Inviting Vampires to Lunch

"We have a winner!" I have won many a corporate retreat ice breaker challenge where they ask you to name the most interesting job you have ever held. Mine always has the utterly unique factor that not just breaks the ice but completely shatters it.

The longing of my soul during my teens was to be a veterinarian. To work towards that goal, I was able to volunteer at a large zoo. The summer program would give me experience with animals that I could include on my college application. Plus, it was just a pretty damned cool opportunity for a wanna be vet.

I was lucky enough to work in the newly opened Nocturnal House, which included many marsupials and night creatures that most people have never heard of let alone seen. Many of the animals ate a wide variety of fruits. My job on day one was to prepare their food made up of enormous wooden troughs overflowing with fruit salad. Crates of papayas, guavas, melons, mangos, watermelons, and grapes were delivered early in the morning and waiting there for me to cut up and distribute for their mid-day meal. I was shown which animals were partial to certain fruits, what sizes to cut the fruit, and how to wash it to keep the animals safe from chemicals. The light cycle had been reversed for these nocturnal creatures; our day was their night so zoo guests could observe them when they were awake and catching a snack. The first day on food detail was going great!

They showed me where to place the troughs of fruit. Most of the animals were not aggressive to people, so I could walk into their grottos without concern of being bitten, I just needed to make sure they did not escape. There were 12 grottos varying in size and focus. Some only contained Australian marsupials, one grotto was devoted to fruit bats (also known as flying foxes), while others contained nocturnal species from Africa and North America.

As I was being shown how to feed the sugar gliders (a palm-sized marsupial that can glide through trees) I heard screams out near the grottos where the public walked through the displays. The head keeper started to giggle and noticed my concern.

"It's the vampire grotto." She stated with a huge grin.

"As in vampire bats?" I inquired.

"You better believe it! We have one of the few displays in America." Another group of screams. "Hilltop Elementary has their zoo field day today. Lots of screamers. You wanna feed them tomorrow?"

"Uh, yes?" I tried to sound confident.

The next day, I came psyched to feed vampires. Having no exposure to vampire bats, I assumed they would be fed blood, perhaps from a sponge, or some way they could bite and suck the blood thru their teeth---just like Dracula. I was very wrong. I was informed by the keeper that vampire bats do not suck blood, they lap it up. They usually make a small bite on a farm animal, allow the blood to ooze out of the wound, and then lap it up and proceed to the next victim. They are not big, around the size of some insect eating bats, so the animals they bite usually are unaware that they are dinner. OK, so now I knew how they fed, how the heck would we get a live animal to be a guest for dinner?

As I was trying to figure out how to prepare lunch for these hairy little mammals, there was a buzz at the door. Two other keepers were let in carrying an empty bucket, a wire grate and one full lid-covered bucket.

"Fresh off the truck!" They set the buckets in the middle of the floor, and placed the grate over the top of the empty one. They opened the lid of the other bucket and started pouring the contents through the grate. It was a bucket of blood!

The keepers seemed oblivious to the fact that they were wrist deep in warm blood. "We have to get fresh pig blood from the slaughterhouse, get it here quickly before it cools off and coagulates." The blood was being poured through the grate to catch any clots that had formed. Once those were removed the still warm blood was spooned into small petri dishes.

"Come with me," the keeper had three petri dishes on a tray heading towards the hallway that led to the back doors of the grottos. “Let’s invite some vampires to lunch!” She was almost gleeful. Everybody should love their job so much.

"You have to do this part quickly. You don't want them to get out and you don't want them to touch your skin. We wear these long gloves to protect our arms, but they are cumbersome." The keeper was very relaxed and confident.

Rats had always made me nervous causing me to do the panic dance if I knew they were creeping around me. Bats are frequently described as rats with wings, though I felt they were cuter than rats. I needed to hold it together, my anxiety would make the bats nervous, and I did not need to make them panic. Vampire bats are small, only about 3.5 inches and weighing 2 ounces, which allows them to be quick flyers and able to get into small spaces. Vampire bats are the only mammals whose sole diet is blood; I just did not want it to be my blood!

She told me to observe what she did from the viewing side of the grotto which had a large window. The keeper slowly opened the grotto door and leaned in. All of the bats hung on the ceiling of the small cave-like grotto. There were about 15 adult bats and four or five babies that I could see from the public side of the viewing window. The bats were squirming and flapping a bit as they hung upside down just waking up. She quickly set the petri dishes on the floor of the grotto and closed the door. The bats flew down to the floor, awkwardly crawled to the dishes and in a surprisingly orderly fashion they started lapping up the ruby colored blood. This was a close simulation to what they would do in the wild, crawling up to a horse or cow while they dozed and bit their leg, releasing an anticoagulant in their saliva allowing the blood to flow while they lapped it up with their tongue.

As the summer rolled on, I mastered and even enjoyed the task of blooding the bats. For some reason it was satisfying to know that this little mammal was entrusted to my care and that my blood preparation was acceptable to them in helping them thrive, though many are repulsed or fearful of these furry flyers. I found all of the keepers had a strong sense of dedication to their mission of protecting the future of the animals under their care, regardless of their popularity with the public. That sense of dedication was something I took from this amazing experience.

The rest of the summer was an absolute joy of learning about various types of animals and having many unique experiences; from blooding the bats to feeding hippos watermelons. My last day was bittersweet as I headed off to college. Hearing a chorus of screams coming from the direction of the vampire grotto was a loud and fond farewell as I walked out the door.