Description:
Darcy talks about her life working at the Oklahoma City Zoo.
Amy Stevens: This is Amy Stevens at the Oklahoma City Zoo and it is September 30, 2009, I’m interviewing with Darcy Henthorn, a zoo employee. So Darcy, start off with your full name and your age and your birth date.
Darcy Henthorn: Okay, sure, well my name is really Dorothy Joyce Henthorn, but I have been known my entire life as Darcy. And I was born in Waco, Texas, back in 1955, so that makes me, let’s see 53. [laughter]
AS: So, how did you come to work at the zoo?
DH: Well, Amy, I got a degree from OSU, go Pokes, for Wildlife Management degree. I found that there was no employment opportunities for me when I graduated and the zoo seemed to be a great alternative. So, I got to the zoo. And after achieving a 4-year bachelor’s degree, I started at the zoo for 2.75 an hour, just to get my foot in the door.
AS: What did you do?
DH: I worked actually at the front gate, taking tickets. And did that for a couple of months, until the education curator grabbed me up and said we can do better for you. And then I started as a naturalist in the education department.
AS: And what year was that?
DH: That was in ‘79. I only had to work in--not that I didn’t like it--but I only had to work up at the front for 2 months. I really wanted to use my degree. So, in 1979 I started with the education department and worked with that good group of people until 1981.
AS: And what kind of things did you do?
DH: I was pretty much a jack of all trades. I took care of the animal room, and all the animals in it. And I also went out to zoo mobiles and taught classes on grounds. I was kind of a jack of all trades for the department. It was a very small department at the time.
AS: And what happened next?
DH: In 1981, I decided that although I do love working with kids and everything, I decided I wanted to work directly with animals, so an isolation keeper job came up and I jumped on it. So, I was in charge--not in charge, I worked with people that would put all the animals through quarantine. And so I did that for a 2 or 3 years.
AS: Kind of explain why we need quarantine and what it is.
DH: Oh, we do quarantine because although generally we get things from other zoological institutions, we want to make sure that the animals we get in our collection are healthy. So, they go through a 30-day quarantine where the vets have the opportunity to look them over and make sure they’re healthy and then they’re put in the collection. So, I got a great opportunity doing that. ‘Cause I got to see everything going through the zoo. Including Tattoo.
AS: Really, the gorilla?
DH: Yes, at the time he came in eight years old and we got to put him through quarantine in the hospital at the time. Before he went over to the great apes. So that was pretty cool.
AS: Yeah, cause he’s a big name out [unintelligible].
DH: He really is.
AS: So, what happened after isolation?
DH: The new curator of birds, Trey Todd, wanted me to apply for the supervisor of birds. I guess he wanted me for the supervisor, encouraged me to apply for that job. And so I did. And fortunately for me, I got the position. So, I was over the bird department for 17 years. And in that time there was a period of time where I also became the supervisor over the children’s zoo. At the same time. And I think that happened for about 4 years. Until they decided that the collection was getting big, and they ought to divide that up again. And have two supervisors. After that, with the new director on board, Bert Castro, and a general curator, Dwight Scott, I got the opportunity to apply for the curatorship. And that’s where I’ve been for the last 5 years I think. So, that’s been a great opportunity.
AS: How do you feel about not working directly with the animals anymore?
DH: Well you know I’ve got a really cool position where if I want to, I can actually work with them. I can help the bird department or the children’s zoo department. You know, when I have the opportunity, I can kind of interject myself in there. We’ve got a unique situation here, other zoos, if you’re in management, you don’t get that opportunity. If you’re a union zoo. But we, fortunately for me, I’m not in a position where I can’t work with the animals anymore. So, I miss them, but I still get that, I can get my fix so to speak of working with the animals when I have the time and when given the opportunity. Yeah, I make more decisions that affect a bigger picture now. So, in a way that satisfies me just as much as when I worked with animals.
AS: So, what’s your most recent fix?
DH: Well let’s see, I got the opportunity to do a little bit of time with the chimp. And that was pretty cool.
AS: Baby chimp?
DH: The baby chimp, and it was only visits, I didn’t get to do long term care for that animal. But I got the opportunity to be down there with it, and it was very cool because it kind of brought me back to when I was supervisor of the children’s zoo and we raised all the gorillas. So, I might preface that by saying I am the bird curator, but I have a lot of mammal background. So, I’d say the chimp and watching the last three years and being part of the flamingo raising, has been the big perks in my career, as of late.
AS: Who’s someone that you have really enjoyed working with that’s influenced you?
DH: You know I looked over that question Amy and there were two people that have always jumped out in my mind as my mentors. One of them is Kimberly Davidson. And although I only worked with her for a couple of years, we are still friends to this day. She’s the assistant director of the Hogle Zoo. And I
probably was more inspired in the field by her than anyone. And the most recent inspiration has been Dwight Scott. Before he--
AS: The zoo director.
DH: The zoo director. Before he got to the zoo, I didn’t realize I’d have an opportunity to be a curator. He gave me that opportunity along with Bert Castro. And I think he inspired a whole new way of looking at this profession to me. Where we all treat each other more professionally and it isn’t just about the care of animals. It’s about the whole, the whole picture. The people working here, and to respect that and to make those connections in the zoo world. So, I would have to say those two people are probably my biggest influence.
AS: What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in zookeeping since you’ve started?
DH: Well Amy when I started and I’m sure other people have said this too, it’s basically a rodeo. I mean you learned how to catch things with a net, [laughter] you learned how to hand catch things. And now I look at the profession and we are so much more safe now with how we approach things. We’re using our brains not our bodies. [laughter] Thank goodness. Some of us I’m surprised survived the early days because it was a big rodeo. And it’s more of a macho field, I would say. And now you see the profession turning to let’s do training. And let’s do enrichment. And let’s not just catch things up. But let’s work smarter. And I think to have been in a profession that long to see the evolution is really cool.
AS: So, what’s one of your crazy rodeo moments?
DH: Well, at the risk of repeating someone else, I remember a day when we were lined up in single file, to hand catch Addax antelope. The horns on those puppies they’re really, they’re pointy and they’re dangerous. And we were told to line up, hand length apart, and grab them as they went by. And none of us were gored that day. And I’m just amazed.
AS: Now, you did have an encounter with an animal though.
DH: I did. I did have an encounter. Red kangaroos can be very tall and I probably ran up against the tallest one that has ever been at this zoo. And yeah, it was a scary moment. He attacked me. I was a real greenhorn at the time, I was probably, had been a keeper a year, a year and a half maybe. And this red male kangaroo decided that for some reason he was going to get me. And, but suffice it to say I survived and it made me even stronger and although I was a little bit apprehensive about going in with kangaroos. And still to this day, I have a little reluctance; it didn’t dissuade me from the profession. Because I just figured out that there were safer ways to do things and I was going to push for that. And actually, I hope my memory’s correct in this, because of that incident, radios started being issued to more staff. So, I feel kind of like I helped that cause.
AS: Very good, ‘cause you got pretty banged up.
DH: I did.
AS: It seems like I’ve seen a picture, something on your eye maybe?
DH: My eye, I had stitches behind my ear. I had a black eye. And actually, during the healing process I went on my first date with my current husband.
AS: Really?!
DH: My one and only husband. [laughter]
AS: And he liked you anyway.
DH: He liked me anyway, but he had to tell the folks in this mom and pop restaurant that he was not an abusive person. [laughter] That this was because of a kangaroo. And that was pretty funny, him trying to discuss that with--
AS: Well yeah, like sure. [laughter] Now this isn’t on the list but you have a daughter that seems to be following in your footsteps now, a little bit. You mind talkin’ about that?
DH: Well, Clair is, well she’s my pride and joy even if she decided that she didn’t want to work at the zoo but yes, Amy, she is, maybe not following in my footsteps because she’s definitely got her own path, but she absolutely loves the zoo. And she has been coming out here since Judy’s birthday parties. I’d take her out here when she was one and two years old. And she will be a junior curator now. This will be her third year. She absolutely loves the zoo, and it’s not just for the animals, but she loves the staff here. I mean she adores the people in education. She loves working with the keepers. And yeah, it’s kind of neat that she has made this a part of her own life. ‘Cause I didn’t push her into it, she did it all on her own. So yeah, I’m kind of proud of that, I really am.
AS: And she’s 16?
DH: She is 16. She is.
AS: You mentioned Judy the elephant birthday parties. Do you have any memories of Judy that you want to share?
DH: Well I tell you what, Judy, since I was in the bird department for so many years, Judy shared the same space as I did. We shared that building for a long time. And not that I worked with her a lot, but she was the animal that represented to me, home, Oklahoma City is home. Because all the people that had grown up with her, and I’m a transplant, I’m a military brat. So, I was kind of transplanted into this state. But to see people that had always grown up here and their love for this elephant was just very cool. So, every birthday party I tried to be there and then when Clair was born Roger and I would make sure that we took her to the birthday parties. It was just really cool. To see that history, you know. It was sad when she died.
AS: So, what is something difficult that has happened to you here at the zoo?
DH: Well, I will say that this field can be difficult because you have to, even though you love animals and everything, it’s a constantly evolving field. So, you have to constantly be ready for change and adaptable and I think because of my background I am fairly adaptable person. But the one thing that came to, comes to mind, when I think about this question is the most difficult event that I ever went through is when a colleague and a friend, Lisa Roberts, was attacked by a Malayan tapir. That forever changed
many of us because she almost lost her life that day. And it just made it so obvious that we were in a dangerous profession if you did not take care of yourself and be aware of your surroundings and work safely; that terrible things can happen. And that day changed a lot of people’s lives. What I remember specifically was rushing down to the scene and seeing Lisa with, in the arms of one of our security guards. And it looked like he was doing everything he could to try to take control of the situation and had her in his arms. And all I can remember is feeling very sad but at the same time knowing I had to take control of the situation because there wasn’t many people down there at the time. I instructed staff to make sure that they could open the door to allow the animal to get out of the exhibit, because, the animal had severed Lisa’s arm and I knew that the arm was still in the exhibit and above everything else I was going to try to get that, get her arm back. And you know I was asked many times after that had happened how I could muster up enough, you know, energy or whatever it took to do that. And I thought to myself, man I always felt like I was just on automatic pilot, you would have to make, you would want somebody to be looking out for you and I felt the same way about Lisa and trying to salvage part of her was my ultimate goal. So, I grabbed her arm, got some ice, made sure somebody got some ice, and tried to at least try to do that. And it was kind of, I won’t say second nature, but I knew to do that. And even though I was scared about everything going on it just seemed like that was the thing to do. So, you know a lot of things, a lot of good came from that and I hope if Lisa ever hears this interview, she knows that I’m speaking out of love. But a lot of good for other people came from that day. We are now safer than we have ever been, in my opinion. We started looking at things that we had never looked at before. And it’s a shame that sometimes good measures happen after something bad happens but that made a mark on this zoo’s history. Sad and negative for a whole family but, good did come from it, I think. And I think a lot of us who may have been scared about that day and leave the profession, my personal thought was you know if people like me and others that were there that day that don’t make a difference, in the safety of this institution, then that would have been for nothing. So, yeah that day will always stay in my mind.
AS: Thank you for sharing that. You had mentioned that there are a lot more safety things in place. Could you tell about the drills and those measures that have changed?
DH: Well we do a lot more protected contact now I think than we use to. We would go in with the tapirs before, that would never happen anymore. We try to make sure that there are always two people in an area when they’re working with dangerous things. We have a full team of emergency response people that, curators, other staff, are trained to work with lethal weapons, in case we were ever needed to control a situation where an animal got out or an animal or a person got in an animal exhibit. So, we have a whole team that trains quarterly at the gun ranges. We also have a number of drills we do every month that tries to make sure we hone our skills, in case a accident every happened at the zoo and that involves everybody at the zoo. Through tragedy we’ve evolved. We know how important our jobs are to keep everybody safe. This is supposed to be a wonderful place to be and it is. And we want to ensure that by having the most trained staff that we can. To keep that way.
AS: So, you’re in change of some of these drills, do you ever have some fear about that and flashbacks?
DH: No, I just know it’s an awesome responsibility and I don’t mean awesome and cool, I mean awesome and heavy. In that I realize that I may have to be the one in charge of making certain calls, if
we ever had an emergency. And what I’m going to do if that ever happens and do even during drills, is try to draw on the strength I had that day that Lisa had her accident. And be confident that I can do it.
AS: Well you’ve been here a really long time.
DH: Really long time. [laughter]
AS: What keeps you motivated and interested?
DH: Boy Amy, you know there is rarely a day I don’t want to come to work because it is so different every day you come here. I mean I may have an opportunity to meet a baby chimp or walk a flamingo, or talk to a number of kids about bluebirds. I mean, anything‘s what you make of it. And I’ve made this a career not a job. I love being here, I love the people I work with. There’s some days that you know maybe not so great as other days. But for the most part, that’s why I’ve stayed in the same profession this long. Because I just absolutely love the new things that come along. All the time. And feel like I’m one of the luckiest people on earth that love what I do. I mean, we sure don’t make a lot of money [laughter] but boy, being somewhere this long, if you didn’t enjoy it, I don ‘t know why you’d stay with something so long. So, I absolutely love it. I wish, I hope I can accomplish a few more things before I retire, but--
AS: Like what?
DH: Well, I’m really anxious to see this children’s zoo finished. I think that’s going to be one of the things that I want to be known for along with our team. That we made a difference with the new children’s zoo. I think it is going to be a wonderful place to bring kids. It’s going to be the only exhibit that I had more ownership in than the other exhibits that have come online. They’ve all been very cool, but this one’s, this one’s the children’s zoo baby. And I think, Doug Latham and the other children’s zookeepers and I will have something really proud of. So, I’m really looking forward to that.
AS: How is that going to change your zoo keeping duties, that’s such a different kind of exhibit than we have anywhere else?
DH: Oh, it’s--as I’ve been trying to mentor the children’s zoo staff, you know a lot of us got into this profession because we wanted to work with animals, but that’s another way the profession’s changed. It was discovered by some very bright people, fairly recently, [laughter] within the last 20 years, that oh it’s not just about the animals. We have to reach out to the guests, the people. It’s not just about the animals. We have to get buy-in from everyone. And so, I’m trying to get buy-in from the children’s zoo staff that it’s going to be really cool to engage the little kids. That we have this barnyard not just so that they can work with American minor breed animals, but that they get to teach kids about them. That’s going to be the challenge for all of us because, there is this whole other spectrum that we are fairly new at, you know? You need to do more public speaking or you need to get an animal out for demonstration, or you need to be training animals. That was not part of my day when I started out. But it is part of this generation keeper’s day, you know? They need to be more versatile than we were. But they’re a bright generation. They’re going to catch onto this and we’re going to go light years ahead. So, I envy them in starting the profession now. Because it is a smarter profession. It’s a profession where they’ll be able to develop a lot of different talents. And, hopefully will give them all those opportunities too.
AS: Do you have a particular passion for birds or did you just land in the bird department? [laughter]
DH: Well, I love birds and mammals. And I think to be quite honest with you it’s not that ornithology was always my burning passion. I wanted to go up into management. And that was a stair-step for me, to be a supervisor of birds, to have a team under me. And a department under me. So, I would have to say that I love birds and mammals equally. It was an opportunity for me to become a supervisor and that is why I started specializing in that.
AS: You probably have a few stories that you tell when you get together with family and friends. Funny or interesting things that have happened to you. What are some of those stories?
DH: Well I don’t know if I can say them right out loud here, because they’re kind of embarrassing. [laughter] I’ll share one story with you. I have always been, well--I’ll share a couple with you. They’re both embarrassing, but I’ll just let you know that when you start off in this profession you make mistakes. And I had my share of them. One of them was in the isolation department, the quarantine department, we also had breeding yards. And one of the yards was for maned wolf. And they had probably an acre and a half, almost two acres that they could roam, and we had breeding modules in there. Well one day I went in to check on the pair. Their names were Rio and Tish, I remember them still. And I came across one of the breeding modules, one of the modules that we had in the yard and there were four black pups in there. And I went to my supervisor and I said, “Oh my gosh, a Labrador must have gotten in here”. [laughter] And she was just roaring because she said, “No, no, no, the youngsters are black”. Now maned wolf, for those of you who don’t know, maned wolf are red in color, they’re long legged and red. And obviously I had not read anything about the natural history, so I came across this module and thought a lab had gotten in [laughter] and had her litter of pups. Oh, that was an embarrassing moment. And the other was I’ve always been a very neat person and when I started off in the insolation/quarantine area. This land was set aside to be off exhibit and away from the hustle and bustle of stuff. So, it was pretty much a hands-off exhibit. So, my supervisor at the time had to tell me, I appreciate your husbandry, I appreciate the fact that you want to keep everything neat and clean, but you’re in the cages way too much. So I took that advice and went to the opposite end of the spectrum and didn’t check this nest box of these birds for weeks [laughter], and lo and behold because of my no-contact policy, there was a chick in the nest box and they were Eclectus parrots, and just to give you a little bit of background, the Eclectus parrot is dimorphic. It’s one of the few parrots that is dimorphic. You can tell the boys from the girls. And I had left this nest box alone so long that you could even tell what sex the chick was. [laughter] So, I learned from that too. Anyway, many embarrassing moments.
AS: And keeping isn’t always glamorous. I hear stories about snakes. What are some of the unglamorous things?
DH: Well there’s nothing like cleaning like a vulture barn after a couple of weeks. Stuff like that. You can’t be, you can’t be afraid to get dirty. You can’t be afraid to be smelly. I remember carpooling many a day with my friend Laura who’s now the mammal curator--
AS: Laura Bottaro.
DH: Laura Bottaro, and she was the supervisor of the training department. So, she would smell like fish, I would smell like pachyderm, and riding home together was pretty rank.
AS: Now, the birds, you have a couple of neat conservation efforts going on in the bird department, tell about a couple of those.
DH: Well, we are part of the Andean condor program, and that’s kind of multifaceted. One of the things that we’re doing is we’re contributing money to the SSP, Species Survival Plan, for Andean condor. And that money goes to help with the release of condors back into their wild habitat. We’re involved with that. We’re involved with the Guam rail program. As of this recording, unfortunately, I don’t have a pair, but once we get a pair together again, we’ll be having the chicks that hatch out from this pair will be either reintroduced into their, the islands of Guam and Roto, or they will be placed in other North American institutions. We are actually at the beginning of starting a new conservation committee; which will involve all the curators, educators who want to, anybody in the zoo who wants to be part of this committee. And we’re going to try to kind of define where we are as an institution on our conservation efforts. So that will be really cool. Yeah, we do a lot of programs, many of them are affiliated with mammal projects and reptile projects too. But those are a few that we do in the bird department.
AS: We’re getting close on time, did you want to look over the list and make sure that there is nothing that you really wanted to say that you haven’t been able to yet.
DH: Well, I would have to say that in my almost thirty years here I‘ve enjoyed working here tremendously. Being part of a new zoo is extremely exciting. And I think for me, the fact that I’ve been in an industry that isn’t just the same standard operational procedure, that I have seen so many changes and for the better. And it’s not just how we take care of animals, but how we take care of our staff. And I think that the leadership that the zoo has had in the last ten years has thrown us into the next century. Because we’ve got a lot of new innovative people that are now leading us and I think the zoo is going to be in much better shape even 10 years from now. Because of that leadership. So, I’m really excited about being part of the positive changes that have happened here. I just feel very fortunate. Having been employed by this zoo and I’ve got a lot of great memories. That I’ll always have.
AS: Anything else that you want to add?
DH: No, I appreciate the opportunity to do this.