Bear Necessities

From primates to pandas, Nicole Meese helps care for many of the National Zoo’s main attractions

By Lisa Suhay

If your little ape starts acting up you might want to use some fuzzy logic and give him a timeout, the tactic employed by professionals to turn wayward primates from King Kong to Curious George, according to animal keeper Nicole Meese ’95.

“Timeouts are the best because they (primates) are focused on interaction and attention just like young children,” Meese said from her office at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., where she has worked since 1998 as a primate keeper. Her duties include everything from cleaning enclosures, to diet preparation and feeding, to enrichment and training.

“I use my background in psychology every single day because we do a lot of behavioral training. Working with the gorillas, particularly, is a lot like teaching toddlers.”

On any given day, Meese works with up to 20 primates, ranging from orangutans and gorillas to lemurs and gibbons. In 2001, she was also given the prime assignment of caring for the zoo’s giant pandas, Tian Tian (male) and Mei Xiang (female), on loan from the Chinese government. Baby made three when Tai Shan, which means “peaceful mountain,” was born on July 9, 2005.

Part of Meese’s job last year was to train Mei Xiang to allow handlers to draw blood and perform sonograms throughout her pregnancy. “She let us do the sonograms right up until the week the baby was born,” Meese said proudly.

She fondly recalls the day she first got to hold Tai Shan, who weighed only 12.7 pounds at his Oct. 12 exam and is now well on his way toward the average adult male weight of 250 pounds. “He was just at the stage where he was beginning to recognize voices and react to you. It was wonderful to be a part of that stage of development.”

Loving the animals she works with and being committed to their care are essential to being a zookeeper, says Meese, who notes that the rewards far outweigh such sacrifices as giving up many weekends and holidays and working outside in all kinds of weather. On the National Zoological Park’s Web site (nationalzoo.si.edu), she relates a particular rewarding experience from her work with primates that occurred a few years ago when she visited the zoo with a friend on her day off.

“I wasn’t wearing my zoo uniform, and I didn’t have any primate food, but as soon as one of the macaques [a type of monkey] saw me, she came running toward the glass. She was lip-smacking (a macaque greeting) the whole way, and sat up against the glass where I was standing. It was a neat feeling to know that she recognized me, just as much as I recognized her.”

When children visiting the zoo ask how they can become professional panda cuddlers, Meese tells them something they don’t expect to hear: “Study psychology.”

Meese’s goal always was to become an animal keeper at a major zoo, and her decision to pursue a B.S. in psychology and minor in biology at Old Dominion, rather than seek a degree elsewhere in zoology, was a calculated one. Her favorite course was Animal Behavior with Peter Mikulka.

“I’m so impressed because my granddaughters watch the panda Web site where every day you can tune in to see the baby panda, and I never knew one of my students was the handler,” the psychology professor said last fall.

Mikulka, who plans to retire this year after more than three decades at ODU, explained that the Animal Behavior course is essentially a survey of the range of behaviors in various species: aggressive, sexual/mating, maternal, foraging, territorial – “all the behaviors we exhibit.”

Asked if she had ever considered using her degree to work with people, Meese replied, “I hate to say it, but I’d rather spend my day with 20 animals than 20 toddlers. Actually, my work is really exhausting and that’s why I don’t have children. I’d be too exhausted by the time I got home at night.”

Having experienced a media blitz surrounding the birth of the baby panda, Meese said she has considered taking some distance learning classes to beef up her education in two areas: public speaking and the mechanics of learning.

“I never expected to have to deal with the press so much,” she admitted. “Public speaking is something I never thought I would have to do. Also, knowing more about how learning works in training and the mechanics of education would be really helpful in my line of work.”
Meese, who has also worked at Norfolk’s Virginia Zoological Park and the Chattanooga Zoo, has no aspirations of becoming a zoo director or making any career move that would take her away from the animals in a one-on-one environment. Even though safety requires a mesh barrier between Meese and her charges (with the exception of Tai Shan), she says she would not make it a day without the contact.

“I really love every second I spend with them. This is exactly what I wanted to do when I grew up.”