Zoo InternQuest is a career exploration program for high school students. For more information see the Zoo InternQuest Journals. For more photos see the Zoo InternQuest Photo Journal.

Lasts are always a drag; it usually means the end of something great. Although we will all miss this session of Zoo InternQuest, our last day was great. We spent it with Kristi Bruce, one of the bird keepers at the Zoo. Ms. Bruce, a native of Santa Barbara, has traveled to bigger and better places where she gained a load of experience towards her career.

Ms. Bruce’s long list of experiences started in Santa Barbara where she shadowed the lead trainer at a local aquarium. Then she went to Scotland, which was her first actual internship. She also worked for the Bronx Zoo, which included yet another internship. Later she studied elephant behavior: the grunts, the bellows, and the fights. She volunteered to look for frogs and wolves in Minnesota, and worked for Disney’s Animal Kingdom as a keeper for some of their animals. Now for almost two years, she’s at the World-Famous San Diego Zoo.

Feeding birds, surprisingly, is more complicated than you would think. Ms. Bruce trained the birds to come to a certain spot in their habitat to be fed. That way the wild native birds don’t steal the food. Now Ms. Bruce is training Amelia Suarez to take over her position so she can use the combined skills she has acquired toward her new position in the interpretive division of the San Diego Zoo’s Marketing Department.

P.S. None of the “fat singing birds” at the San Diego Zoo are fat. Just happy and healthy.

Dana, Careers Team

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