Bring ’em Back Alive 375 The Zookeeper’s Secret (2018) is the title Jeffery Thompson and J. Stuart Bunderson chose for their book about finding fulfillment in one’s career because of all the employed people they interviewed, zookeepers were among the happiest. Passionate about their work despite being underpaid and often unappreciated, zookeepers, from German Carl Hagenbeck (1909) in Beasts and Men to Australian Terry Boylan (2011) in The Keepers and the Kept, have written popular memoirs about the animals under their care. Their observations range from humorous descriptions and emotional attachment, to collecting scientific data and coping with emergencies, as well practical, often maternal, routines of attending to animal welfare.1 Zookeepers’ work encourages them to be contemplative about evolution, ecology, destruction of the environment, and what humans have to learn from animals. William Hornaday, the first director of the New York (Bronx) Zoo (1896-1926), alarmed at the precipitous disappearance of the American bison that once numbered in the millions, brought a few to his new zoo. There he not only established a breeding population, but returned the offspring to the wild in 1907, initiating the world’s first captive breeding and reintroduction program.2 Equally popular at the turn of the twentieth century, and often with the same audience, were narratives about big game hunting— outdoor adventure stories of going into the wild, stalking and killing a variety of dangerous or rare animals for the thrill, and returning in the name of science with trophies to deposit in natural history museums. European and American big game hunters wrote, and were written about, as exciting adventure seekers in Africa and Asia, creating a new hero paradigm. H. Rider Haggard’s Allan 1 Zookeeper’s anecdotes about their intimate relations with animals are now replicated in online videos about rescued animals that watched by millions of people. 2 Nigel Rothfels (2019: 57) points out that Hornaday, like many early American zookeepers, was also a hunter.
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