Hello, citizens, and welcome to the sarcastic portion of the Arkansas Discovery Network’s weekly blog posts. My name is Nichole Ashley, and I am the Museum of Discovery’s Animal Care person.
This basically means that I am paid to play with animals (Ha ha!), as well as take care of all of their daily needs such as cleaning, feeding, watering, chauffeuring, administering daily backrubs to, and cooing over all of the nearly one hundred and twenty members of our in-house animal community.
I would like to tell you that the thing I love most about working here is helping the children; however, you and I both know that is a lie. You see, reader, I have a tragic and chronic allergy to children; large groups of them have been known to break me out in a serious case of hives and after a certain amount of exposure I must retreat to my lair to recover.
No, we both know that the best part of my job is, of course, the animals; and not because animals are easy to deal with or because I love all living creatures (I do not), but because they don’t care if my dancing is terrible or if I belt out random lines from songs that I can never entirely remember. It doesn’t matter to them if I’m not wearing makeup or if my socks are two completely different colors, patterns, and lengths; and it doesn’t matter to me if their combined smell makes peoples’ eyes water.
And you know what? If certain someones (chinchillas, I’m talking to you!) immediately tip over their food bowls as soon as I put them in their cages or even if certain birds whom shall not be named (*cough* Eli *cough*) screech at all hours of the day or any time I am on the phone with someone important, it doesn’t matter because I love them anyway, and I can tolerate that they are tiring, smelly, and loud, and I know that they’ve really no choice but to tolerate me because I feed them.
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