That would be me.

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So yeah, I don’t know how it happened or, more importantly, why, but I now find myself in a Position of Authority. A Respected Member of the Community, even. A Mentor, in fact.

Way back when, I wrote about my first foray into the world of volunteerism, specifically at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, which, as zoos (or should that be zooz?) go, isn’t a bad little place. Most of the animals, specifically the ones we can best identify with, have some pretty nice digs, get all sorts of “enrichment” activities, and, by and large, seem to do what wild animals typically do, which is either a) eat or b) lie around waiting for the next time to eat.

Sure, there are no predator-prey interactions so you can successfully argue that they don’t have the full “wildlife” experience but, thinking back now, there was a time when humans were both predator and prey and I seriously doubt that any of you would willingly return to those halcyon days. So don’t get all philosophical about how this missing thrill demeans the animals experience unless you are also willing to walk, basically naked and armed with a nothing but a stick, through a forest filled with sharp-clawed, hungry beasts who wish to do nothing more than eviscerate you and start chowing down while you’re still able to watch.

As a side note, the zoo tried the whole wild-diet thing but, unless the prey item was a fish – for some reason, the visitors complained. Now, creatures which require “Whole Foods” have their dinner “humanely euthanized” before the still-warm corpse is tossed into the cage. “Humanely euthanized” is zoo-speak for “whacked with a stick”.

So anyway, if we were able to ask the zoo’s residents if they would prefer living in the zoo versus living their shorter, but arguably more meaningful lives in the wild, I think it would be almost an even split. If you rephrased the question and gave them a choice between the zoo life and starving to death in a dump or being killed for bushmeat by the encroaching tsunami of privileged homo sapiens (as if); I can guarantee that the zoo would be the choice of 100% of the respondents; kind of like people and nursing homes. Lest you think that this issue is confined to the noble beasts of the Serengeti consider that one of the zoo’s most successful conservation efforts was bringing back the humble western pond turtle from the brink of extinction. This small reptile nearly succumbed to the pressure of humanity in the oh-so-forward-thinking Pacific Northwest. Numbering a mere 150 wild individuals in 1990 the population has rebounded to 1500 currently. The only problem is that their genetic diversity is now about the same as that of humans in West Virginia.

In any event, I now spend some of my time at the zoo as a Zoo Ambassador. My job, a couple of days a month, consists of slowly walking through the grounds enjoying the animals and answering questions from the public. The questions range from: Where’s the bathroom? (A: Right behind you.); to: Where can I smoke? (A: You have to leave the zoo grounds to spark that blunt, bruddah.); to Where are the chimpanzees? (A: There aren’t any.) Unless, of course, the people who want to smoke are also the ones looking for the chimps at which point the answer becomes: The chimps and the Smoking Pavilion are both located here; and I point at the map. Where I point is determined by which section of the zoo is farthest away from where the question is asked.

There are other opportunities available to me as a volunteer. There are Barazas (a word which doesn’t seem to exist in any language but is the name of a bar in New York City) which are these brown bag lunch cum educational sessions; as well as volunteer luncheons, lectures, and wildkeeper events. All of the pictures of the luncheons seem to feature smiling geriatric volunteers surrounding long tables groaning under the weight of countless bowls of furry potato salad and platters of disturbingly gray cold cuts. As I’m not a fan of three-day old, warm ham and am, what may be charitably called, asocial, I have eschewed all other volunteer activities.

Like the plague.

I go to Seattle, I get on the bus, I walk around the zoo for three hours, and I’m done. That’s it for my volunteer experience.

Suffice it to say I was somewhat surprised when, several months ago, I received an email from the zoo which said: “your name came up as someone we would like invite to help us mentor our new volunteers”. My response: Why??? But as documented here before, I am not averse to new experiences regardless of the cost to others and, what might be best described as, the associated collateral damage. It helps provide subject matter for a blog which otherwise by now would have become hopelessly tedious.

Oh, you think so, huh?

The first order of business was determining who had put my name in the hat, so to speak. There are exactly no people who could have done this, save for my own mentor Sally. There is, in fact, not a single individual on zoo grounds who could identify me by name without first looking at my nametag. But I’d be able to find the culprit soon as the pre-season mentor pep talk was coming up in just a couple of weeks.

The mentor meeting, which I thought was going to be more of a training session than it was, took place and was a mix of the existing mentors and the few new mentors who received the Special Invitation. Sally was there and I confronted her.

She looked stunned. “What are you nuts?” she replied. “Why would I recommend you? Here have a cookie.”

One of the great things about having Sally as a mentor was that I got to know a bit about her and the typical times she comes to the zoo to volunteer. This was a good thing to find out because when she comes to the zoo she always brings a large bag of home-baked cookies. Sometimes still warm.

I munched away at the proffered biscuit and we speculated on who else could have made my name come up in the same sentence as “would make a good mentor”. We both came up blank.

“Really,” she said. “I just don’t think you have it in you.”

I took another cookie.

The meeting went smoothly and without much fanfare. The whole mentoring program fits on two sheets of paper – double side – and consists of 1) Welcome to the Mentor Program nonsense, 2) try not to scare off the trainee with all the stories of escaped animals eviscerating Zoo Ambassadors, and 3) walk your trainee around the zoo for nine hours and see how they do.

Piece of cake; or in this case, cookie.

A few months went by and I got my first assignment from the new crop of potential volunteers. I contacted my trainee to set up our first session and, given that we had five weeks to complete the three sessions I figured it would be an easy, stress-free first experience.

How wrong I was.

First off, my assignee was nothing if not eager. Instead of the allotted five weeks, he wanted to complete the program in five days. A suggestion I quickly put paid to. I’m sure he is very anxious to get started at the zoo but this mentor stuff is so not my job. Second, as you might infer from the eagerness, he’s young and, sadly, just out of college. He studied biology in school and, given an economy that is not particularly friendly to the soft sciences, I’m sure any activity with resume potential is welcome. Plus, it turns out that a significant percentage of the zoo’s workforce came up through the ranks of the volunteer corps so there was some actual job potential here. Third, and last, with him being a biologist, long time Seattle resident, and something of a zoo aficionado, he knows significantly more about the Woodland Park Zoo than I ever will.

So much for being the mentor.

We’ve now completed two out of the three “mentoring” sessions and I know more about the zoo than I ever hoped or, really, wanted to. I now really know where all the bathrooms are. I know the names of the elephants, all three of them, and how to tell them apart. And, believe it or not, I even know where they hide the chimpanzees.

A secret I will take with me to the grave.