海角社区官网

Then, one day, she was assigned the late shift, closing the building the jaguar enclosure was in, and had no choice.

It was her first time back in the building since Luca, a 19-year-old jaguar, had died in October 2023.

She cried the entire time, she recalls.

Luca had been at the 海角社区官网Zoo for nearly his entire life. He lived with his sister, Zambucca. He loved playing with cardboard and getting scratches from the long back scratcher used by keepers.聽

More than anything else, Luca was sweet, the zoo said in its obituary for the jaguar.聽It made his death that much harder.

“We made up a memorial picture,” Soh said. “That also made me cry.”

This is the job of a zookeeper. They spend years 鈥� sometimes more than a decade 鈥� working with an animal, training them and developing a relationship. They build a trust, an understanding. And then, eventually, the animal dies, and the keeper grieves.

This summer, the 海角社区官网Zoo lost four animals in just one month, two of whom were geriatric and experiencing health issues. As the zoo celebrates its 50th anniversary, officials anticipate these losses will become increasingly common, reflecting the aging population of the animals in their care.

The zoo opened in August 1974 with thousands of animals. Some, like the 52-year-old gorilla Charles, have been there ever since. It is these animals and others that the zoo anticipates losing in the next 10 to 15 years.

The zoo models its population using an age pyramid, tracking each species and individual animal from birth to death, according to Grant Furniss,聽director of wildlife care. A healthy age pyramid stands straight up. An unhealthy one leans precariously to one side, looking like it’s about to topple over.

The transition from healthy to precarious comes in waves, Furniss said, and can be difficult to predict. Right now, the zoo’s pyramid is unhealthily skewed to the side.

And while only two of the zoo’s recent deaths were age-related, it was a difficult summer that could be a sign of things to come.

It started in late July, when a two-year-old Masai giraffe died during a castration procedure. A review of the surgery found stomach content in the giraffe’s lungs, a 鈥渨ell-recognized risk鈥� among some animals known to throw up when under anesthesia.

“I’ve been doing this job for about 20 years now and every so often, really, really bad things happen,” Nic Masters, the director of wildlife health, told the Star at the time. “This is one of them.”

The bad days kept building.聽One week later, the zoo lost one of its red panda cubs, one of two born聽only six weeks earlier. Infant mortality is a known risk among the species, with studies showing as few as 40 per cent of cubs reach their first birthday.

Then, in mid-August, an 11-year-old moose was euthanized after 鈥渟everal months of decline,鈥� the zoo said. Ten days later, in the final blow of an emotional month,聽another red panda 鈥� the mother of the cub 鈥� died from cardiac arrest. In a span of three weeks, the family of three red pandas had been reduced to a family of one.

For keepers, every animal death is painful 鈥� especially so because bonding with the animal is essential to the job.

Ryan Hegarty, who works in the zoo’s Australasia region, once trained a tree kangaroo, teaching her to accept voluntary injections, which are sometimes necessary for medical exams. When it came time for her to be sent to another zoo for breeding, she had to be examined under sedation 鈥� and took the injection easily beforehand.

Animals also instinctively hide any sort of illness or injury from keepers, making changes in health hard to detect. It鈥檚 the keepers鈥� job to pick up on a limp here or a scratch there.

And in some ways, when an animal dies, it is also a keeper鈥檚 job to grieve.

鈥淚鈥檝e seen all of my co-workers cry,鈥� Hegarty said.

The zoo tries to prepare keepers for the inevitable by teaching them coping mechanisms and making on-site counselling available every two weeks, said Joanne Eaton, the zoo鈥檚 manager of health and safety.

Every keeper copes differently.

鈥淲orst case scenario,鈥� Soh said, 鈥淚鈥檓 buying a pint of ice cream and I鈥檓 not doing anything that night but eating the ice cream.鈥�

At a base level, most animals are memorialized with a painted footprint, taken by vet tech staff when an animal dies. In the Australasia section, the keeper room features a memorial wall with collages of animals who have died.

Sometimes, the zoo holds public memorials, as it did for Mila, a tiger cub Hegarty took care of for two years before she was sent to a Colorado zoo, where she died in an anesthesia accident.

Other times, there are private memorials. When 25-year-old grizzly bear Samson was euthanized, the zoo held an Indigenous-led ceremony in his honour.

More personally, Soh has two tattoos of animals she鈥檚 cared for. One is the jaguar Luca鈥檚 face, imprinted on her hand. Another is the fingerprint of a chimpanzee she once worked with.

鈥淚t took me years to be able to talk about her without my voice cracking,鈥� Soh said.

But unlike the death of a pet, grieving for keepers can be uncomfortably public 鈥� both in questions from curious visitors and comments online.

鈥淚t鈥檚 really hard to hear and see people from the outside commenting negatively,鈥� Soh said. 鈥淚t feels like they kind of forget, or maybe people just don鈥檛 know, how deeply we care for those animals and how we do everything possible for them.鈥�

The zoo houses about 3,000 animals representing about 240 unique species, according to Furniss. He and his team track demographics for each species 鈥� and right now, the general population is aging.

Charles the gorilla will turn 53 in January and is already the second-oldest silverback under human care, Furniss said. Charles has been at the zoo since it opened in 1974.

Likewise, Puppe the orangutan arrived in 1974. At 57 years old, she is the oldest Sumatran orangutan in North America.

鈥淭hese are animals that I can already tell you are not going to have another 10, 15 years out here,鈥� Furniss said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e already starting conversations 鈥� It鈥檚 just getting everybody prepared and ready, because we know this animal has a certain lifespan.鈥�

The zoo is currently putting together a plan that will lay out what the next five to 10 years look like for the animal population, Furniss said. It will include what animals they鈥檇 like to add to the zoo to help maintain its population.

But the circle of life remains. Those animals will, eventually, die. And when they do, the zookeepers will grieve. Then they鈥檒l come back to work the next day, ready to keep doing their jobs.

Becoming so close with the animals is not something the keeper’s regret. Soh once worked with an old lion-tailed macaque monkey named Dave, training him for injections he would inevitably need when he was euthanized.

At the beginning, when he got darted, it was terrible.

鈥淚t was just one of the most stressful, awful things that I鈥檝e ever seen, because of his level of panic and stress,鈥� Soh said.

But she kept training. When the time came for Dave to be euthanized, he came, sat and took the injection.

鈥淭he last thing he did was grab a whole handful of bugs, then ran off and ate them,鈥� Soh said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 how he went out 鈥� so peacefully and so happily. So it was totally worth it.鈥�

Soh now plans to get a tattoo of Dave.