Editor’s Note:
The phrase “the great unwashed” was coined by Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873). I’m not sure what he had in mind with that phrase, but it seems to fit most keepers’ feelings about the general public fairly well. Particularly on free days!

This is not to say that keepers hate all zoo visitors, but if you’ve ever worked in a public setting you probably understand that there are always those special few who, intentionally or not, make things difficult. And it’s especially vexing in a zoo setting where it’s usually the animals that take the brunt of the abuse.

One of the great frustrations of working as a zookeeper is that you often don’t have time to stop and chat with the nice, polite families passing by but still have to go out and deal with the jerks.

Bulwer-Lytton is probably best known for the infamous opening to his novel Paul Clifford (1830) which begins, “It was a dark and stormy night….”

He is also credited with first using the phrase “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

In spite of numerous signs prohibiting it, many people insist on feeding the animals. One man, his pockets filled with shelled peanuts, was trying to get the attention of a large male ibex. The goat was standing on a ridge of gunite where he could command a dominant view of the exhibit while remaining in the shade of the overhanging trees.

His perch was a good twenty feet from the public area, but just below the ridge was a prominent ledge onto which the man was lobbing peanuts. The goat, however, was completely ignoring the man and his offerings. Peanut after peanut landed on the ledge, only a few feet directly below the goat, but he never moved a muscle. The man was becoming more and more frustrated with each toss.

At this point a keeper happened to walk by and saw what was going on. Although he normally would have told the man to stop, in this case he simply laughed to himself and continued on, for he knew one thing that the visitor obviously didn’t: due to an injury a few years earlier, that ibex was totally blind in the eye that was facing out of the exhibit.

Several young boys were reaching precariously over the railing in front of the lion cages and teasing the cats. By balancing on the railing and stretching their arms the boys could just get their hands close enough to the cage front to be dangerous. A keeper, seeing what was going, on decided to teach them a lesson.

This particular keeper was big and burly, and had a gruff, deep voice to match. He managed to sneak up behind the boys without their noticing, and the next time they reached out to the lions, he bent over them and let loose with a deafening roar.

The kids were so startled that they lost their grips on the railing and crashed to the ground.

Young gorillas seem to attract more than their share of off-the-wall comments.

A visitor looking at a gorilla family asked a keeper what kind of animal they were. The keeper, slightly taken aback, replied that they were gorillas. The visitor, pointing at the infant gorillas clinging to their mothers, responded, “Oh, then what are those? Chipmunks?”

Another visitor, asked of the same young gorillas: “Are those little ones still in the chimpanzee stage?”

A keeper hosing a large, outdoor exhibit heard a visitor call, “Hey, buddy!”

The keeper shut the hose off and turned around. The visitor, a college age male, called out, “Where’s the fish?”

Not really sure what the man was referring to the keeper replied, “Which fish?”

“Any of them. Penguins, walruses, dolphins.”

“You haven’t named any fish yet!” called back the keeper, a little sarcastically, feeling that he could be a bit rude to someone who used “Hey, buddy!” to call to a stranger.

“Uh-the penguins.”

“The penguins are right over there in the aquatic bird house,” replied the keeper, emphasizing the word “bird.”

If the man noticed the sarcasm at all he gave no indication of it. He called back “OK, thanks!” and headed off to find his “fish.”