shoulders, the tamarins were among the most striking creatures at Lowry Park. Weighing less than two pounds each, Kevin and Candy did in fact look like miniature lions. If they could have growled, they would have been doing so right now, because they were in the middle of a heated argument with Lee Ann Rottman. The best they could do was glare at her.
“You see ’em?” said Lee Ann, shaking her head as she pointed them out.
The curator and the defiant monkeys were facing off inside the zoo’s free flight aviary. Knowing how much the public loves tamarins, Lowry Park had long kept a pair of them inside the giant screened enclosure along with the emerald starlings and the masked lapwings and all the other birds. In their native forests of Brazil, tamarins lived in the canopy and nested inside holes in the tree trunks; at Lowry Park they roamed through the oaks of the aviary and slept in a camouflaged Igloo cooler that hung high among the branches. For years, another pair of tamarins had lived in peaceful coexistence with the birds and the human visitors, but recently they had grown too old and the staff had replaced them with Kevin and Candy. The two newcomers had become a headache, because they had chosen to spend their days on a branch that hung too close to the sidewalk that led guests through the trees. Much smaller than the average housecat, the tamarins were relatively harmless. But their teeth were sharp and they had been known to bite when their keepers approached to feed them crickets or fruit. The zoo had posted a sign warning not to touch the monkeys, but they were too cute to resist and too feisty to be trusted. Sooner or later, somebody was likely to get a hand chomped.
The keepers had tried everything they could think of to make Kevin and Candy abandon the low-hanging branch and choose another perch farther from the sidewalk. They had even collected some of Eric the tiger’s urine from his den and used it to spray the area, hoping the pungent menace of his scent would intimidate the monkeys. No luck. Nothing seemed to scare them, even the two boat-billed herons who grew agitated one day when Kevin and Candy wandered too close to the large birds’ nest.
“They were clacking at them,” said Lee Ann. “The tamarins didn’t care.”
Candy, the female, was especially territorial. She didn’t like taking orders from other species, no matter how much they dwarfed her. Whenever the keepers drew near, she retaliated with angry chatter. She was doing it now to the acting curator.
“She’s a little bitchy,” said Lee Ann.
Obviously Kevin and Candy were not destined to be permanent residents of the aviary. The staff would have to move them back to their previous home, a smaller enclosure with other tamarins and marmosets in Primate World. It was just one more task for Lee Ann’s never-ending to-do list. She was the ultimate troubleshooter, constantly dealing with the neuroses and complaints and quirks and insecurities and problems of multiple species. If a baby chimp was forsaken by its birth mother, Lee Ann found it a surrogate. If one of the Sarus cranes lost its appetite or a kangaroo suffered a miscarriage, she needed to know why. If an orangutan hurled her droppings at a bank president or the Bactrian camels humped again in front of the second-grade field trip, she heard about it. If one of her keepers was going through a divorce or couldn’t take another day of beak-pecking from the emus, typically they ended up crying in her office. Sometimes the humans acted like animals—not necessarily a bad thing in her view—and sometimes the animals behaved like complicated humans. All of it was her problem.
In a zoo, where dominance is often maintained through physical size and brute force, Lee Ann was a remarkably small and delicate alpha. Five feet tall, with a slight build and a natural shyness, she appeared almost frail. In reality, she possessed reserves of strength and resilience that had sustained
“You see ’em?” said Lee Ann, shaking her head as she pointed them out.
The curator and the defiant monkeys were facing off inside the zoo’s free flight aviary. Knowing how much the public loves tamarins, Lowry Park had long kept a pair of them inside the giant screened enclosure along with the emerald starlings and the masked lapwings and all the other birds. In their native forests of Brazil, tamarins lived in the canopy and nested inside holes in the tree trunks; at Lowry Park they roamed through the oaks of the aviary and slept in a camouflaged Igloo cooler that hung high among the branches. For years, another pair of tamarins had lived in peaceful coexistence with the birds and the human visitors, but recently they had grown too old and the staff had replaced them with Kevin and Candy. The two newcomers had become a headache, because they had chosen to spend their days on a branch that hung too close to the sidewalk that led guests through the trees. Much smaller than the average housecat, the tamarins were relatively harmless. But their teeth were sharp and they had been known to bite when their keepers approached to feed them crickets or fruit. The zoo had posted a sign warning not to touch the monkeys, but they were too cute to resist and too feisty to be trusted. Sooner or later, somebody was likely to get a hand chomped.
The keepers had tried everything they could think of to make Kevin and Candy abandon the low-hanging branch and choose another perch farther from the sidewalk. They had even collected some of Eric the tiger’s urine from his den and used it to spray the area, hoping the pungent menace of his scent would intimidate the monkeys. No luck. Nothing seemed to scare them, even the two boat-billed herons who grew agitated one day when Kevin and Candy wandered too close to the large birds’ nest.
“They were clacking at them,” said Lee Ann. “The tamarins didn’t care.”
Candy, the female, was especially territorial. She didn’t like taking orders from other species, no matter how much they dwarfed her. Whenever the keepers drew near, she retaliated with angry chatter. She was doing it now to the acting curator.
“She’s a little bitchy,” said Lee Ann.
Obviously Kevin and Candy were not destined to be permanent residents of the aviary. The staff would have to move them back to their previous home, a smaller enclosure with other tamarins and marmosets in Primate World. It was just one more task for Lee Ann’s never-ending to-do list. She was the ultimate troubleshooter, constantly dealing with the neuroses and complaints and quirks and insecurities and problems of multiple species. If a baby chimp was forsaken by its birth mother, Lee Ann found it a surrogate. If one of the Sarus cranes lost its appetite or a kangaroo suffered a miscarriage, she needed to know why. If an orangutan hurled her droppings at a bank president or the Bactrian camels humped again in front of the second-grade field trip, she heard about it. If one of her keepers was going through a divorce or couldn’t take another day of beak-pecking from the emus, typically they ended up crying in her office. Sometimes the humans acted like animals—not necessarily a bad thing in her view—and sometimes the animals behaved like complicated humans. All of it was her problem.
In a zoo, where dominance is often maintained through physical size and brute force, Lee Ann was a remarkably small and delicate alpha. Five feet tall, with a slight build and a natural shyness, she appeared almost frail. In reality, she possessed reserves of strength and resilience that had sustained
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