My day as a zookeeper: A is for Aardvark

When I discovered that I had been given a 'Keeper for a Day' experience for Christmas, I was presented with a dilemma. Which of the three programmes should I choose? Scheme A had tigers, giant anteaters and inferior African elephants - clearly second best to placid, patient Indian elephants. But I'm not fussed about sun bears and wolves, so I rejected that. Scheme C had penguins and sea lions, but also had chimpanzees, and I've never really been keen on them. And so, it was Scheme B...

And so, bright and early this morning, I left our cottage in the mid-Suffolk countryside and headed for Colchester, one of the country's top zoos, for my day as a zookeeper... But, rather than retell the day in chronological order, I'll tell of my day in alphabetical order.

And here are my new friends, photographed by me inside their enclosure. Adela, the male, is the one lying on his back with his stomach in the air. So placid are they that he was quite content for me to rub his tummy, examine his claws (much bigger than you might think) and rub his ears.

And why let sleeping aardvarks lie?

Aardvarks grow to full size pretty quickly, and Zafira, the middle one in the picture, is only sixteen months old. She decided that my finger might be worth sucking in case it might produce milk (it doesn't, I'm afraid) but took a firm grasp with her tongue. The aardvark snout is surprisingly soft though...

However, there are more aardvarks, thanks to Adela and his partner Oq. Colchester Zoo has the most successful breeding program for aardvarks in the country and, indeed, worldwide, and Oq was in the birthing chamber with the latest addition, still to be named or, for that matter, sexed. I was taken behind the scenes to meet the baby and Oq, as baby aardvarks are quite vulnerable until they've put on a bit of weight. It already weighs over 5 kg, so the keepers hope that it can be introduced to the family group fairly soon.

A baby aardvark at the end of a hard day growing

Curiously, aardvarks don't seem to be very popular with the zoo-going public, which is odd, because you don't often see them in zoos, and whilst even their mothers would struggle to describe them as pretty, they do have a certain charm. I guess the fact that they're nocturnal, rather dull in colour and lacking in excitement, may be the cause, but I rather fell under their spell today. And I dare anyone not to want to pick up a baby aardvark...

Tomorrow, something beginning with B, and something beginning with G...