Keeping up with the animals at Cosley Zoo

Big Ray has a weak spot for veggies.

Show him a little corn and he'll be happy to let you shine a flashlight in his big, brown, dreamy eyes.

He might even let you touch his face if you dangle a green pepper in front of it.

Zeroing in on the right motivation is all part of Lauren McMenamin's job, along with cleaning up after Ray, a llama, and his pals at Cosley Zoo in Wheaton.

"So many people think being a zookeeper's cool, but a lot of people wrongly assess what the job is," said Sue Wahlgren, Cosley's manager.

In fact, keepers need to have a bachelor's degree, if not a master's, in a related field and participate in research, as well as training, with their charges.

"It's not just scooping poop," Wahlgren said.

McMenamin epitomizes the new crop of zookeepers moving into the field, she said.

They're well-educated, love animals and take public education seriously.

McMenamin was a student without a major at Illinois State University when she decided to volunteer her time at Miller Park Zoo. The die was cast: she was destined to spend her life around critters.

"It is truly a job of love. But loving animals isn't enough, you've got to do all the work that goes with it, which means talking to the public," Wahlgren said.

Indeed, McMenamin's duties vary greatly.

She starts her morning feeding animals housed in the barn, letting them out in their pens and cleaning their stalls from the previous night. She then heads over for one of two daily training sessions for the three animals she works with: a llama, raccoon and fox.

Training animals for tasks that might be required of them during a veterinary visit is a job almost worthy of combat pay. Think teeth, claws and beaks.

Working with positive reinforcement, or food, though, McMenamin, 24, said she's able to shape the behaviors she wants repeated over time - like letting a llama have a flashlight shined in its eye.

It just takes a little finesse and understanding. The raccoon, for instance, will do almost anything for a strawberry.

Much of her job, when she's not cleaning or taking care of tasks like installing heat lamps for winter, involves simply observing and getting to know the animals. To determine if something's ever wrong, keepers must understand what's normal, she said.

And when all of her assigned duties are done, McMenamin is free to take a stroll over to the raptor building. People might think simply being a zookeeper is cool, but this one thinks the best part of her job is hanging out with birds of prey.

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