A day in the life of a zookeeper at the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) - This week's Wildlife Wednesday follows zookeeper Brooklyn Heydel to see what it takes to be a zookeeper for a day at the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo.

Heydel starts by collecting the items she needs for her assigned animals, which today are the red-footed tortoises, the box turtles, and Bryson the warty pig.

Heydel's first stop is the red-footed tortoise enclosure, where she must complete three essential tasks for the four tortoises that live there.

Heydel starts her checklist by inspecting the shells and overall health of the tortoises and noting any changes she observes.

"So I'm making sure that they look good, nothing is wrong with their shell. Their eyes look good, so this one, the left eye, is a little bit watery, so I'm taking a mental note of that. So that we can monitor it, and if nothing changes, we can actually be able to refer back to previous days and say, 'It's been watering for like a week, we need to get that checked out,'" Heydel said.

Next, Heydel walks around the enclosure collecting the water bowls left out from yesterday to clean and fill with fresh water. Then she grabs fresh food for the tortoises and strategically leaves it for them to eat.

Heydel's next stop is the box turtles' habitat, where the hardest challenge is finding and rounding all of them up.

Box turtles are very small and masked by natural camouflage, making them very hard to spot through the enclosure's thick ferns.

As she finds them one by one, Heydel monitors the turtles' health and checks up on their shells, much like she did the tortoises.

It's important that the zookeepers make these wellness checks every day so that they can tell what's a new injury and what's an old one.

"Because that's pre-existing. That's historic on this animal. It's a healed crack; everything is perfectly fine with this individual. But if I didn't know that, I would be alarmed and call as a manager and figure out what to do from there," Heydel said.

Before Heydel leaves the enclosure, she walks around to the water bowls, cleans them out, and fills them up with fresh water for them to drink and bathe in.

Next, Heydel collects her things and heads over to Bryson the warty pig.

Heydel gets a little more intensive with her duties here because an animal like a warty pig requires a bit more maintenance than a turtle or a tortoise.

Her first task is to clean up around the enclosure and rake any holes Bryson may have dug near the fences. Next, she rinses out yesterday's water container and fills it up with new clean water.

And to mix mealtime with some enrichment, Heydel stuffs a toy with a mix of hay and Bryson's diet so that he gets exercise by manipulating an object and forages like he would in the wild, which are both good for mental stimulation.

Plus, Heydel creates a massive hole for Bryson so he can get even more enrichment by digging out a treat.

"We have a mouse for him, and that's because one of our snakes actually didn't end up eating it this morning, so he gets the lovely treat. And I'm going to put it in the hardest to access place so that he gets a really big reward for doing all this really difficult work to dig all this up," Heydel said.

And once she's done in Bryson's habitat, Heydel brings over all of the equipment and tools she used for the day to a washing station to get them cleaned for the next keeper to use.

Heydel's final stop is back in the office, where she documents her work for the day and organizes her records before she heads off to class.

"If we notice something new, we can go back and look and see if it's actually new or something that is a historic thing with that animal. And also make sure that all the animals get medicated every day, things like that," Heydel said.

If being a zookeeper for a day sounds like something you'd be interested in, the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo actually offers a VIP experience where you can see what it's like for yourself.

"So if you're above the age of nine years old, you can come to our zoo and shadow one of our student zookeepers. We'll put you on a run. You'll get to do some of the fun scrubbing. You'll get to observe the animals, even feed some animals, depending on where you are. And you'll learn a lot. Our students are always really eager to share everything that they're learning. Maybe you'll walk away wanting to do it again and again," said Johnny Conard, zoo educator.