Wildlife still fascinates zookeeper after 40 years

Not many people have had a Japanese macaque jump on their heads, but Wally English has.

One of about 60 zookeepers at Woodland Park Zoo, English is celebrating his 40th year on staff, which puts him at Woodland Park — and in the path of many a wild animal — longer than anyone.

Well, almost anyone — there's Gertie, a 43-year-old hippo. "She's the only one on the grounds with more seniority than me," says English, 65.

When he started at the zoo in 1967, you could have mistaken English for Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider," and though his hair these days is wispy and gray-blond, the soft-spoken Seattle native is as fascinated with wildlife as he was at 5 years old. For about a decade, he's assisted with the zoo's pond-turtle conservation effort and taken care of endangered birds.

He's seen his job change as zoos themselves have been transformed from circuslike menageries to conservation-minded environments.

"When I started, it was the ending of an era," he says.

In the 1970s, zoos were beginning to be more sophisticated, designing exhibits with education and animal welfare in mind.

But English remembers the days when donated pizzas were fed to the bears, when animals were grouped by category (for instance, "birds" or "bears") without regard to habitat, when zookeepers would actually wrangle wild goats, cowboy-style, for examination.

Now animals are fed in measured portions, and Woodland Park eschews donations of food. "We use only the best produce," says zoo spokeswoman Gigi Allianic.

Meanwhile, the zookeeper's job has morphed from simple cleaning and feeding to taking part in everything from zoo conservation efforts to exhibit design. English, who helped start Woodland Park's raptor center, proudly notes that he was involved with design of the zoo's African savannah and waterfowl exhibits.

A job transformed

Once seen as menial labor, zookeeper work has become highly desirable — they're jobs that, today, require a college education. (English had only a diploma from Tukwila's Foster High.) Positions that drew 20 applicants in the late 1960s were drawing 500 a decade later.

Not that it's a cakewalk: Only after some years do zookeepers become immune to smells that cause others to flee — though English has to admit that the old primate building was in a league of its own.

Having a Japanese macaque jump on his head was bad enough, but it was an incident at the former Monkey Island (now Lemur Island) that rattled English most. Felix, the island's dominant breeding male chimp with a harem of females, didn't take to his visits, but English always felt safe in his belief that monkeys and apes don't like water.

One day Felix outsmarted English in the island's indoor enclosure, grabbing the water hose before English could get to it, then biting English in the thigh. English surprised Felix with a kick and ran outside, diving into the moat "to escape this monkey who supposedly didn't like water," he recalls. "I got out about 10 feet and looked around, and here comes Felix swimming after me."

Felix was eventually turned back — with the aid of another zookeeper.

A couple of years into the job, English was cleaning the bison yard when he encountered Doc, the yard's most fearsome bull. English placed a wheelbarrow between Doc and himself, as he'd been advised to do, but when Doc pawed the ground and hooked the wheelbarrow out of the way with a horn, English discovered how quickly he could scale an 8-foot wall.

Animal magnetism

Among the animals he recalls most is Kiki, a small gorilla who would elbow English in the thigh if he wasn't watching. And the image of Bobo — the gorilla who opened Seattle's hearts after being captured as a baby, kept as a pet and then donated to the zoo where he lived to age 17 — slinging a big truck tire behind his back like a Frisbee is forever etched in his mind.

Over the years, English has learned to avoid getting too close to the animals. Especially in his first decade, the death of one he'd cared for would bring him to tears. "I think it's tougher for those who work with great apes or elephants," he says. "There's a greater tendency to feel a sense of closeness with another mammal than, say, a reptile."

Sometimes, the mammals get a little too close — like that Japanese macaque. Around 1970, English was in the old primate house, cleaning up after a pair of the red-faced primates. It was before the zoo had the barriers now in use.

The male macaque threatened, and English kept an eye on him as he worked. Then, out of nowhere, 12 pounds of muscle and fur landed on his head, biting until the surprised keeper shook off the female macaque. He escaped with minor injuries. "Everyone expects the males to do the attacking," he says.

English plans to stick around at least another year. "It's the greatest job in the world, to be able to come to a 92-acre park every day and work with exotic wildlife," he says. "They accept you for who you are and how you care for them."

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com