I've had a fascination for animals as long as I can remember, but growing
up in New York City didn't offer me the opportunity to observe much
wildlife--aside from the occasional stray cat or dog. I had to satiate my
appetite for animals through Wild America, Wild Kingdom and Nature
specials. My mother liked cats, and we had a few over a period of time,
but my brother's allergy to dander, made their stays short. After a
girlscout field trip to the pet store, I became almost obsessed with having
a pet white mouse. My mother's response was that of a typical
mother--adverse to rodents. However, finally she caved in and allowed me
to get a teddy bear hamster. That one soon became thirteen as Buffy had a
litter of twelve five days after we brought her home. After three hamsters
I graduated to birds and got a pair of noisy messy parakeets in high
school. I was glad to leave them behind when I departed for college.
My first three years at University were pretty normal. I ocassionally
visited the Buffalo Zoo, the museum, and then started making weekly
pilgrimages to various pet stores in the area. I was hooked the first time
I held a ball python. Feeling it's muscles constrict while I held it and
feeling the power of that snake broke any barrier I might have previously
had against reptiles, and I knew that I wanted one. However, I let the
unfounded fears and general antipathy of society towards reptiles dissuade
me from purchasing a snake and decided to get a Ferret instead. Ferrets
were much more acceptable and popular pets for college students and Kethem
was my companion for the next five years.Nevertheless, once I have an idea, it's not so easily forgotten and two years after I got Kethem, my family increased by one, Kaa, the Columbian boa constrictor. At about the same time, I was student teaching at City Honors School and my cooperating teacher had a tarantula, two rough green snakes and a turtle in his classroom. Every morning I watched the students interact with those animals, and started using my animals to enhance academic courses that I was instructing in after school programs. Mr. Geelan told me about the reaactions his first students had to his six-foot boa and encouraged my to hold his tarantula-another barrier was broken down. It was then that I decided that when I officially became a teacher, I would have animals in my classroom. After all, how can one teach Biology "the study of life" when everything they're using is either dead or depicted in a book.
The first few months after I moved to Georgia were a lonely time for me, and although Kethem was at my heels when I moved and curled up on my pillow at night, it was too quiet in my apartment. So I decided I wanted a talking bird to fill the silence, then came Klyde my African Ringneck. Now, sometimes I wish he would just shut up After Klyde, I cannot remember the order of the animals. Students would bring me strays they found or I would find something exotic that I had to have in my class. Students started calling my classroom a "zoo" and I figured why not, after all zoology is a discipline of biology. Finally, the spark that prompted the explosion came after I attended a conference of Georgia Sceince Teachers. There were two teachers in Macon, GA that had implemented animals and a "Zooquarium" into an after school science club, that's when I decided to make my animals a formal part of my classroom and the ZOOARY was born.
Since then it has snowballed and both my students and I have presented the Zooary to a variety people. The zoo is always evolving and growing and even has its own WebPage, I don't know what's next. Meanwhile, I have fully indulged my fascination with animals by taking weekly exploratory hikes in Georgia wilderness, volunteering as a docent at Zoo Atlanta, and presently volunteering as a Naturalist at the Chattahoochee Nature Center. I hope to one day earn my PhD in Zoology, but might have to wait a little longer for that piece to fall in place.