at our site. A lot of people assume that facilities that are not AZA are somehow not accepted into that “club.” In reality, facilities of all sizes and types choose to affiliate with different organizations for various reasons.

Back to the first day of the internship:
We introduced ourselves, and then went outside to prep the food and feed the four-legged members of the Center. I was lumped with the "LC" (Large Compound) which is the big cats. For my work interview, I actually helped with the prep and feeding. It was nice and helpful knowing what to do! It was also nice getting a review on how to tell whether the meat was fresh or not, and remembering how to check chicken butts. It is essential to check their butts to ensure that the chickens are still good, since the color of the butt indicates the quality of the meat within. If the butt is pink or flesh-colored, it is most likely fine to feed to the animals. However, if it looks greenish to "ick" (use your own definition for what that might look like!), the chicken either needs to be gutted or disposed of.

After food prep, we went out to the compound to feed the large cats. The only animal missing from my work interview was Sadie Lion. She actually passed away two or three days after my interview. Work was pretty standard - the animals were moved into holding dens or "shifts," then we would go in to pick up any poop, change out the water, and move around things in the enclosure. We would finish by placing food in the enclosure, leaving and locking the gate. This was the "cue" to release the animals back in the enclosure to enjoy their "noms."

We finished around 12:45  and headed back for lunch. After lunch the interns had a brief class on the safety rules (most absolutely the important!), and the cell phone policy (in other words, absolutely no phones in the compound with some exceptions). Afterwards, we met up with a keeper who showed us how to prep food for the next day. We headed back to the house to clean up and head out after that. We finished around 4:30 to 5pm.