hi my name is Rita Pusan nether soul and
for the last 26 years I’ve been a
volunteer here at Franklin Park Zoo I’m
an animal care volunteer and an
education volunteer and I’d like to talk
to you a little bit about what I’ve
learned here and how it can help you
have a great zoo experience but before I
get started I need to make a shout out
because I need to say hi to kit and Kiki
and Gigi and Joe and Camby Arian Kamini
Kimani and to baby Aziza because this is
being simulcast to them in the gorilla
exhibit and they’ve taught me everything
I know about taking care of gorillas so
hang in there guys I hope I do right by
you I guess I should start at the
beginning I became a zoo volunteer I
lived across the street from the zoo in
fact and I didn’t really connect to the
zoo I’d been here but I didn’t really
connect to the zoo at all and one day
I’d had one of those you know what those
soul-sucking days at work you know just
miserable day at work and at about noon
it had started to snow
and so my ten minute commute became an
hour-and-a-half commute and I came home
in the snowstorm and I pulled up in
front of my house and I looked to the
left and there in the snowstorm with the
grieving zebras prancing and dancing and
jumping and playing with such abandon
and it was so beautiful I stood in the
middle of Blue Hill Avenue in a
snowstorm and watched them until the
keeper brought them inside and that’s
when I knew I had to be involved in this
and I went and I volunteered and that
moment has defined my experience here at
the zoo because every day that I opened
the door and come into the tropical
forest I know that I’m gonna be dealing
with moments of amazement of beauty of
joy of angst as animals live and die
here you know that circle of
thing it’s real and it happens everyday
here so when I was thinking about doing
this speech I thought maybe I should
name it
please don’t bang on the glass because
that’s what I have to say about 50 times
every day at the zoo I’ve learned to say
it in five different languages and I
have to do that
because people come into the tropical
forest and they see the animal doing
nothing and they want the animal to do
something and so they bang on the glass
they beat the chest they yell at the
animals they hiss at the animals and
what tends to happen is you have one
angry gorilla or in a gorilla who just
gets up and leaves because that’s not
really entertaining and a disappointed
guest and so that’s what I think I’d
like to talk to you about is I think
people don’t do this because they’re
mean people
they do it because they’re looking for
an interaction with the animal and they
want a real experience but they just
don’t know how to do it and so what I’d
like to talk to you about is how to have
a good zoo experience without banging on
the glass okay
so I have kind of five rules for how to
have a good zoo experience the first one
give it time do not try to get through
the entire zoo in 90 minutes flat life
is stressful enough the zoo does not
need to be another source of stress so
take your time I can’t tell you how many
times I’ve sat in front of an exhibit
and I’ve listened to people say I could
sit here all day and watch these animals
and then they get up and leave not even
seeing the contradiction between what
they said and what they did so don’t be
that person
come early stay late plan on coming back
you don’t have to do the zoo in one day
and the path doesn’t only go one
direction you can go this way you can
come back the other way you can do that
but one of the best ways to have a great
time at the zoo is to give it time for
the animal to be curious about you and
even come to the point that they come to
recognize you my second point is
related to that which is come to the zoo
anytime I mean not at 2:00 in the
morning but anytime during the during
the seasons everybody comes to the zoo
in the spring and the summer and that’s
lovely there’s lovely things to do here
at the zoo but quite often if you come
in the spring of summer you wind up
navigating crowds instead of having that
interaction that you really want
Franklin Park Zoo in stone zoo in
particular have a really lot of things
to do during the winter so it’s a really
good time to come and have the animals
all to yourself and by the way the
animals are different in the winter by
the way we’re open every day of year
except Thanksgiving and Christmas so and
the animals are here too they don’t go
to on vacation to Florida for the winter
okay so they’re here so I think that if
you can come and like I said some
animals get really interesting in the
winter those red pandas who are really
shy and quiet in the Sun in June or a
bunch of wild and crazy guys in the snow
in February and they’re worth seeing the
third point that I’d like you to do is
to come to the zoo with an open heart
and an open mind and not just towards
the zoo but towards the animals and
towards each other towards the other
guests you know I think that we all have
expectations we all have animals we like
we had to have animals we don’t like but
what we’re here to do is to expose you
to just about everything that’s out
there and that’s important because I had
expectations too the first animal that I
ever worked with at the zoo was the
Madagascar hissing cockroach okay I
don’t know if you’ve ever seen a
Madagascar hissing cockroach but it’s a
4-inch cockroach with a hiss and a
really bad attitude okay and that was
almost the end of my volunteer
experience right there especially when I
was sent in to feed them for the first
time and I stuck my hand in the
enclosure and they collectively hissed
at me and I jumped off the ledge and ran
down
calling out the building okay I had it
took me years to live that down but you
know after a while curiosity conquers
your fear and I began to kind of
appreciate the Madagascar hissing
cockroaches and their role in in the
jungle and I’ve come to appreciate in
vertebrates now there’s no happy ending
I don’t fall in love with the Madagascar
hissing cockroaches at the end but one
of my favorite animals at the zoo is an
invertebrate that’s at the beginning of
the tropical forests that most people go
by the very adorable giant African
millipedes
so we’ll get a chance go see him granted
my idea of what’s adorable has changed
over the years okay and the zoo is a
really important institution in what is
a predominantly african-american and
Latino and immigrant community and as a
woman of color who lives in this
community I feel a special
responsibility to show people to be an
example of who is doing this kind of
work not just at the zoo
but around the world we all know about
Jane Goodall and Jack Hannah and they
are my personal heroes but there are
other people around the world who are
doing this work one of them is not have
super Marin who is a young boy from
Mumbai who at the age of 12 got his
friends together and created an
organization called kids for Tigers
another one is Renee and Luongo who is a
biologist out of the Congo who is taking
on the practices of logging and mining
and farming in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo that is impacting
negatively the habitats of gorillas and
by the way that’s not just the habitat
of the gorillas it’s also the ancestral
homeland of the pygmy people of the
Congo so what happens to the animals
happens to us as well and finally
another person who’s doing great work is
eduardo su casa
and he’s doing excellent work in
nicaragua dealing with bears
tapirs so what I’d like you to do is
I said again come to the zoo with an
open mind and an open heart and be
prepared to fall in love with an animal
you never heard of before my fourth
point for a tip for getting having a
good time in the zoo is look up I mean
seriously
look up everything at the zoo is not at
ilevel some of the best things you’ll
see at the zoo are up there we have two
species of bats and we have about 20
different birds that fly around the
tropical forest and a lot of people zip
through this building and never know
that they’re there up there there are
battles for territory there are eggs
being laid chicks being fledged it’s
this drama going on up there
you just have to look up there and find
it and at the zoo we have another more
practical reason for encouraging you to
look up here at the zoo we say birds
poop every 15 minutes how long have you
been standing there
my fifth point is about talking to us
and for this point I kinda have to talk
about the people that I work with here
so if I get a little emotional forgive
me because I work with some of the most
talented educated brilliant
compassionate hard-working and downright
hilarious people and those are the
zookeepers here in the tropical forest
and at Franklin Park Zoo and they are a
secret for having a great experience at
the zoo survey after survey at zoos all
around the world say the thing that
makes a normal everyday zoo trip go from
ordinary to extraordinary is having
someone who can explain or interpret
what you’re seeing and that’s what zoo
keepers can do and that’s what
like I said I think that
what people really want is an
opportunity to understand not just a
canned scripted interaction what people
want is something that is spontaneous in
the moment and that responds to what
you’re seeing right in front of you at
that moment and that’s what zoo keepers
can do and zoo keepers they not only
know about a lot of animals and about
this particular species they know about
that particular animal and what they can
add to your visit is the emotional
dimension that you might not get from
all of the pictures and all of the
graphics that you see around the zoo so
there it is those are my five tips give
it time come any time of the year number
three is to come with an open mind and
an open heart number four is to look up
and five is to talk to us because we
love talking to you about our animals so
I hope that you’ll take this information
and that you’ll go through our zoo and
today and in the future and any others
do that you go to and that it will
enhance your zoo experience thank you and by the way don’t bang on the glass
for the last 26 years I’ve been a
volunteer here at Franklin Park Zoo I’m
an animal care volunteer and an
education volunteer and I’d like to talk
to you a little bit about what I’ve
learned here and how it can help you
have a great zoo experience but before I
get started I need to make a shout out
because I need to say hi to kit and Kiki
and Gigi and Joe and Camby Arian Kamini
Kimani and to baby Aziza because this is
being simulcast to them in the gorilla
exhibit and they’ve taught me everything
I know about taking care of gorillas so
hang in there guys I hope I do right by
you I guess I should start at the
beginning I became a zoo volunteer I
lived across the street from the zoo in
fact and I didn’t really connect to the
zoo I’d been here but I didn’t really
connect to the zoo at all and one day
I’d had one of those you know what those
soul-sucking days at work you know just
miserable day at work and at about noon
it had started to snow
and so my ten minute commute became an
hour-and-a-half commute and I came home
in the snowstorm and I pulled up in
front of my house and I looked to the
left and there in the snowstorm with the
grieving zebras prancing and dancing and
jumping and playing with such abandon
and it was so beautiful I stood in the
middle of Blue Hill Avenue in a
snowstorm and watched them until the
keeper brought them inside and that’s
when I knew I had to be involved in this
and I went and I volunteered and that
moment has defined my experience here at
the zoo because every day that I opened
the door and come into the tropical
forest I know that I’m gonna be dealing
with moments of amazement of beauty of
joy of angst as animals live and die
here you know that circle of
thing it’s real and it happens everyday
here so when I was thinking about doing
this speech I thought maybe I should
name it
please don’t bang on the glass because
that’s what I have to say about 50 times
every day at the zoo I’ve learned to say
it in five different languages and I
have to do that
because people come into the tropical
forest and they see the animal doing
nothing and they want the animal to do
something and so they bang on the glass
they beat the chest they yell at the
animals they hiss at the animals and
what tends to happen is you have one
angry gorilla or in a gorilla who just
gets up and leaves because that’s not
really entertaining and a disappointed
guest and so that’s what I think I’d
like to talk to you about is I think
people don’t do this because they’re
mean people
they do it because they’re looking for
an interaction with the animal and they
want a real experience but they just
don’t know how to do it and so what I’d
like to talk to you about is how to have
a good zoo experience without banging on
the glass okay
so I have kind of five rules for how to
have a good zoo experience the first one
give it time do not try to get through
the entire zoo in 90 minutes flat life
is stressful enough the zoo does not
need to be another source of stress so
take your time I can’t tell you how many
times I’ve sat in front of an exhibit
and I’ve listened to people say I could
sit here all day and watch these animals
and then they get up and leave not even
seeing the contradiction between what
they said and what they did so don’t be
that person
come early stay late plan on coming back
you don’t have to do the zoo in one day
and the path doesn’t only go one
direction you can go this way you can
come back the other way you can do that
but one of the best ways to have a great
time at the zoo is to give it time for
the animal to be curious about you and
even come to the point that they come to
recognize you my second point is
related to that which is come to the zoo
anytime I mean not at 2:00 in the
morning but anytime during the during
the seasons everybody comes to the zoo
in the spring and the summer and that’s
lovely there’s lovely things to do here
at the zoo but quite often if you come
in the spring of summer you wind up
navigating crowds instead of having that
interaction that you really want
Franklin Park Zoo in stone zoo in
particular have a really lot of things
to do during the winter so it’s a really
good time to come and have the animals
all to yourself and by the way the
animals are different in the winter by
the way we’re open every day of year
except Thanksgiving and Christmas so and
the animals are here too they don’t go
to on vacation to Florida for the winter
okay so they’re here so I think that if
you can come and like I said some
animals get really interesting in the
winter those red pandas who are really
shy and quiet in the Sun in June or a
bunch of wild and crazy guys in the snow
in February and they’re worth seeing the
third point that I’d like you to do is
to come to the zoo with an open heart
and an open mind and not just towards
the zoo but towards the animals and
towards each other towards the other
guests you know I think that we all have
expectations we all have animals we like
we had to have animals we don’t like but
what we’re here to do is to expose you
to just about everything that’s out
there and that’s important because I had
expectations too the first animal that I
ever worked with at the zoo was the
Madagascar hissing cockroach okay I
don’t know if you’ve ever seen a
Madagascar hissing cockroach but it’s a
4-inch cockroach with a hiss and a
really bad attitude okay and that was
almost the end of my volunteer
experience right there especially when I
was sent in to feed them for the first
time and I stuck my hand in the
enclosure and they collectively hissed
at me and I jumped off the ledge and ran
down
calling out the building okay I had it
took me years to live that down but you
know after a while curiosity conquers
your fear and I began to kind of
appreciate the Madagascar hissing
cockroaches and their role in in the
jungle and I’ve come to appreciate in
vertebrates now there’s no happy ending
I don’t fall in love with the Madagascar
hissing cockroaches at the end but one
of my favorite animals at the zoo is an
invertebrate that’s at the beginning of
the tropical forests that most people go
by the very adorable giant African
millipedes
so we’ll get a chance go see him granted
my idea of what’s adorable has changed
over the years okay and the zoo is a
really important institution in what is
a predominantly african-american and
Latino and immigrant community and as a
woman of color who lives in this
community I feel a special
responsibility to show people to be an
example of who is doing this kind of
work not just at the zoo
but around the world we all know about
Jane Goodall and Jack Hannah and they
are my personal heroes but there are
other people around the world who are
doing this work one of them is not have
super Marin who is a young boy from
Mumbai who at the age of 12 got his
friends together and created an
organization called kids for Tigers
another one is Renee and Luongo who is a
biologist out of the Congo who is taking
on the practices of logging and mining
and farming in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo that is impacting
negatively the habitats of gorillas and
by the way that’s not just the habitat
of the gorillas it’s also the ancestral
homeland of the pygmy people of the
Congo so what happens to the animals
happens to us as well and finally
another person who’s doing great work is
eduardo su casa
and he’s doing excellent work in
nicaragua dealing with bears
tapirs so what I’d like you to do is
I said again come to the zoo with an
open mind and an open heart and be
prepared to fall in love with an animal
you never heard of before my fourth
point for a tip for getting having a
good time in the zoo is look up I mean
seriously
look up everything at the zoo is not at
ilevel some of the best things you’ll
see at the zoo are up there we have two
species of bats and we have about 20
different birds that fly around the
tropical forest and a lot of people zip
through this building and never know
that they’re there up there there are
battles for territory there are eggs
being laid chicks being fledged it’s
this drama going on up there
you just have to look up there and find
it and at the zoo we have another more
practical reason for encouraging you to
look up here at the zoo we say birds
poop every 15 minutes how long have you
been standing there
my fifth point is about talking to us
and for this point I kinda have to talk
about the people that I work with here
so if I get a little emotional forgive
me because I work with some of the most
talented educated brilliant
compassionate hard-working and downright
hilarious people and those are the
zookeepers here in the tropical forest
and at Franklin Park Zoo and they are a
secret for having a great experience at
the zoo survey after survey at zoos all
around the world say the thing that
makes a normal everyday zoo trip go from
ordinary to extraordinary is having
someone who can explain or interpret
what you’re seeing and that’s what zoo
keepers can do and that’s what
like I said I think that
what people really want is an
opportunity to understand not just a
canned scripted interaction what people
want is something that is spontaneous in
the moment and that responds to what
you’re seeing right in front of you at
that moment and that’s what zoo keepers
can do and zoo keepers they not only
know about a lot of animals and about
this particular species they know about
that particular animal and what they can
add to your visit is the emotional
dimension that you might not get from
all of the pictures and all of the
graphics that you see around the zoo so
there it is those are my five tips give
it time come any time of the year number
three is to come with an open mind and
an open heart number four is to look up
and five is to talk to us because we
love talking to you about our animals so
I hope that you’ll take this information
and that you’ll go through our zoo and
today and in the future and any others
do that you go to and that it will
enhance your zoo experience thank you and by the way don’t bang on the glass
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