Abi Clarke: Zookeeper in Training - Week 5: Up Close and Personal

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

When the team asked Abi if there were any animals she was scared of, she said “Crocodile, obviously.” So today… she’s meeting one. Kind of. Maybe. It’s complicated. Is it a crocodile? A gharial? A false gharial? You’ll have to listen to find out.But that's just the start. Until now, Abi’s had it pretty easy. Otters, sloths, and casually lobbing grapes at a cassowary. But the real work is about to begin.She’s elbow-deep in rhino poo and scrambling up cliffs for ibis eggs, all under the watchful eye of a vulture called Ethyl.See some of Abi’s adventures at Chester Zoo on Instagram and TikTok.Find out more about the incredible work at Chester Zoo, here.New episodes every week.Music courtesy of BMG Production Music Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is your official warning that this podcast may contain some very mild swearing. Don't worry, I won't be calling an elephant a but if you're expecting a super child friendly podcast, this may not be the show for you. Proceed with caution. Excuse me, it's not yours. We have an exclusive. There's a robbery happening right now. I'm Abby Clark and if you've been listening, you know by now. I am a stand-up comedian and Chester Zoo's most recent employee. How did I end up here?

Well, as someone who finds social situations pretty difficult, I somehow found myself in a career that relied heavily on talking to people. So I was searching for some respite, a new setting, a safe place where I only have to talk to creatures I like. You guessed it, animals. And it turns out Chester Zoo isn't just a great place for my own personal growth. They're actually trying to save the world. And they're doing an unbelievable job at it too.

Some of their wins include repopulating wild snails in Bermuda, saving harvest mice from the brink of extinction in the UK, and becoming one of the most successful breeders of salamanders. Meanwhile, I'm trying to improve my small talk. Still, I am not one to shy away from a challenge. I've got just two more weeks to prove that I am cut out for this job to go from trainee to a full-time member of the team. So what we can do sometimes is feed them corn. So like sweet corn comes out hole in their poo, the same as humans. There's been loads of sightings of them even eating provoscis monkeys and other mammals. There's one sighting, I think, of somebody saying they saw one take down a cow.

Oh, or not, that's true, is debated. Has one ever a bit of humour? Are you going to move out my way? Are you going to stay there? This is Abby Clark, Zookeeper in training. Being a keeper so far has been pretty glamorous. I've seen chameleons and waistcoats, been surrounded by 107 of the most fabulous flamingos, and seen giraffes with legs that are even too long for the cover of Vogue.

But that is all about to change. As I'm getting stuck into some real work, I'm going poo-picking. Rano's a better behaviour than any cat I've ever owned. Okay, so we're with Jodie, one of the... the rhinockeepers, can you talk us through the rhinos you have here at Chester Zoo? Yes, so we've got Eastern Black Rino here at Chester Zoo. We've got nine individuals and they're all housed separately apart from are females with calves. So we've got all separate habitats here. Oh wow, they're all separate habitats. Is that to stop them fighting? Why do you keep them all separate? So in the wild,

they would naturally live solitary until they were coming together for breeding or mum and baby. So that's what we tend to replicate here at the zoo. Cool. And what are we doing today? We're going to take a fecal sample to take up to our science labs. So here at Chester Zoo, all our rhinos are part of the European breeding program. So we're breeding them for conservation. And because they naturally live solitary in the wilds, if we just threw them together at any point in the cycle, there's potentially a fight going to happen.

So we check their hormone levels in their fecal samples to know when exactly they're ready for mixing. Okay. All right. Pew picking. Let's do it. Tell me through it. What is the process?

So we need to find where our animals poo. So in this habitat, rhinos tend to midden their feces. So they go in specific areas again and again. Okay. So we've got one here and then one way down the back over there. So they have specific toilet areas. So our females are pretty clean. They tend to just poo in one spot and leave it there.

Males will kick it around a little bit more just to mark their territory. I see. So we've got the girls in this one. They're nice and tidy. And how do you take a sample? Is it just like picking up a dog poo? pretty much so we're going to put some gloves on do you want to do i want to are you willing to i'm contractually obliged to right gloves on yeah gloves on so the best way to do it is we would

find a full ball ball ball like this oh my gosh it's really good she's just grabbed it she's just fully grabbed it in half yeah and then we want to take a pinch from the middle so we know it's not contaminated and we stick it in one of our little sample bags here there we go my first poo sample Don't I get the job now? I feel I'm going to give some feedback. I feel like these bags are too small. Tiny bags for massive poo. I feel like we could take a lot of the grossness out of this job by just having bigger bags.

I'm going to suggest it. I'm putting it in the suggestion box on the way out. The one at reception. We'll need a giant freezer. Oh, I see. We can fold them down. Get one of those vacuum back bags. Is this the worst bit of the job or does it get worse?

Pooh is the expected part of the job. Yeah. I would say the worst part is December and January when it's cold and wet and you're smashing the ice and digging around for frozen poo. Oh, I see. When it's sunny like this, it's like the best job in the world no matter what you're doing. Oh, nice. So why are we collecting poo?

I assume this isn't a pleasure activity for you. We do it so we can send it to our science labs that we have here. on site at Chester Zoo and they monitor the hormone levels and that is so we know when they're cycling and best they're mix them. So they're more receptive to the male. So do you not test the male poos? No, we don't collect samples from the males, only the females. Just the girlies. So here we've got mum and daughter. So obviously we've got two sets of rhinos and we don't always know who's poo is who. So what we can do sometimes is feed them corn. So like sweet corn comes out hole in their poo the same as humans. So we feed it to only Emma and then

And if we find a poo with corn in it, we know it's hers. So are you wanting to breed Emma again? Eventually she's still in the breeding program, yeah. So all the Brack rhinos at the zoo are part of a European breeding program that are managed by a stud bookkeeper. So there's someone in charge and they've got all the rhinos in Europe and they can recommend who's best to breed with who and when. Can you tell if a rhino poo is healthy just from looking at it at first or

do you need to test it for that as well? For sure that the consistency of the poo is a good indication of how healthy the or rhino is so we want nice solid balls not too wet not too dry it basically is just hay isn't it it is they don't have very effective digestive systems so they eat a lot of food and then most of the nutrition comes out whole still so if we're following this tiny little bag now where where does this poo go what happens to it so we've got a science lab on site so it goes into our freezer and then at the end of the month the science people come and collect one big bag of all our little frozen poos we will date the day we collected it, the species and the name of the animal, and they will compile

them in the science lab and test the hormones and then they can plot it onto a graph. Is it like one of those apps on your phone where you track your period? It's exactly like that. It goes up and down the way it would on your period app so you can see it on the graph and at the point of Easterst it goes up and that's when at the point we would mix our rhinos. Oh my goodness. And are you looking for anything else in the poo? Is it just hormones?

So far, the daily ones we take off a hormone tracking. but if we have a sick animal and we suspect that they are unwell they're showing signs of lethargic or losing weight or look under condition, we can take a poo sample specifically and send that off to the labs and they will look for parasitology or just signs of ill health in their poo. So, it turns out poo picking was not just some cruel initiation they made me do at the zoo. It actually has a purpose. After filling a little plastic bag with fresh, warm rhino waste and chucking it into the freezer,

I had some questions. Mostly, why am I putting poo in the freezer? I decided to follow its journey. Where does it go? What do they do with it? And why is everyone acting as though this is completely normal? The poo led me to Becky, who makes this whole situation sound very clever and much less unhinged.

I'm Becky Mogi, and I'm the laboratory coordinator here at Chester Zoo. So they're stored in a freezer on section, and once a month, someone from lab or head down, collect the months' worth of samples, bring those all up to the laboratory up here. And to process them, we obviously have to defrost them. So we'll set them all out. Usually in date order, we'll defrost them, and then we'll start to process them. So we weigh out a certain amount of the faecal sample, and then we'll use an alcohol solution to then extract hormones from the fecal material or the poo sample.

And we can run one sample on numerous assays, so we'll tend to sometimes look at numerous hormones. So the big one is progesterone, so we use that. to look at cyclicity. So when a rhinos in eustrus, for example, so we know when to advise on introductions and such. And estrus for anybody not up to date on their hormone vocabulary means in heat, or in more professional terms, ready to accept a mate. As humans, you may be more familiar with the time, two weeks after your period where you'd consider anything with a pulse. We can also with progester and tell when an animal's pregnant. That's often what we're doing kind of pregnancy diagnosis. And in addition to that, we have numerous assays.

that kind of linked to health and welfare, but we can test for quite a few things. If anyone who isn't fluent in science, an assay is basically the tests they do to work out what a sample is made up of. So like 10% sweet corn, 90%, just a lot of straw. When I first joined here, it's amazing to me that the lab can really build into those kind of success stories where like an animal perhaps hasn't been successfully bred for a number of years. And that can be for many, many reasons. It could be that the female may be, doesn't cycle as normal as we would expect that female to do. And we can kind of shed light on how long her cycles are or what she might be doing reproductively. And then that result in the animal

getting pregnant and giving birth. And then obviously that contribution to the European population is pretty amazing to be fair. But can any of these tests be done on human poo? Oh, it's a good question. I think so obviously pregnancy tests for women, you pee on a stick. And I think that's a much easier way than going down the poo route. But yeah, I think actually, interestingly, they can use the pregnancy for humans with some primate species, which is really good, so you don't have to actually look at their poo. But yeah, I definitely think there's lots of diagnostic tests that, unfortunately, for the people, poo tester labs,

I'm thankful that most of mine is hay. But yeah, I think you can tell a lot from anyone's poo in cleaning animals. I thought it was a member of star's job to stand beneath a peeing primate and catch the wee on a stick. I was going to say, that's very impressive, right? So we think, probably find a puddle, dip a stick. like a dop-dop, a dip-dop.

I was lucky enough to go out to Kenya with Dr. Katie Edwards, who's like the lead scientist for the conservation laboratory, and we joined Cedric Carly, who is a senior researcher at the Wildlife Research and Training Institute. And we went down to KWS headquarters where we've worked with Cedric to set up a sort of pop-up endocrinology lab. There aren't many, obviously, unfortunately, Black Rino in Kenya. But the ones that are left, they're in conservancies where they have a sort of particular area which they kind of live in and eventually that

consummancy reaches its carrying capacity and it's important to be able to move those rhinos to other locations in order for them to maintain their breeding prospects and keep pushing that kind of population forward and katie and i went out to look in the freezer at all the samples he's collected from all these moves which is obviously amazing sample collection i think there was over 300 in the end so there's quite a few and he's continuing to collect samples too and we were able to run those samples on several of our assays that we've set up here at the zoo, and he's processing that data now and trying to look basically at how different rhinos adapt to the different translocations. So in the hope that we can kind of maybe home in on some

aspects of the translocations and make sure that they're as optimal as possible for optimal success for those rhinos want to move. The goal for us at the zoo in terms of, and what we'd like to achieve is we want to continue working really with scientists like Cedric and also other scientists. And I think the big goal for us is to be able to have those kind of conservation techniques that we have here in the conservation physiology laboratory available for scientists working all across Kenya. Because obviously the assays we use for the black rhino, we use for hundreds of species here. And they can be applied in all different ways. Today is all about facing our fears. I face humiliation, head on,

and rummage through a fresh rhino poo, but it is time to take things up a notch. When I signed up to be a keeper, the team asked me if there was anything I was particularly scared off. And I said, crocodiles, because I am a sensible human, who knows that a fear of crocodiles

is simply a fear of dying, a very painful death. So, we are now going to go meet to crocodile. And when I say meat, I mean literally, in the habitat, with it, no barriers between us. What could go wrong? I don't really know what's about to happen. All I know is that we're going to meet a crocodile.

There's a lot of gates and all of them say warning crocodiles present. Warning, don't let them loose. I didn't realize I was going to be going in. Now, to continue to call them a crocodile would be rude. They are actually sundagarials, but it was the closest thing the zoo had to traumatise me. Picture a crocodile, but then imagine its snout has been hitting the azem-pick. Okay, similar-sized body, but long, thin snout. That's a sunda-gareles. Gariel. Someone who wasn't scared of the garials was Keeper Charlie.

What, like, what is a Sunda garyl? How's it different from a crocodile? How's it different from an alligator? So Sunder garrials are actually quite a particular crocodileian. They are split into three where you get crocodilians, you get alligators and you get true garrils. And essentially, the Sunda garyl, or false garril, is kind of one of those in between us where there's still debate as to whether or not they are a garyl or an actual sort of part the crocodile family. So essentially the biggest difference really is going to be down to sort of morphology. So it's for example the jaw shape in alligators is quite broad and round and

quite big that crocodiles tend to have a more slender snout that's a bit more pointed. And then with garrials, a true garrials that you find in India will have very long slender snouts with kind of a bulb on the end of it for the males and they will be very much a fish specialist. Then you have the false garrials, which are kind of debated us to whether or not they are a true crocodile or a garril, but those guys are parent themselves to a bit of a garrul. So these garrials might not even be garrials. It's like how of mice and men isn't actually about mice, or baby oil isn't made from babies. For the longest time, people thought that they would only eat fish because of the heap of their jaw, just like a true garril.

Turns out that actually there's been loads of sightings of them even eating proboscis monkeys. and other mammals. There's one sizing, I think, of somebody saying they saw one take down a cow, whether or not that's true, is debated. Has one ever bit of humans?

There are recorded cases of fatalities, I think, only one real recording, and then I think it's just murmurs of crocodiles essentially going for humans, but whether or not those are true is left to be debated.

And how, obviously, this is an audio production? How big is a Sunday aerial? They will tend to grow to around, I'd say four metres for a female and then about five metres for a male who tend to be quite a lot bigger and then in terms of weight

anywhere between 300 to 600 kilos 600 kilos would be like pushing it at the very far end. It was at this point that the team told me what we would actually be doing with the garyl slash not garyl. It was cleaning day. You might think that cleaning a tank

with a massive reptile is more complicated than just flicking on the hoover. But dear listener, you would be completely wrong. Could you talk us through kind of what's about to happen and what you're doing? So essentially, because we want to try and replicate as much as sort of the natural habitat that the animals would have in the wild, we pay a lot of attention to sort of the water quality and we try and replicate it as best as we can. So we have quite sophisticated filter systems on them. Now, with any water, you start to get Audi build up, you start to get leaves dropping in from all the needs.

natural plants around mud being dragged in by the crocodiles and sand and all that stuff and it starts to get into sort of the filter grates and essentially we're using the hoover to clean those out and we'll do that on a weekly basis just trying to sort of essentially clean out just so it doesn't get too clogged up and essentially just breaks the filters and what are these long wooden kind of forks you're holding so these are to push the crocodiles away if ever they do get a bit too close and just sort of essentially barrier manage how close they can get directly to us. Have you ever had a close encounter? Not necessarily.

Our guys are actually quite tame. False garrows in general are quite a tame crocodile. So they will come over out of curiosity. They might be a bit forceful sometimes. But generally speaking, it's more so inquisitiveness or a feed response where they think we might have food for them so they start pushing towards us. But generally speaking, you sort of nudge them

and they should sort of go by their own way. Okay. So has this always felt safe? Were you scared first time you did it? Safe is a broad word. broad word. You never really afraid. You always have to respect the animal no matter what it is, but it's the same for if you have a dog at home or anything like that. You always have to respect whatever you're working with. And obviously, these animals will always have an element of danger because at the end of the day, they are a predator. They are built to fit in a certain ecological niche. But as long as you respect them, you're aware of your surroundings, where they are, how they're behaving amongst all those things, then you're absolutely fine. I have one question before we start. I didn't get your name, sorry. Joe. Why is Joe the only one in a life jacket?

No, so I work with the fish. So these guys now... Joe just loves water. Joe wants to the fish if you didn't hear his answer. I'll just be closest to the water. Ah, so you're doing the actual cleaning job? Yeah. I see.

I know this conversation was supposed to be a chat with Charlie about the false garrials. But before we continue with the clean, I do want to know more about Joe. Why was he chosen? How far in does he have to go? Is he even part of the ectotherm team? Were you scared? first time you did it? I was first time and then we've been doing this for weeks on weeks

and every time the garrows do what we need them to do so it's been it's been time yeah. I've actually relaxed quite significantly after hearing that only one fatalities recording and also they're not that fuss about us. They're incredibly shy. You should have got someone more famous like Alan Park. I think they made they would have made an appearance. We'll put the Hoover on if that's okay.

Yeah, Hoover Rum. I'm going to save you listening to three minutes of hoovering and instead tell you some more about Chester Zoo because I have just found out that they're an actual not-for-profit organisation. Like I knew they were leading the way in animal conservation work but I didn't realise they were actually ploughing everything back into the zoo and most importantly, the animals. That means you can make a difference just by visiting the zoo

or buying yourself a coffee and a treat on your visit. You don't actually have to clean out the rhinos or prepare the fish for the otters. You can get that cinnamon bun and say you're doing your bit for the environment. You can be part of creating a future where nature thrives just by having a lovely day out this summer. If you're not Chester-based, make a trip of it. Later this year, they're launching luxury overnight stays where you can see the animals as you wake up. I'm calling for fewer nights out in Ibiza and more girls' trips to the zoo. They even have a pup. They have their own pup. That's so cool.

With a beer garden right in the middle of the action. If that doesn't convince you to visit Chester this year, I don't know what will. Head to chesterzoot.org slash podcast to get your tickets and find out more. Charlie, can you just tell us about the actual two you have? What are their names? What's their character? Do we like them? I mean, yeah, we like them very much.

So we've got one of the crocodiles that has all its teeth, which is called Hookfang, the unofficial name. And then we've got another crocodile who has barely any of its teeth. called toothless. These garials were just two old ladies. One of them was literally called toothless, which I don't think you could get less intimidating as a type of crocodile than to admit the lack of teeth. And if how to train your dragon has taught us anything, is that any monster called toothless is adorable, basically a cat. So they're actually quite good in temperament. The one with teeth, hook fang, it tends to be quite a lot shyer around people. We've discovered

through sort of like CCTV cameras that we have in here. Those roles are quite reversed when they're together. They're actually the one with teeth can be a bit of a bully. But generally speaking, there's just very, very sort of nice crocodiles to work with. Having worked with other species beforehand, as I said, they're not much of a hassle. They're quite inquisitive. They come over. They sort of have a look at what you're doing.

They're just never really show any aggression. The only thing you'll get out of them is a bit of hissing and bubbling of the water when we eventually do training where they get a bit impatient. What do you train a cindergarial to do? So we do target training. So essentially we'll have a target with a pad on it. And the idea is that the crocodile has to come to us, boot the target with its nose. And if it does that, then we will reward it with a fish. If it bites the target or overshoots the target, we should just remove it and reset. And essentially we can get them to sort of move

from area to area by touching the target every time and then eventually what we can get them to do is move to the target and station them and then the reason we do that is for desensitization in regards to when they're stationed like that we'll have another keeper there holding the tail touching the tail and moving around and what we're trying to get the crocodile to do there is get habituated to touch so that then if there's any issue either medical or anything like that we can then take a blood sample, we can give them antibiotics if need be, and it's not something they're completely unaccustomed to. It's something that they've already had happened to them before.

Is that never slightly like, but what if this time they decide not to stay still? We try and do it in a sort of secure manner. We're fortunate enough the way the way the pool here shaped, the crocodile would have a hard time turning on itself. If it was just in open water, then yeah, it would be definitely more dangerous. bit here you would have somebody on land in that area just there which i know this is audio so you can't see but it's like a narrow corridor and it just means the crocodile can turn on itself but just not very far so you'd have time to move out the way but also when you're targeting and you're

feeding the crocodile usually if you keep the face side busy with food the crocodile doesn't really tend to want to turn around because it's being fed and if ever there was a situation where the the crocodile was about to turn we at the top front so i.e. let's say myself and a colleague would immediately give a warning to the person who's at the tail end just being like she's turning and then they would have time to move out of the way. Okay so I'm touring the zoo. Yes. Learning to be a keeper of all kinds. Why did you specifically pick crocodiles? I think because like most young boys I saw dinosaurs and thought that's pretty cool. I want to work with them and then sort of never lost the gist of it and sort of continued through.

And what's the best bit about it? Why would someone want to do this job? It's just very rewarding in regards to when you do do the job right and you do see animals that are thriving, being able to do and be a part of reintroduction programs and all these things, being able to breed certain animals that haven't been bred before and then being able to do re-releases and be part of sort of conservation and saving a lot of these species that essentially even to the smallest brown lizard like the Bermuda skin that people would generally look over because it doesn't have flamboyant colors or all these things but yeah you know

you need a place like Chester Zoo to be able to look at that and go well why does it less deserving than you know a tiger or more iconic species even though it is just a small brown lizard that leaves in leaf litter it's still a life at the end of the day and it still needs saving so yeah that kind of stuff I think is why most of the team would get behind or why most people would try and get behind doing these exofermit things and also reptiles at the end of the day are kind of the underdog, you know, people overlook them. So it's kind of cool to be able to do that kind of stuff. Honestly, after that, I need a calm afternoon.

Luckily, the bird teen needed some help collecting eggs. Perfect. Also, I thought until we got there and realised we would be climbing ladders into caves and sharing a space with a massive. vulture. Yep, a vulture. You know that bird that looks like it's just waiting for you to have a nap so it can eat your soul? I was assured the vulture had absolutely no interest in hurting me, and she was even called Ethel. I joined Lauren and Heather from the bird team to find out more. So we have the vulture in here. That's the only, um, our only worry is her flying. She's,

she might fly out of us, but she won't, she won't like do anything. Right. She'll just be warning us. so what yeah what are the risks of a vulture um sharp pointy feet and deep but she won't she'll invite us as a warning if she does at all okay so we'll just move out the way at last second and we'll go slow and we'll stay together as a group what's the vulture's name ethel oh great name it's a birthday as well um this month and she turns 34 happy birthday ethel that's that's about the age people start doing triathlons all right so today we're in the cliff avery so these are all european species that are at risk of extinction or we're at risk of extinction and today we're checking the northern bald ibis nests who nest in the caves at the back and we're checking to see if

they've laid in the eggs and we're going to take some eggs and dummy them which means put fake eggs underneath them so they don't sit and hatch real eggs oh i see why are we doing that so we're only allowed to breed six chicks this year because our birds have bred so well in the past that they're overrepresented. So there's a lot of our birds genetics in the gene pool of the species in zoos across Europe. So because of our productivity, we've been restricted in what we can breed over the last few years, but this year we've been allowed to breed them, which is nice because we haven't bred them for a good few years. Okay, let's go. Right, we're going to cut across here, and we're going to go behind the tree, and then if she comes down, we're out of her way.

So can you tell me a bit more about the species we're going to check? We're going to check the nests of Norving Bald Ibis, which are these splendid looking birds. So the untrained eye, they're just black, plain birds and everyone calls them ugly. But when you see them in the sun, they're so iridescent there's all the colours of the rainbow in their feathers. They're really beautiful. Oh yeah, and they're sat. Yeah. So there's kind of like a big cave almost. Yeah, so the colony nesters, which means they'll nest in close proximity to one another.

so there's multiple nests in that cave and then you'll get some solitary nesters who are in their own cave but they really don't mind nesting right next to each other and there's bedsets yes so they went extinct in Europe about 700 years ago

and due to reintroduction programs are now back in Europe and North Africa are they dangerous still they're not dangerous well I suppose if you get too close to them they might have a little peck at your eye I have ended up with a beak in the mouth before by accident, which is very unpleasant

because these guys will eat anything. In your mouth? Yeah. By accident, right? I was holding it and I was ringing it at the same time. It was a juvenile, so I was putting a ring on it. And as I was like leaning over to put a ring on it, it was like, it just put its beak in my mouth and then rattled it around on my teeth. Oh, my God.

Yeah, it wasn't nice. There's a mixture of personalities here as well, so some of them will fly away as soon as we go up there and we'll just keep watch from resistance and then others will guard the nest. like really aggressively so sometimes you have to move them out the way to check and that's what as in you just genuinely just push them yeah just push them out of okay yeah and you've got a planet of golf balls here so we use golf balls as their dummy eggs they're fake eggs so they're not very clever so they'll sit on a golf ball think it's think it's their own egg and that way we can manage the population that we breed here at the zoo what you're about to hear is lauren climbing into

a cave and talking to the birds. And listening to this, I can only assume they chose Lauren for this job because of the impeccable manners she shows the animals. Hi. Can I come and check your nest? Are you going to move out my way? Are you going to stay there? I'm going to sneak this way and then you can get past still. I need to check them now, so you do need to move. I'm sorry. Truly, it was like a game of chicken and that is the sound of Lauren winning as the bird flies off. Now that the bird has left its nest,

Lauren needs to check if the eggs have been fertilised. It's like a secondary school sex ed class, but thankfully Lauren's not making me watch a video of a woman giving birth. I'll let you come up this one and we can check that one together. Oh gosh, there's quite a crowd around the habitat right now. I think we're safe from the vulture. He's currently planning his breakfast of schoolchildren. This is a steadier ladder.

You're not scared of heights, are you? No, just unstable. He probably should have asked you that before I got used to come on for you. Do you want to follow me up? Here we go. Lauren told me that it was my turn to climb up the treacherous ladder, avoid the vulture and check on the bold ibis eggs for myself. So we use a process called candling,

which is basically just shining a torch through the shell of the egg and seeing what's inside. What do you see? You see different things at different stages of development so in the early stages you'll start seeing vein growth

so the yolk will go darker and they'll get a really dark patch in the middle of the yolk and then from there there'll be some veins growing all around the internal membrane of the egg the further along in the process it gets the darker the egg will be

so you can tell how far along it is with how dark it is yeah it is quite difficult to see the overall gone over the head you put that over your head yeah take my phone and then hold up the thick end of the egg up against the torch you'll be able to see that the light shines

through it you just have to turn it a few different ways to be able to see it but you can see that the light shines all the way through it and you can see a quite pale yolk so there's no development in the egg yet and then if you want to have a look with that egg as well and see if they're at the same state because I just will usually lay. Oh God, don't trust me. They will usually lay either one a day, if they're faster, but usually one every other day. But they will sometimes start sitting from the first egg, so you will see staggered development in the eggs.

I mean that one looks the same to me but you're the expert Tell me if I'm right Okay so this was a tense moment Lauren gave me all of the equipment She said I'd be able to see something I came out from under the overall And she said with hope in her eyes

Did you see it And I said yes I didn't I saw nothing I don't know I just saw a lot of shell And and I saw nothing But I couldn't tell her that I wanted her to think

I think I'd done it. So I was like, yeah, saw it. And then she went into check. And when I tell you I was praying, I had guessed correctly. Please don't tell Lauren. But no, I saw nothing. Yeah, that looks the same. Yes, I got it right. Okay, this is embarrassing to listen back to you, because it is so clear, I have no idea what's going on. Like, at every turn, I go, please, but you look, do not trust me. I couldn't see a thing. And I could not bring myself to tell her that. And she put me under those overalls by myself, and I was like, I don't know what I'm going to come out and say. I've seen after this. Because I was like, it looks like an egg, like all of the eggs. Yeah, that feels like, you know when you've asked someone to repeat themselves three times and you can't ask again, that's exactly how it felt.

I was like, I've looked at this egg for too long to not come out with an answer now. So I was like, yeah, this is my answer, can't you confirm? And I was relieved when she did. These eggs are still really early in development, which means. that they were either laid today or yesterday and they haven't probably finished sitting yet. And this egg hasn't got anything at all apart from bits of litter. Oh no. Is that what visitors have left? Yeah, so anything that blows up against the net and they'll use their beaks to go through the net and then pull it in. And they're really bad at just picking up any bits of litter.

So really important not to leave anything behind, put it in them in. Exactly. And so what are you going to do with those eggs now? So I'm going to leave those for now. Because they're so fresh, we can leave them for a bit longer so we're going to see how many they lay and then decide how many of that clutch to take so we'll re-check again in a few days and then go from there

and then what do you do with these eggs that you can't confiscate? We will put them in the fridge to chill them so we have to humanely dispose of it so we put it in the fridge for a while and then freeze it and then dispose of it via incineration Lauren surprisingly then headed into the next few caves

without me to finish the egg counting for the day How many did you get from that one? So we got, I took three eggs from Cave 3. One of them had already rolled out the nest. Oh no. And if you touch them, tell me which one you think it would be. This one?

Because it's much colder. Yeah. Yeah. So they haven't been sitting on that one for a while by the feel of it because it's stone cold and the others are really nicely warm. I think they look like mint chocolate chip ice cream. They do look delicious. They're like mini eggs.

The speckles and stuff. Got imagine if mini eggs were that size. Does anyone in the world eat them? Yeah. So actually, one of the reasons why the species is so threatened in the wild is because they're hunted for their meat and for the eggs, especially in the olden days. They used to hunt the juveniles because the meat and their bones were particularly soft.

So they used to eat the whole thing. Oh, my goodness. It was at this point that Ethel ran down the path of the habitat, swooped past our heads, and narrowly avoided serious injury. To us, not her, she was fine. I needed to change my pants. Gosh, she uses that gravel as a bit of a runway, doesn't she? It's like a plane taking off. Does Ethel kind of rule the roost? She likes to think she does, but actually it's a smaller species, the magpies in here that are the most aggressive.

Really? So when they're nesting, you have to wear like baseball cap and carry a stick of you because they'll dive on you. No way. They're probably the most dangerous bird in here because if you look up at the wrong time they could peck your eye out. Well, there we go. She's scared of the vulture the whole time. Despite the size of Ethel's claws. I was going to say Ethel's throwing her weight around though, like a lot. She's really...

Do you ever worry that Ethel's going to like eat other birds' eggs or anything? We've never had an issue with egg eating. Some vultures will and have in the past. But she's really good. It's usually... I mean, yeah, I was going to say she's entering a cave currently. Let's tell her off. Excuse me, that's not yours.

We have an exclusive. There's a robbery happening right now. Have you always wanted to be bird keepers? Bird keepers? Yes. Well, no actually. I did an art degree in wildlife photography. And after I graduated, I had no idea what I wanted to do and it was so difficult to do anything in wildlife photography without having a lot of money. And then I saw the internships at Chester Zoo, so I applied for an internship on the bird team because I did prefer birds in my photography and I thought, I'm going to do a year there and like really get a better understanding of how

birds behave and that's going to really help me of my photography. And I just never left. So, yeah. You're the second person we've met from the internship. And Heather. Oh, Heather was a apprentice. Apprentice of the year. So up to now, there has been another keeper Heather helping us out.

But after the revelation that she was apprentice of the year, and I am currently trying to pass my traineeship, turns out that keeping her off Mike was an oversight on our part. So because she is arguably the best person to speak about how to become Chester Zoo's newest recruit, here's Heather. So you want apprentice of the year? So the first apprenticeship was in 2022 at Chesterisk. So I was one out of ten of the first group of the apprentices.

And I won an apprentice in the year for animal welfare. As a trainee zookeeper, any tips, any advice? I think you've got to go for everything. So every opportunity that comes up, you've got to go for it. Because if you don't, how are you going to learn? And I think in the two years, it is a very short amount of time. You blink, it's gone. you want to make sure that you're doing everything to be the best basically

so I think that is just taking every opportunity as it comes and why did you pick birds? Because birds are so different I think the way that they do their courtships the way that they breed and lay their eggs everything about them is just so different so you're constantly learning with them as well you don't get bored and that is where we'll have to leave it for today From Rhino Pooh to hanging out with vultures in caves,

I'm in need of a drink, a nap, and some serious therapy. If you have enjoyed this roller coaster and want to see some of the incredible things I've been getting up to as well as hearing them, give us a follow over on Instagram and TikTok. We are at trainee zookeeper. I've been Abby Clark, and this has been the most intense episode so far of Zookeeper in Training.

I'll see you next week, and I'll be finding out if I can make it onto the full-time Chester Zoo. team. See you that.