Gidday, Gidday
Good girl
Good girl You're so clever
How I actually got involved in the zoo was through a career's advisor at school
going "look I really want to work with animals" and in my mind it was sort of
Department of Conservation and how could I get into that field and it was just by chance
that she had mentioned that she'd sent someone to Auckland Zoo for work experience and I
said "oh, that's bloody brilliant!" and then yeah I managed to get some work experience
in the native section and it all went from there and I then volunteered on my weekends,
so I was still going to school, and then I would come up here on my weekends and just
help out with the native team. I guess growing up on a lifestyle block and
then having, y'now being around animals and I used to have a permit to hold some of our
native gecko species which at my age back then would have been, I don't know I think,
13, 14. y'know to have these sort of native species
at home, it was in my bedroom at the time, and then yeah having a lifestyle block, cows,
sheep, all these sorts of things, dogs. It was about three years working here before
I started working elephants. Training animals whether it was seals or camels or
doing some stuff with giraffes at the time or rhinos, elephants were kind of like the
pinnacle when it comes to intelligence and their ability to manipulate the relationship
that you develop with them. It was like the pinnacle of the species that you'd want to
work with. I think starting out the way that I did and
basically experiencing a bunch of different species just really
set a good foundation.
The first time I meet Anjalee was eight years
ago and that was after all the deliberation between the government and working through
the whole process around us bringing an elephant to New Zealand.
What we needed to keep a really close eye on was how fatigued Anjalee gets and it was
obvious at the later stage of the transport that she was starting to get quite tired and
I can tell you there were moments there where I was getting really nervous.
Massive journey to get Anjalee here to Niue and it started for us in Sri Lanka at 2.30
in the morning and it was quite incredible as we actually had to wake her up she was asleep
going into the crate I couldn't have asked for any better from her.
Now I just think how, yeah, how crazy it all was, even to fly back in a Hercules
is incredible in itself.
Again I think her personality has worked
in our favor and we were going through the stage of actually identifying the right candidates
that would suit a relationship with Burma and that's what the ultimate goal was to have
a companion for Burma, or companions.
Yeah like the whole introduction around her
and Burma was interesting in itself and y'know she was like 'oh, it's just another elephant'
which was a big deal for Burma but it wasn't necessarily a big deal for Anjalee and it
wasn't until they linked trunks through the barrier at the time when it all just came together for
Burma and then they were kind of inseparable in a lot of ways
For her and me, she trusts me a lot but I still think she needs to give a lot more trust
then perhaps she does but that's just a time thing and for me to make sure that I keep up and
don't get distracted with other things. That I maintain the time and effort and energy
that I would have normally had with her outside of my other responsibilities of running the
section. There's so many learnings going on through
all of that process and as a team and even as a team how it's changed and evolved over
the years, it's been a massive learning thing as well.
In hindsight you look back and go yeah they've taught me so much about
myself, so much about each other, so it's those sorts of things that you cherish and
I guess I just still feel to this day privileged that I'm one of seven people at
this current time that gets to walk out there and work with these incredible animals and
and I just yeah, we're just grateful that we can do what we do.
I've got no more treats, I've only got a couple I say that so often, I've got no more treats
and then they just happen to fall out of my pouch.