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.

Coating our hands in sticky, thick saliva, the giraffes snatched our acacia leaves excitedly and even nibbled on the haystack seats of the keeper truck. There was energy in the air, something magical about interacting with such a large and elegant animal. At the climax of this exotic trance, I heard a loud “rrrip”, almost at the awkward level of a rip in the pants! All of our heads flashed towards the origin of the sound: who would be the victim of such embarrassment? To our surprise we caught a giraffe sneaking a taste at my blog notes!

It’s one thing to get up close and personal with a giraffe at a zoo, but it’s a whole other world to be feeding it on the back end of a truck and have a munch taken out of your notebook. One of my fellow interns joked, “I wish that could have been MY notebook!” 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.

The giggly experience I had is available to guests of the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park by taking a Photo Caravan tour, and for a good reason. No matter how much I’ve learned about giraffes, nothing has brought me as close to the species as this personal, moving experience. Inside the Park are several donation opportunities, usually sculptures of flamingos or giraffes that guests can feed with money. What persuades people to support wildlife conservation isn’t a random or spur-of-the-moment reaction. Usually, it is after seeing wildlife on television or visiting them at a zoo. But, the greatest way to gather support for conservation is by establishing genuine personal bonds between man and beast.

Natalie, Real World Team

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