Yes, I did! My mother hates it.  But I haven’t been this excited about anything for a long time.  No. I don’t get paid.  It’s actually serious volunteer work and I had to go through a screening process and I’m midway through the 3 month training.  It’s kinda nerdy geeky in a way but I’m surprised most of the volunteers are relatively normal people (like me!).  Most are professionals – which is pretty admirable coz had I been working I think this zoo thingy would be heavy on the commitment side.

On training days, I have to wake up at 6 am to get to the zoo at 9 am, and anyone who knows me knows I’m NOT a morning person.  So yeah the first few training days, I was mostly disoriented and kept forgetting stuff.

And I can imagine people thinking something to the tune of – “Huh??? Zoo?? Uh-why??”  First, let me emphasize that I volunteered for the Singapore Zoo not the Manila Zoo.  (I haven’t been to Manila Zoo since grade school but I can remember my little grade school brain thinking that it stinks and I felt pity for the animals because they were malnourished like the Negros children.)

The Singapore zoo is the best zoo in Asia and belongs to the top zoos in the world.  But if you’ve been to a zoo and you didn’t get that feeling of awe, or if you find no affinity whatsoever for Steve Irwin then you probably won’t get it.

Plus I’d rather actually do something for the environment than other social causes like poverty.  It’s just a personal choice.  I like plants and animals better because they’re less complicated.  Most of the people who come to the zoo are from different parts of the world and you get to educate them about conservation.  This time I think what I do can really make a difference.  Coz I’ve tried volunteering for Greenpeace when I was in college but I didn’t really get to do anything except sign petitions.  It wasn’t very satisfying.

During the training, we got to go “authorized only” places like their animal hospital and mortuary and I must say it looks far better than our public hospitals.  They use a digital xray machine that looks like a CT scan machine for the animals.  So high-tech!  My last X-ray still used the metal plates and film kind.

We also got to pet (I actually only touched it just so I won’t regret not touching it) a caterpillar,

a tarantula
photo courtesy of http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk

a giant millipede
photo courtesy of http://www.life.uiuc.edu

stick insect

Sadly, all the courage I can muster is still not enough for me to touch the madagascar cockroach.  It’s so freakin’ big!  It was like a scene from Spiderman when Peter Parker and his class was checking out the spiders in their little glass containers.  I was anxiously checking the containers making sure nothing has escaped.

I like animals, but mostly just mammals, specifically feline.  So the insects (which are mostly in the Rainforest section) would be my last choice for station duty.  I honestly don’t think I’d be an effective conservation ambassador there.  I don’t even like butterflies and I can hardly walk tall inside the Biodome where all the butterflies are.  I do it for experience (and sometimes out of peer pressure).  Try everything at least once.

So in the following weeks we’re going to have our zoo keeper attachments – something like apprenticing to the zoo keeper and I chose to help out with the White Tiger, and the Zoo kitchen.   The White Tiger is obviously very interesting but I bet the Zoo kitchen would be just as, if not more, interesting.  Some of their food are even imported and they are only given food that is fit for human consumption.  The zoo animals are probably better fed than our third world impoverished constituents.  It’s kinda sad when you think about it but we do need to take good care of our wildlife ie feed them well.  We’re all part of a chain.  If they die, we die with them.  And there’s less of them alive so better take care of them good.

Best of all, I’m probably going to be the coolest Tita alive to all the kids I know.

P.S.  The pic of me and the tiger cub was during a visit to the Avilon Zoo in Montalban where we chanced upon the zoo people taking the cubs for a walk.  That moment is right up there on my Happy thoughts list.