It’s a Zoo Around Here--on Her Terms

It’s not hard for Connie Sweet to remember the first time she went to the zoo.

She was 20 years old.

She had grown up in rural Ohio farm country, surrounded by animals but far away from any such thing as a zoo.

“I guess this is one of those weird things I must have been born with. I’m the only one of three kids who was very intensely interested in animals. My interest was just consuming. When I got old enough to be allowed to take off on my bicycle by myself, I’d head out to the woods and the creeks and local farms and go sit in the field and wait until the cows got curious enough to walk right up to me,” said Sweet, the 44-year-old animal curator of the 44-year-old Santa Ana Zoo. “I was always doing stuff like that.”

During her first year at Ohio State University, she volunteered to take a group of disadvantaged kids to the Columbus Zoo. Seeing animals in cages bothered her, and it bothers her still.

“Most cages are bad for the animals, and the exhibits don’t teach anybody anything. Zoos that are worth their stuff are getting away from it,” she said.

During her 10 years at the city-owned zoo at Prentice Park, Sweet has created more open-air, environmentally appropriate exhibits for the zoo’s 250 animals, including a walk-through aviary.

“Habitat immersion is one of the phrases that we’ve been using for several years now. A habitat-immersion-type exhibit is where people are actually in the habitat with the animals. But there is a segment of the population that prefers looking at animals in cages because they can walk by and go, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a gorilla and there’s a mountain lion.’ That’s all they’re here for.”

Sweet is responsible for the care and condition of the animals, which are primarily from Central and South America. She also oversees the ordering of food and supplies, manages veterinary care, keeps detailed records for each animal, fills in when needed as a substitute animal keeper, and takes part in public education programs.

She also travels throughout the world to zoos and natural habitats to learn how best to replicate animal environments.

“We get people who come and say, ‘Oh, I would just love to do that.’ But they don’t understand what truly is involved in this kind of career. It’s a lot of very hard work, and it’s a very intense schedule. We’re responsible for the lives of 250 animals.”

The quality of the animals’ environment is her primary concern. One of the first things Sweet did when she came to the zoo in 1986 was to transfer the bears to another zoo because she believed they were living in substandard conditions.

“They were in an incredibly dinky little exhibit, and they were not happy. The zoo director who was here at the time had been trying to make arrangements to move the bears out. When I came, that was my first priority. They went to the Guadalajara Zoo in Mexico, a brand new zoo, in a huge exhibit with a pool and a big grassy area. It was just great.”

At the country’s most troubled zoos, animals in cramped quarters display what Sweet calls “stereotypic behavior.”

“We don’t have those problems here that some of the zoos have, the pacing and patternized behaviors. You’ll see bears pace back and forth with the typical flip of the head each time they turn around. It’s a symptom of boredom.

“Our keepers put a lot of effort in giving the animals things to do, and it’s not just food things. It can be things like putting in the live plants and lots of different perchings so they can get up high and see out.”

One of Sweet’s favorite animals at the 8-acre zoo is a black Nubian goat named Amber. At 13 years old, Amber is nearing the end of her life. She spends lazy days in the children’s zoo just beyond the reach of mischievous hands. Amber shares her corral with a turkey, a few chickens and a double-yellow-headed Amazon parrot named Pedro who likes to call out, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

For someone who never went to the zoo as a child, Sweet finds contentment in such surroundings, regardless of the assorted scars she has collected over the years from unruly animals. She still has a vivid memory of being bitten by a chimpanzee at the Virginia zoo where she worked for 11 years.

“The selfish little part of me loves what I do because I get to be around all these animals. I love it. I would not want to live in a world without animals. I could live in a world without people, but I couldn’t live in a world without animals.

“But I also hope that we are helping people to understand that these are living creatures that need to be respected and appreciated. It doesn’t matter if it’s an endangered monkey that needs protection in its rain forest in Brazil or whether it’s your pet dog or cat. They all deserve the same respect from us. Trying to get people to understand that is one of the really important things about doing what I do.”

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Profile: Connie Sweet

Age: 44

Hometown: Springfield, Ohio

Residence: Santa Ana

Family: Two cats

Education: Bachelor’s degree in zoology from Ohio State University

Background: Advanced from animal keeper to general curator during 11 years at Virginia Zoological Park; animal curator at the Santa Ana Zoo since 1986

On zookeeping: “The main purposes of accredited zoos are education, conservation and research. In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be a need for that, because humans would behave themselves and they would not pollute and destroy and slash and burn and do all the nasty things that endanger animals.”

Source: Connie Sweet; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times