Oral History: Sophie Palin

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Transcript:

Today is January 13, 2010. I’m Amy Stevens and I’m here with Sophie and we’re at the Oklahoma City Zoo for an interview.  

Amy Stevens: Sophie, can you tell us your full name, your birthplace, and your age to start. 

Sophie: Okay, my full name is Sophia Jean Palin, no relation, and I was born in Athens, Greece. I’m 48 years old. 

AS: Athens, I didn’t realize you were from Athens. 

SJP: Yes, my mother was Greek. I’m an Air Force brat. 

AS: Did you grow up there or did you just move everywhere? 

SJP:  We went just about, well not everywhere, but several different places. I got to live in some interesting areas. It was fun, fun time when I was a kid. I enjoyed the moving around but not so much now.  

AS: A lot of military families they continue to move through their life but you’ve been here a long time.  

SJP: I have been here quite a while.  I’m working on my 15th year here at the zoo and I’ve been here in Oklahoma 20 years.  

AS: Well tell us about how you got your start at the zoo.  

SJP: Well, um, gosh, it was a surprise to me. It was just good timing. I was working for an animal hospital that was having some, at that time, some financial problems. We worked with ostriches, you know they had that big boom there for a while, so it just worked out that when I needed to look for a job there was a couple of openings here and I applied for both of them; one was in pachyderms and one was in aquaticus, and I interviewed for both of them and luckily for me I got the pachyderm position.  

AS: Why do you say luckily? 

SJP:  I think it was a better fit for me even though I thought the other job would be,  I had no idea the rewards I would get working with the elephants specifically and I also, luckily,  just because, it was a well sought after position and I was only the second female to work in pachyderms and  first young lady, I understand, quit after a year. Cause it’s very strenuous and very stressful. So I thought I was pretty lucky all the way around.  

AS: What year was that? 

SJP: That was 1995. 

AS: Did you have a background in animal husbandry or something? 

SJP: No actually, most of my experience was working in animal hospitals. I had worked in animal hospitals for 6 years prior to getting this position and that was pretty much it. When I say that it was a well sought after position, it was mostly people who had worked with animals but not necessarily elephants. I don’t think there was any other applicants that had worked with elephants specifically. I know there was at least one rhino guy, but there wasn’t a lot of elephant people moving around then. 

AS: Why do you think you got the job? 

SJP: I had a great interview. (laughs) I really sold that and since it was my second interview, Jack Grisham was the general curator at the time, and he got to sit in on both of my interviews so I think I just won him over. I wore him down or something.  

AS: (Laughs) But you haven’t stayed with pachyderms. 

SJP: No, I worked pachyderms 10 years and then I took a promotion to head of security.  

AS: And that’s what you do today? 

SJP:  That’s what I’m currently doing yes.  

AS: Let’s go back to your pachyderm days. Tell us about what you did back then. 

SJP:  Wow, um. 

AS: What was a typical day? 

SJP: A typical day was a lot of work. A lot of cleaning. Interacting with the animals of course cause we worked the elephants, rhinos, and hippos. We had some small primates. We worked the  colobus monkeys when we still had the monkey pit after the boat was removed. 

AS: Really? 

SJP: Yeah that was a fun time, but the colobus monkeys were fun. They were a lot of fun to work with, and then we also had the howler monkeys in the pachyderm building. Yeah they were great. Those two were a lot of fun.  

AS: So you all took care of the mammals that lived even in… 

SJP: Even in pachyderms, yeah, we had the mammals in that small exhibit next to the bathrooms. Occasionally we would have birds. Darcy would somehow rope us into taking care of some birds during the summer season, but it was a lot of physical labor, moving the animals from one exhibit to the other and cleaning up quite a bit, as  you can imagine. Rhinos and elephants in particularly leave a lot behind to be picked up. It was a lot of work and then obviously working with the elephants hands on a lot to maintain that relationship so we could take care of them properly. 

AS: What were some changes you saw in elephant care from when you started to when you left? 

SJP: Well probably the biggest thing was our transition from free contact to protected contact. That was the biggest change that we had here and it involved a lot of time and a lot of hard work as well and just learning a whole new system of working with elephants cause the mindset of course, of free contact was you had to be the matriarch, if you want to put it that way. You have to be in charge of the herd and be the dominant personality and so it took a lot to convince a 10,000 pound animal that you are the one in charge and you had to be stern and I am proud of the fact that we weren’t real heavy handed with our elephants, or at least that I saw or that I was taught. We expected them to do what we wanted them to do, but you hear stories of other places and I think that we managed our elephants very well and very responsibly and the main reason that we went to protected contact was, you know, we had an issue; mainly the issue was with me. One of our elephants decided to, she actually challenged one of our keeper and when she won by him leaving our area, she decided to work her way up the ladder, which I was the next one so she challenged me and we had a little altercation where I got knocked down so the decision then was made to go to protected contact cause it was a safer system and then when we got the girls, Asha and Chandra, we went back to free contact briefly, very briefly, because of their age and the system they were used to. It was going to take some doing to integrate them some more into the protected contact system again, but we eventually did do that.  

AS: How did you get yourself up to speed on training if that wasn’t your background? 

SJP: Oh with the elephants? 

AS: Mmm hmmm 

SJP: Well my supervisor at the time, James Sherfield, trained me, you know, one on one with free contact. It was kind of a hand me down kind of thing, you know, passing techniques and skills and little insider tricks one person to the next. Almost like a family kind of thing, and as far as when we went into protected contact, that’s when we started researching operant conditioning more and we had a consultant come in and show us how to do it and then we just developed our skills from there. 

AS: And did you use this with the rhinos and the hippos as well? 

SJP: Absolutely. We didn’t do it right off cause obviously you have to get a good strong basis with an animal like the elephants and they were our main focus, but then we realized that there were a lot of things that we could do with things, do with the rhinos as well because they were just as trainable as the elephants. I mean it may have taken a little bit longer to get them to go from one step to the next but they caught on pretty quickly and so did we.  

AS: What are some of your favorite memories from that time? 

SJP: I have a lot of favorite memories where Judy the elephant is concerned. I was fortunate enough to be able to work with her for two years. When I first started there, Judy had this attitude of, you know, she’s a big old elephant, she’s an older elephant, and she doesn’t necessarily have to do what you tell her to do; and she made things very difficult for me, she was very challenging. Our African elephant Tansy at the time was so much easier to work with and I had such an easier time when I was learning working with her cause she would do thing exactly the way I wanted her to do, very quickly. I wouldn’t have to fight with her to get it done, but Judy, she just made me work for everything. She just acted like I was an annoyance. She had to put up with me. I know this is pretty anthropomorphic, but I can’t help it. I used to watch her when James would show up and she would get so excited to see him and she would do all these happy elephant things and her ears would flap, she would trumpet, she would start to rumble where you can feel it in your chest she would rumble so loud, and she would twirl her trunk and the she would pee and poop. That was her happy elephant thing and I was always jealous of that cause god she like hates me, but when we went to protected contact, I became her primary trainer and it was difficult cause she wasn’t food motivated at all. Tansy was, I mean you just show her a little bitty, you could show her a grape and she would jump through hoops for it, but Judy was like, “Um, No, that’s not enough”. It took me a while to realize, cause that’s one of the things you have to find out in operative conditioning is what motivates them, what do they consider a reward and through a lot of trial and error, I found out that I was her reward. Any kind of contact that I could give her, if I could sing to her, scratch her belly, you know, her ear, if I could just have some kind of physical interactions through the barriers that was her reward. She wouldn’t’ do it for food, but I had to shape her behavior by, I would ignore her until she would do what I want and then we’d build from that.  I’d just pet her and stuff like that and that was her reward. Through that we built up this bond and I knew it was, it was, pretty touching, the first time I walked in and she flapped her ears, trilled her trunk and peed and pooped, I realized I finally became a person, cause now I was her favorite as well. That was a big, that’s probably one of my favorite stories right there. Another favorite story I have is from when we had the youngsters, when they came in. Elephants have this habit, they play with padlocks, and they will play with them, it doesn’t matter how good the padlock is, they will play with them and jerk on them until finally they wear them out and they’ll break. That happened one night. They managed to break the padlock, to pop the padlock on their exhibit door in the back hallway and we came in the next morning and those girls had been out all night, running back and forth in the back hallway all around where the rhinos were and the hippos and they had pulled hoses out of the wall, they had gotten into buckets of paint which was all over them and all over the walls and all over everything. They had pooped all over the back hallway and there was cane everywhere. It was an awful mess. Pulled the phone off the wall, our message boards and stuff, they just tore it up but it’s hilarious. They had a great time. Luckily nothing major was broken and they didn’t get hurt or any of the other animals got injured. It was something. 

AS: That was Asha and Chandra? 

SJP: That was Asha and Chandra yeah. 

AS: What about some of the other animals in your area? Did you work with Matilda? 

SJP: Yes I did. I worked with Tilly and Norman. They were excellent. They are Nile Hippos. Tilly was kind of like Judy. She never changed. She was like, “I’m big and old and I don’t have to listen to you.”  Everything was in her own time and the way she wanted it and we pretty much let her do that. We didn’t bother her too much; she didn’t really like the interaction a whole lot. She had just gotten to that point in her life where, just leave me alone I want to float in my pool. Norman on the other hand, he kind of enjoyed it a little bit I think and he was actually very trainable. We had to very quickly train him and this, actually I think even before he had done any operant conditioning, he had had an abscess in his mouth and the vets were very worried that they were going to have to anesthetize him in order to treat it and flush it out and that’s always very stressful and just a huge risk with a hippo. But we were able to train him to open his mouth and hold it open so we could flush it out and it just never seemed to faze him.  He was fine with it and we found out that when he went to Disney, where he still resides I believe, they were just thrilled with him cause he was so easily trained and easy to work with.  Most of the time with hippos, they don’t spend a lot of time working with them, or at that time they didn’t, so yeah, they were a lot of fun. Norman had this habit of waiting until, if he was in the indoor exhibit, he would wait for the hallway to fill up with people and all these kids and everybody would be looking over into his pool and it just seemed like he would do it on purpose. He would back up into that front corner and just let it fly. Poop everywhere, all the way up to the ceiling and covering anybody that was there but that’s the only time he ever did it.  If the hallway was empty or there was nothing going on he never did that. Only when there was a lot of people in there and the hallway was real loud. I think that was his way of trying to quiet everybody but of course all it really did was make everybody scream so (laughs) 

AS: (laughs) So what are some of the other things that happened to you during that pachyderm time and then I want to talk to you about your security time.  What are some of your funny stories? 

SJP: Gosh, funny stories. Other than, well there was the one time working with Tansy, our African elephant, and she didn’t like me a whole lot. She would do everything I wanted her to do just because she was trained very well and if when you were in charge and you told her to do things she would do that but once you let her go she was “I don’t like you, stay away from me” and she would run away or whatever.  But she liked to throw things at me sometimes and there was one day that I came in and I was coming back from lunch and as I was walking down pachyderm hill, she picked up this branch that was five feet or so long and two or three inches in diameter, she picked it up and she threw it at me and Tansy had the best aim cause it sailed right over my head, and I had to duck.  She had great aim. So I went in and I told James Tansy threw this branch at me you know, he says, “Ok, well go get it” so I go out and I get the branch and he takes me back into the elephant exhibit and he goes “Ok, you’re going to teach her a lesson that’s not acceptable. “ He said you got to take it and you shake it at her and you tell her, you just give her a good cussing and then you throw it down and make her pick it up and give it to you and you just keep doing that. I felt really, really foolish, I mean really foolish. I hadn’t been working there very long, just a couple three months maybe and I just felt so foolish but I did it and I would go in there and get right up in there, she would bend her head down and we were actually eye level, I’m 5’2” so she had to bend her head down quite a bit, and I shook that thing at her and I told her grrr, giving her the best cussing that I could and her eyes would just blink, you know,  like oh oh oh I’m so sorry, and then I would throw it down and make her pick it up and she would give it back to me. We went and we did this a few times and she was just all apologetic looking so I was like, okay and he said you’ve done it, now you can let her go and I was okay and I released her and walked back out of the exhibit and we turned around and it’s the funniest thing. She was looking at us and then all a sudden she dropped her head and kind of sagged her shoulders and she walked over to the big rocks in the middle and sat down on them, just kind of plopped down like a three year old that had just gotten in trouble and how they’ll just plop down and it was hilarious. It was one of those things where I can’t laugh cause you’re supposed to be disciplining her but how do you not laugh at something like that. It was hilarious but uh 

AS: She ever throw anything at you again? 

SJP: Yeah, it was quite a while after that; she would throw mud and stuff. That’s the other thing, she used to, I don’t know what it was about our mammal curator at the time, Fran Lyons, that any time Fran came back to the back where the elephants were, Tansy would throw something at her. It was one day when we had our training consultant coming in from San Diego and we were all going down to the elephants to do some training and he and Fran went on out to the elephant exhibit in the safety area cause they were ahead of us, and the next thing we know they came back around the corner, both of them covered in mud because as they went over there to look at the elephants, Tansy found the one and only mud puddle and scooped it up and just covered them. She did that to me one time walking around the exhibit and that red mud just doesn’t come out of stuff. I had that sweatshirt forever, had these little red splotches all over it. The elephants gave me the most funny stories I guess. It was a hoot working down there.  

 

AS: They had a lot of personality it sounds like. 

SJP: Oh yeah. Definitely, and everything, all of them actually, the rhinos as well had a lot of personality. The rhino babies, just each one of them, each one was different, each one had personality. I was only there for one of the hippo births but that was something else too. It was a fun time.  

AS: So why did you take the security position? 

SJP: I actually had to do a lot of soul searching about that. There were some reasons. Part of it was when we had those accidents at the zoo, my accident included. Just the whole response and how our people were trying to help injured staff members and so I got interested in being a first responder when we had our EMT’s out here and then I became an EMT as well while I was still in pachyderms so I could help in the event we have something like that happen again. It’s just some reason, it meant a lot to me to be able to help my coworkers and so when I got interested in that and you know our security force had all of these EMT’s and we had been trying to bring it in house and make it work, and that position opened up and I had to really think about it but I had something to contribute to that and I was getting to a point in my career in pachyderms where physically it was very difficult for me to do that job and I could see that I didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep that up cause it’s a very, very physical job and so  I had to weigh that out as my own personal health and the things I could contribute to the supervisor security position and that’s why I made that decision. It was a difficult one and there are times where I still miss working pachyderms, especially now with the new exhibit coming in and elephant babies on the horizon. I still have to go back and visit my reasons for why I did that.  

AS: How do you get your animal fix? 

SJP: Besides my animals at home. Actually what’s fun about being in security is I see more of the zoo now than I ever did the first 10 years I was in pachyderms. Sometimes, well I know in pachyderms anyway we were so focused on what we were doing and the workload we had, you just didn’t get out of the area, you k now, unless it was for a specific meeting or something that you just had to do and now, matter of fact, my first year in security, I was just amazed at some of the stuff I saw cause I never had the opportunity to look at it before and realize really what a beautiful zoo we have and the collection is amazing. It shocked me that I didn’t realize that until 10 years in, like wow this place is really something because I was so focused in my one little area, or just the animal division. Now I go out and see all these different animals that I didn’t see before and the different habitats and I’ve come so much further in my thinking of what a great place this it. That’s how I get my animal fix. I go out and watch the bears or go see the cats. I have this interesting relationship with one of the mountain lions and I don’t know why. When we were first talking about Oklahoma Trails and getting these animals in, the first plan was that all of the mammal departments would have a portion of Oklahoma Trails to take of and initially pachyderms was going to have mountain lions, bobcats, red wolves, and badger. Shortly after that is when Hunter the mountain lion came in and they had him in over wintering and I would go back there and just talk to him cause you know he had had a lot of human interaction and he would make this little meow and so I would go back there and hang out with him and talk to him just so he would get used to me cause I figured eventually these were going to be our animals and we’re going to be training them so I’m going to build some kind of relationship here. But then as things worked out that changed and antelopes got a lot of Oklahoma Trails and carnivores took mountain lions and those animals so pachyderms got kind of phased out of being involved and by that time I was leaving anyway and going to security. But I don’t know if he remember that or not but every time I go, not every time but in the mornings when they’re still kind of active and not lazy from the heat, it’s almost like he hears me coming or smells me coming, I don’t know but he will, as soon as he sees me, he will hunker down, almost like he’s stalking me, and he’ll watch me go from one window to the next and then he’ll run up to the window then stop and rub along the window and then paw it and then he’ll try to reach around the fence by the post and reach through, we just have this crazy interaction for whatever reason. It’s pretty funny, I enjoy it. I think it’s kind of cool and sometimes if I time it right, there’s kids there or something or people with cameras they get a boost out of it or something. I think it’s pretty cool and they get great pictures, especially when he jumps onto the rock it’s like whoa look how big he is. It’s kind of cool so I’ll do it on purpose just for that.  

AS: (Laughs) Well you’re in the public a lot more than you used to be, you want to talk about your security job? 

SJP: I think that’s what shocked a lot of people about me going into security because the pachyderms I avoided human interaction as much as possible but yeah, I’m out there a lot, especially when it’s warmer. I like to be out on grounds and not just to watch people and make sure they’re not doing the wrong things. I’m out there to help, give people directions or just answer questions when I can and I try to get my people out there as well. Just making sure we’re there for the public when they need us and we’re also there for the employees so I get a lot of public interaction, not just touring around and stuff but people get splinters, and we do all our EMT calls and first aid calls all over the place for everybody. It’s kind of great, it’s fun to watch people especially the little kids. You really see their faces light up when they see certain animals or when they do certain things. That’s why I get such a kick out of the mountain lion thing cause those kids just light up, it’s great. But I also watch for those older kids, they sometimes try to cause a little mischief and I have to say I’m pretty protective of the zoo. Pretty protective of the animals especially. I carry that with me from my animal days I guess. I think for the most part our committee really appreciates the animals and what the zoo does.  

AS: How do you train and prepare for all these disasters from bee stings to whatever? 

SJP: Well most of the medical stuff, you know, we learn how to deal with it going through EMT school and most of my staff are EMT’s, my full timers, then I have some first responders as well and we have first responders on grounds in other areas that are there as back up and to take care of people in their own areas. But most of that is all the EMT training. I have done some online command training which is through FEMA and just, it’s mainly learning how to work in a system when you’ve got a national disaster or a mass casualty kind of thing or something big, and that just me taking my own time learning that stuff. 

AS: What is some of the unusual situations visitors have gotten into out here? 

SJP: Well we’ve had a few; there was one I remember specifically. It happened in the pachyderm buliding and it was before they renovated the front railing in front of all the animal exhibits and this little boy had tried to get a better view I guess, of the elephants, so he got his head stuck up through the flat railings and got stuck and you know Dad couldn’t get him out, couldn’t pull him through because his body was too big, couldn’t pull him back down cause of his ears and his nose and he was just, you know, he was crying and just very distraught. The parents were upset and, it was really pretty funny, and I’m not sure, I can’t remember if I was in security at the time, I think I was still in pachyderm. It was after I got my EMT training but he was stuck, and those bars you couldn’t bend then or anything. It would take a welder to come and cut him out so I, they only thing I could do was calm him down and, what I do with kids all the time is, oh yeah I do this kind of things with the elephants all the time and blah blah blah, and they seem to, for some reason it calms them down, especially when it comes to splinters. Yeah I used to take splinters out of the elephants feet and they’re like oh okay. It’s funny. You link anything to an animal and they’re okay with it. So I went into the office and we had this Vaseline we would use to soften the rhino horns around the edges, and I just took it out there and just slathered the sides of his head with it. His head, it just, it got him out. I held his ears down and just kind of slid him on through. He was greased up, he had a great hairdo going, it was all sticking up and everything, but it did the job. We had this other funny, one really funny call, and again I was still in pachyderms at the time. It wasn’t in security but it was during lunch and we would always get calls from people dropping things in the elephant boat or the rhino boat you know, hats, cameras, things like that, to go retrieve them.  I guess the front desk called and said um, a visitor dropped something in your rhino boat and you need to get it out. I was like okay but I’m by myself and if it’s something I can fish out and not move the animal I can do it, what is it? It’s an eye. 

AS: What? 

SJP:  I was like, what, wait, is this joke? This woman said her sons’ glass eye fell into and yes that’s exactly what happened. It was an interesting situation but sure enough I went out there and I had a little net and the mother was very upset cause her sons glass eye had fallen cause it was an old one, they hadn’t gotten a new one yet and it didn’t fit right so it just popped out and sure enough I fished the glass eye out of the boat and gave it back to him and was like do you want me to take this in and clean it, and she was like no and put her hands into it and put it back in and said be more careful! I was like, okay, yeah that was a great story, it was one of our better ones. That year the JC’s presented us an award that had an eyeball stuck to it, that was funny, I had almost forgotten about that one. That was a great story.  

AS: I’m curious, how has it changed for your department now that there’s bicycles instead of carts to ride around the zoo? 

SJP: For some of my guys it’s made a huge difference. It’s raised their fitness level a little bit, especially some of my guys who ride all the time. It gave them a little bit of a boost, something out of the norm, especially the guys that had been there for so long and they’re the ones who have really taken to the bikes more than some of my younger employees. It was a new challenge, it was just something different and it was something they found enjoyable and as far as our interactions with the visitors, it’s been much better because we’re more approachable, I think.  The kids will go, oh there’s a bike, and they’ll watch and there’s just a lot more positive to it where in the past, just being on the cart I think we were perceived as being a bit more unapproachable or were just too busy to stop or, you know, I don’t know but it’s also made my officers more friendly and more interactive with the visitors when they’re on the bikes. It’s been a win/win situation.  

AS: Is there some employee or mentor that’s really affected you over the years? 

SJP: Well obviously my supervisor James Sherffield was a big part of my upbringing in the zoo. He was very patient, he was kind of known for being very gruff and very stern. He actually had a reputation for being hard to work for and I’ll admit it, when I was going through my training I was probably in tears every day because he did demand a lot but then as I grew, I realized he had to be demanding to ensure my safety, his safety, and everyone’s safety cause when you work with, not just pachyderms but any of the wild animals out there, you really have to pay attention to what you’re doing. It’s not a fuzzy warm and petting the animals all day kind of job. You have to pay attention to what you’re doing. Even when you’ve worked with an animal for years and years, anything could happen and he was very strict about passing that on and I think that that helped me get out of; it prevented me from getting into bad situations, that training, and when I did find myself in a bad situation I think it helped to get me out of it.  It’s just knowing that discipline and knowing what I needed to do, the step-by-step kind of thing so he probably had the biggest impact on me here.  

AS: What are some of the difficult things that you have experienced? 

SJP: Well, by far and away, the most difficult thing I experienced here was Judy passing away. That was probably the hardest. That seeing, sometimes seeing animals go is probably the hardest part of working, to me, with animals is when they have to go somewhere for breeding or when the SSP decides they need to go to another zoo or whatever that’s difficult. You can’t help but form attachment but they have to go. Even though you know that’s the right thing, it’s the best thing for the breed and all that it’s just, those are the hard things probably.  

AS: We have about five more minutes so I have a couple of questions I would like to ask and then anything you want to add. Looking back, did your career turn out the way you expected? 

SJP: How far are we looking back? Um no, no, not at all. It really hasn’t. Before I came to the zoo, I mean  I never imagined myself working at a zoo because like so many people outside of the zoo I had the wrong impression about what zoos were all about and it probably wasn’t until I started working here that I realized that the zoo is a lot more than just an amusement park for people. There’s just so much more going on here and it’s important stuff and once I started here, I never would have expected myself to be where I’m at now in security, definitely, cause I thought I would stay in pachyderms forever just about or, at the very least, if I moved at all it would be as a curator. You know, somewhere in the animal division. But honestly, for the longest time, I never thought I would ever leave pachyderms but here I am.  

AS: How would you like to be remembered? 

SJP:  Well hopefully I won’t have to be remembered any time soon but I guess I would like to be remembered as someone that they could all count on to be there through the good times and the bad times. To help people when they needed it, to celebrate with people, you know, when they wanted it and I hope that I’ll be remembered as being a good leader and a good follower. I think that’s it.  

AS: Is there anything here we didn’t get to talk about? 

SJP: Gosh, I don’t think so other than however long I stay at the zoo, I can’t imagine myself going anywhere else until I retire or whatever, but this has been a great place to work. It’s gone through a lot of good changes in attitude and in design and that I’m kind of excited to see what happens next. 

AS: Anything else you’d like to add? 

SJP: No, no, I think that’s it.  

AS: Alright then, thank you Sophie. 

SJP: Okay, thanks.