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Religious Studies Grad Turns Zookeeper
By Ellen Lindquist
Orangutan Photo By Charlotte Jones
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The interview below, conducted by Alum Chat intern Peter Peters, is the last in
our series, "What Happened to Them? Whither Kakawoolah State Alums?" Peters
interviews Edna Glouchester, class of '96, who parlayed her religious studies
degree into a career taking care of an orangutan at the San Diego Zoo.
Chat: So, tell me about the job with the orangutan.
E.G.: Well, basically all I have to do is feed him several times a day: some
bananas, mixed greens and grain, ground-up vitamins, plantains, that sort of
thing. Oh, and I also clean out his cage.
Chat: Did your degree in religious studies prepare you for this position?
E.G.: I would say, yes, it did. It taught me to think, basically—you know, in
a linear, as well as a non-linear fashion. That's important when dealing with an
orangutan.
Did you know it's not that uncommon for Kakawoolah religious studies grads to
work with orangutans, or at least with zoos, that is. There's Jeffrey
Schmoozicker, class of '97, who's with the Philadelphia Zoo, and Zorna Ratflag,
class of '98 who's with the San Francisco Zoo, in the herpetology division.
Chat: So you'd say a lot of Kakawoolah religious studies grads have
ended up at the zoo.
E.G.: Yes, a fair number. The classes come in handy when it's dawn and you're
walking out to the cage carrying a flashlight, about to face a beast that's much
stronger than yourself, what we refer to in religious studies as "the
Other." You feel like you're waiting for something, some kind of epiphany,
a message from God, maybe. Then you hear the bellowing of the animal that's
waiting to be fed.
Chat: I'm not sure I follow.
E.G.: We don't know, do we, exactly who we are. Are our animal natures really
all we possess and the rest, well, just the weak beam of a flashlight in the
dark? All of this is neatly summed up in Nelson's contradictions and
complexities.
Chat: You see Nelson as some sort of noble savage, a contemporary "naïf,"
as it were?
E.G.: Who knows. After about 1,000 more years of evolution, maybe Nelson's
descendants will be feeding us.
Chat: Nelson's progeny will be pondering the meaning of it all?
E.G.: I think Nelson probably does now, in his own way. Only to him it's
probably more like: The woman with the plantains, what does she symbolize?
Chat: After you got your degree in religious studies, did you plan on becoming a
zookeeper?
E.G.: Oh, no, though I always did do a fair amount of hanging around at pet
shops. But I was never interested in the really large animals, just the small
ones—the finches, the goldfish. A pet shop owner told me I seemed to have a
certain rapport with them. The puppies would immediately stop whining as soon as
I walked into the shop.
My big break came when a pet store owner got me a job writing leaflets for the
zoo. I wrote up a little summary about Nelson. Nelson's keeper called me and
said I'd summarized beautifully what Nelson was all about. They asked me to feed
Nelson, and one thing led to another.
Chat: So serendipity played a role in your taking on this orangutan.
E.G.: I would say it definitely did.
Chat: It seems like you have a special bond with Nelson. How did it develop?
E.G.: I suppose it was after I began confiding in Nelson—telling him some of
my darkest fears for the well-being of the academy. I told him how
postmodernism has ravaged the university system. I knew that Nelson understood
completely. I heard him howling. I think it was his way of sharing his pervasive
nervousness, his opposition to the deconstructive attacks on canonical works. I
knew he longed to depart from reflexivity,
heteroglossia, linguistic play and rhetorical self-consciousness. We talk a lot
about humans having body language, don't we? Well, by his posture, I could tell
that poststructuralism has had an enormous impact upon Nelson.
Chat: I imagine orangutans pose challenges at times. Does any particular moment
with Nelson stand out?
E.G.: Yes, there was a moment when I had to call on my gestalt reserves. One
afternoon there was some trouble with the zoo's water supply and it was time to
bring Nelson his usual tub of liquid. My assistant, Freddy, said we should give
him a couple of jugs of apple cider we had left over in the refrigerator. Freddy
ran and got the cider and poured it into Nelson's barrel. You know how events
can collide in a synchronous manner? Freddy
distracted me and I accidentally left the gate open, and Nelson, having drank a
long draught of the cider—which we quickly realized was alcoholic—started
through the gate, then he gazed upon me—with voluminous eyes that seemed to
contain the entire universe—and arms waving, ran and seized me around the
waist and pressed me tightly against him. He began making these outrageous
sounds, as if he were bellowing out a Cole Porter tune or two. He placed one paw
firmly on my waist and took my hand in
the other and actually began dancing, all the while staring into my eyes. Just
then luckily—er, fortuitously, I mean—a little child dropped her gorilla
doll over the side of the wall and Nelson let me go to retrieve it. That is,
after gazing deeply into my eyes one last time.
Chat: Being held by Nelson, was that a formative experience?
E.G.: Indeed, it was. Like being in the arms of an "uber-orangutan."
Merton might have seen it as the universe having seized me in its grasp. I
suddenly understood my days as a religious studies major, my experiences at the
pet shop—they all came together in one realization that…. Well, it's hard to
put into words, but let's just say Nelson brought me into the realm of the
ineffable.
Chat: Do you have anything else to say to the Kakawoolah alums?
E.G.: Yes, tell them love knows no species boundaries.
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Ellen Lindquist was recently invited to submit
poetic texts to the 2004 London Art Biennial. To read an online interview with
her, go to: http://www.midnightmind.com/stuff/lindquistquestions.htm
Charlotte Jones took this picture one day while
she was hanging out at the Houston Zoo. The fact that the subject resembles members
of her family is entirely coincidental.
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