Description:
Doug Latham talks about his career at the Oklahoma City Zoo.
Transcript:
Oklahoma Voices
Interviewee: Doug Latham
Interviewer: Amy Stephens
AS: This is Amy Stephens and I am at the Oklahoma City Zoo on September 30, 2009 interviewing an employee, Doug Latham. So Doug, give us your full name, where you were born and your age.
DL: Douglas Hamilton Latham. I was born here in Oklahoma City at Deaconess Hospital and I am 54 years old.
AS: So how did you get your job at the zoo?
DL: Well let me back up a little bit. I uh, I started working for the City of Oklahoma City in the Parks Department at Martin Park Nature Center. I spent about 10 years there, they had a reduction in force in 1989. I was reassigned a Parks Maintenance District and I worked there for about 15 months and it was, it is honorable work but it wasn’t what I was looking for. I certainly missed the outdoor experience that I had at Martin Park, interacting with guests um, that sort of element. A position came open at the zoo, my wife was working in the horticulture department at the time and was keeping me posted in opportunities and so I started working in the giraffe department as an animal technician. We were called zoo keepers back then.
AS: That’s right. So what was a typical day for you then?
DL: Uh, in the giraffe department it was, it was um, a lot of physical labor, um, we took care of the deer section and the inner circle where the zebra and giraffes and okapi lots are now. Hauled a lot of hay, sable antelopes were still in that area at the time.
AS: And then you took a different position because that’s not what you do any more…..
DL: Correct and after being there for about a year and a half I had an opportunity to move to the Children’s Zoo which was a little, there was some opportunities to have a little more flexibility in your schedule. They were hand raising some infants at the time. I had an infant at home at the time and could utilize the flexible hours, so I gained some experience over there.
AS: What kind of baby animals did you raise?
DL: I have been involved with hand rearing lion cubs, an anteater um, wallabies, kangaroo, and lots of gorillas…….
AS: Yeah I have seen pictures…..
DL: About a half dozen gorillas, uh huh.
AS: So how is your job different now then maybe when you first started?
DL: Well now we are not really raising babies like we did back then, before they were kind, they were more or less kind of utilized for public display um, and now the animals, the areas where the animals came from, that staff is caring more for the infants they are utilizing their expertise, and we find that the babies integrate back into their groups better if they can be around their own kind. Um and now with the Children’s Zoo changing, it’s going to be brand new for myself and all of my staff with um, new animals coming in, new exhibits, some nature play areas for kids, so……..
AS: Yeah, so……
DL: It still keeps things kind of fresh because things, people ask what a normal day is in the Children’s Zoo, and there’s not one.
AS: So talk a little bit about the new Children’s Zoo and your involvement in that.
DL: uh, the new Children’s Zoo, we started about 3 years ago with some big ideas just trying to conceptualize what we wanted um, kids, the experience, and from a zoo keeper’s perspective, there’s not as many animals but I think that there is opportunities for kids to connect to nature more in this new exhibit. We have elements of play kind of incorporated in a lot of the exhibits. For example there is a climbing structure near our spider monkey exhibit. We will have some nesting elements near the flamingo where kids can pretend that they are sitting on a nest like a flamingo would have to do. Now the birds will sit for 28 days, we won’t make the kids do that.
AS: Good. And your position has changed too because you are a supervisor now…..
DL: That’s correct. I started as a keeper in the Children’s Zoo and was a zoo keeper for 10 years and then a position came open for the supervisor of the Children’s Zoo and I was awarded that in 2000 I believe.
AS: Ok, so you and your wife worked here together…..
DL: Correct.
AS: For a while. Explain that a little bit. How did all that work?
DL: Well it worked pretty well. We shared a ride together a lot of times, so we commuted and you could cut down on expenses for gas. Uh everybody seems to know your business though. You know, if I got in trouble everybody knew. So there were some elements that weren’t great for us but, she’s since moved on to a gardening, public garden.
AS: Ok. So can you think back to some employee that really had a big effect on you?
DL: Well as a child, Bob Jenny was, when I was young he was here but, uh, I was always sort of fascinated by what he did here, you would see him in early television shows and things, and um, I had an opportunity when I was about, 9th grade I volunteered at the zoo and I think it was even prior to what we now call the Junior Curators. I worked down in the herpetarium, um and I remember the guys having me clean the alligator moat and then we took all of the coins out of it and went to the snack bar at break. So that was one of my early experiences. Bob Jenny I guess would have been, and there’s been just a lot of coworkers that I have learned from, of course Ralph Harris, Eddie Whitty, um Bill Savage, that’s who was my supervisor, my first supervisor when I came to work in the giraffe department. Gleaned a lot of knowledge from people that had been here a long time.
AS: Was there ever uh, some big event that ever happened that really affected you as you worked here at the zoo?
DL: Well that’s hard, there’s a lot of those, some really positive and some really tragic. You know we had a coworker that was seriously injured. Losing Judy the elephant and being involved in getting her buried was two tragic events in my zoo life. Of course experiencing handering the gorillas and being on national t.v. because we were raising twins at the time. Those were some real highlights.
AS: So you have been on t.v. a lot?
DL: Uh, more than I cared to be……
AS: Oh really?
DL: I prefer the behind the scenes elements myself. So the new Children’s Zoo will be a real challenge to me.
AS: So what’s it like being on t.v. with an animal?
DL: Um, you never know what they are going to do so it can be kind of, it’s unpredictable I guess is the best way to describe it.
AS: Sounds like there might be some stories there……
DL: Well I’m sure that everybody has seen somebody on late night t.v. with animals that do surprising things and you never know.
AS: So what are some funny things that have happened to you as a keeper?
DL: Well I got locked in an exhibit once. I had food on my hands and I stuck the key in the door and it was an automatic closing door and it closed behind me with my key in it and I had to crawl out through the exit where the animals use to go out into the exhibit and there was guests waiting on the other side of the fence as I came crawling out.
AS: That’s embarrassing.
DL: Yeah.
AS: How do visitors treat you as a keeper? What’s that like?
DL: I think that the visitors are fascinated by what we do. I think that they see us a kind of a fun element and there is certainly a lot of physical labor that is involved in creating the exhibits and making it look like it’s fun and easy, um, of course we want the guests to have fun and a good time while they are here so we want them to have that, you know, experience fun. So we try to create the exhibits in that way.
AS: So what is hard about zoo keeping?
DL: Losing animals that you have worked a long time with is hard, uh, because you connect with them just as you would a pet at home. The weather I guess. The weather can be, we work in all weather conditions and uh, the older I get, the harder it is to work in the cold, um things like that.
AS: What’s, what’s the biggest change that you have seen out here since you started?
DL: Well I came to the zoo in 1990, just after the sales tax came into be. So I have seen great, great improvements in this zoo. I grew up in Oklahoma City so I came to the zoo quite a bit when I was a kid and um, so there has been uh, you know, a huge improvement in how we are caring for animals and the kind of quality exhibits we can present and house them in. so I think overall, animal welfare has improved greatly. Those are the things that I have seen in my tenure here.
AS: Well are there any changes that you regret? Things that you liked better the old way?
DL: Well I think, I think that if we are going to encourage more guests to come out, that some of the architectural features that were here in my memory would have drawn some older people out, maybe with their kids or grandkids, and of course the monkey island that everybody grew up with. Um, you know, some of the old rock work that was done I guess by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Those kinds of elements that are natural looking but still have a history. The old herpetarium, I hope they never tear it down, it’s kind of a cool little building……
AS: Yeah, it’s from the 20’s…..
DL: Yeah.
AS: It’s old. So what motivated you to even get into this type of career?
DL: I had animals growing up. I have always had kind of a connection with them. My parents, my father was a judge and went to county fairs and so I was around a lot of small animals all of my life. I raised chickens in a 4H project, raised rabbits for show, was involved in FFA in a gardening kind of program so I always had kind of a love for working with animals and plants.
AS: That’s a lot of the same animals that are in the Children’s Zoo…..
DL: That’s correct……..
AS: Interesting…….
DL: Kind of gone full circle…..
AS: Yeah but you started with the biggest…..
DL: Yeah.
AS: So how do you care for a giraffe?
DL: Very carefully.
AS: Is it protected contact?
DL: The giraffes were protected contact, um, of course you have to feed at their level so you have to climb a ladder to get to the hay racks and they would swing their heads at you so you had to be cautious and kind of watch what you were doing. For their size they are really pretty gentle creature.
AS: Were they already over at, where they are now…….
DL: Yes.
AS: Or at the old location?
DL: No they are where they are now.
AS: Ok. Share one of your favorite animal stories the kind of story that you tell at family reunions.
DL: Boy there is a lot of those. I guess, you know, one of the most interesting things was, you know, raising the babies. The anteater was a lot of fun um, he had a hard time finding the bottle but once he did he would just latch on and his claws would curl up and so he was always trying to hook you with them and hang on. You know, the kids always ask me at family events, what’s the most dangerous animal you work with, and of course there is things that can do you a great deal of harm, but I always tell them a duck. They look at me like I’m crazy but, they are really territorial and you know, you go into an exhibit and you feed and you clean and you do what you are supposed to do in their exhibit and they chase you out, so in their mind they one. So every day they just build on that experience and they get tougher and bolder and they want to swat you with their wings and so that’s one of the jokes that I like to pull on kids, the meanest animal that I work with is a duck.
AS: And you have probably had a few bites…..
DL: Unfortunately I uh, I did receive one fairly serious injury early in my career. Might have been what sparked me to move on to the Children’s Zoo. Um, I was helping some team members separate a rocky mountain goat from its parents to be shipped and they weren’t too happy about it and he got past the guy with the shield and I was gored in the leg.
AS: Oh, yikes. Scars from that?
DL: Yes I do have a scar from that.
AS: But you continue to work here anyway?
DL: Yeah uh huh.
AS: How do your kids feel about the fact that you work at the zoo? Is it no big deal to them?
DL: Oh my kids are now 20 and 16 but when they were younger with my wife being a gardener, dad feeds animals, mom feeds plants. That was kind of how they defined us.
AS: Yeah that’s good. You mentioned earlier that you have memories of Judy the elephant. Do you have any stories to share about her?
DL: I did, I did work with the elephants for a short time. They were short staffed in that department and I was new to the zoo and wanting to learn as much as I could and so I had an opportunity to work in the carnivore department and in the pachyderm department. So I did get a little bit of hands on with them. At that time it wasn’t, it was free contact so it’s, we’ve learned to work safer and smarter.
AS: What kind of training did you do with Judy and some of those bigger animals?
DL: I didn’t do a whole lot of training with them but some of the typical things was to get them to raise their feet for exams and to hold their trunk up and to mount up on the fence and to exercise, to walk their yard to make sure they were getting enough activity. That was with James Shurfield, he was a long term employee of the zoo.
AS: So what kind of training are you involved in now that you are in the Children’s Zoo?
DL: Well I am going to be involved in training some primates. The lorikeets will be returning to the Children’s Zoo and we are going to have to recondition them from going from their outside flight cage back inside on command. We have some macaws, some big parrots that we’ll be crate training so that we can shift them on and off of exhibit…..
AS: How do you train a flock of lorikeets to go where you want them to go?
DL: They are food motivated and they are a social bird. So we withhold some of their favorite foods for inside only and so in order for them to get the reward they have to come in within a 10 minute time limit, and if they don’t then the guys that come in on time get the reward and the other birds are separated but they can still see all of the other birds and they are having a party and hopefully, and it typically works that they will come they will be the first ones in next time.
AS: So what is your favorite animal that you are working with right now?
DL: Well we just got in the spider, or the squirrel monkeys and they are in isolation right now. I think that they are not only going to be challenging but a lot of fun, they are a real active animal um, but I haven’t had a chance to work with them because they are still in isolation. But we have some reptiles that are in the education collection that are a lot of fun. I like the alligator and I like the big savannah monitor lizard, and the armadillo, he’s a real treat.
AS: So have you ever been part of an escaped animal of some sort?
DL: I guess my favorite story on an escaped animal was a hornbill had gotten out of its enclosure and this was early in my career and everybody had a net but Jimmy Tarbox, and of course where did the bird go, straight to Jimmy……
AS: Of course.
DL: And he got over the fence and flew straight to Jimmy, and Jimmy jumped about 3 feet off of the ground and caught him by his legs and brought him in.
AS: Wow.
DL: Another story that I was involved in was with a saddlebill stork that had gotten onto the golf course. And um, they trim the wings on those birds, so the feathers had grown out and it had escaped and got onto the golf course. I was able to help net it, but there was guys playing right on through. We not only had to watch the bird but, you know, duck golf balls because those guys were still out there teeing off.
AS: Yeah and they are considered pretty dangerous animals.
DL: Yes they are. You had to wear eye protection and gloves because they will do you some harm.
AS: Just long bills and…….
DL: Uh huh.
AS: Could you kind of explain the process of drills, like how we practice an animal escape and why we do that?
DL: Well safety is a major concern um, and so we practice drills so that we will be prepared in the event of an escape. Of course, we try to make sure that doesn’t happen, but animals have nothing but time to figure out a way out if that’s what they want. The call of migration and what looks greener on the outside of the fence, you know, lures them out sometimes. But we set up drills for both code red and code yellow animals, the red being for the hazardous and yellow being for the nonhazardous animals. I have had some interesting nonhazardous animal experiences too. I had a bird get out of one of the enclosures in the older part of the Children’s Zoo, the beaks and feet exhibit, and it was towards the end of the day and I am kind of a bird watcher nature anyway and I saw this beautiful colorful bird up in the tree. I thought I had never seen that before. Well, it turns out that I had seen it before, just in its enclosure that it was out of, and Mr. Fish was the curator at the time and he convinced me to put a live trap on top of the cage where it had escaped and I didn’t think that it would ever work, and sure enough the next morning he was inside the trap. He came and took the food that we had put in there and we got the bird back.
AS: Well we are almost out of time but I wanted to see, is there anything else that you have thought of that you would like to share about your time at the zoo?
DL: Well, it’s been a really good experience for me. I have been here for almost 20 years and I didn’t think that I would leave the job that I loved before, but circumstances sort of dictated that I did and, you know, I look forward to coming to work every day, I mean it’s still fresh for me.
AS: Alright, anything else that you would like to add?
DL: Not that I can think of.
AS: Well that’s good. Thank you, Doug.
DL: Thank you.