If there’s one thing that Kristin Grove is good at, it’s addressing the elephant in the room.
Born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Grove went to college at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and majored in animal sciences.
“The summer of my sophomore year, I interned at a place called Riddles Elephant Sanctuary in Guy, Arkansas, where I spent my summer cleaning up after and caring for 13 elephants, and I loved it,” Grove said. “After college, I worked at a small zoo near my hometown. I saw that Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus had an internship at their facility in Florida, so I spent three months there learning to care for elephants. I ended up going on the road with Ringling for a year, traveling and taking care of their elephants and horses. After that, I came to Little Rock Zoo to care for the elephants here. I’ve worked here for 11 years and worked my way up to Elephant Manager, where I oversee all of the care for our three elderly elephants.”
Grove starts her day at 7:30 in the morning, checking on all of the animals at the Little Rock Zoo before heading to the elephant barn to do a lot of cleaning.
“We clean up close to 1,000 lbs. worth of elephant feces every morning. We then exercise the elephants, which includes walking them out in their habitat and performing different strength and stretching exercises. It’s very important to keep older arthritic animals moving. We then bathe them and give them breakfast. While they eat, we set up their habitat for them to be outside on exhibit the rest of the day,” Grove said. “Once they are out, we hose the barn and work on any extra projects that may need to be done. Late afternoon, we bring the elephants back inside so we can clean their habitat and get them and give them their evening hay. The elephants then have access back to their habitat and can choose to spend their evening outside or inside.”
Grove shared some of the skills needed to work with such big animals.
“To work with elephants, you definitely need a very strong work ethic. It’s a lot of heavy lifting and dirty work, which requires you to be outside in all kinds of weather and temperatures. We work holidays and often come in on our days off to cover for someone else who might be off. We come in early and stay late if we have medical procedures or events at the zoo,” Grove said.
Grove emphasized that when caring for such complex animals, thorough and open communication and patience are key.
“Communication is also very important. We have a team of five people and always need to be able to stay in the loop with what is going on. Patience is also important. You are working with animals, not machines. They have brains and are very intelligent. Sometimes they choose not to cooperate, so we are always having to find ways to stay one step ahead of them, which is no easy task,” Grove said.
Sadly, even a job as colorful as this one comes with very difficult challenges.
“Losing an animal is the worst part about this job,” Grove said. “You develop such strong relationships with them that they become family. I see the elephants more than my own family. Little Rock only takes in older female Asian elephants that just need a place to go. We know that these older animals are going to come in with health issues. It comes with aging. We manage any health issues and keep the animals as comfortable as we can. We know they are coming to us in their golden years, so our time with them is sometimes limited, but it doesn’t make it any easier knowing this.”
Fortunately, Grove has had some major successes in her career, which she shared with AMP.
“Elephants are very intelligent, and they all have different personalities. To train with an elephant, you really have to gain its trust and develop a relationship with it. Any new thing that I train an elephant to do, I consider a success because it means that they trusted me, and I was able to communicate to them exactly what I wanted from them,” Grove said. “This makes any health care that we have to do with them less stressful when they can just participate in their own health care.”
Grove offered a word of advice to anyone considering a future in zoo-keeping or elephant care.
“My advice to anyone coming into this field is to work hard. You have to have a college degree and some work experience. In order to get this work experience, people often do internships that are mostly unpaid. There aren’t a lot of zoos either, so you have to be willing to move to get your first full-time position. It’s a lot of work for very little pay, so you really have to have a passion for the work,” Grove said.
Lastly, Grove shared some of the life lessons that she has learned throughout her career as an elephant manager.
“I’ve learned a lot in my career. I’ve learned to be patient, have a really strong work ethic and have developed better communication skills. I used to be really shy and didn’t always engage with people I didn’t know. But this job has really helped me to overcome that. I love talking to guests about the animals and my passion. I could talk all day about elephants if someone were willing to listen. I recently just had my first child, and I truly believe that working with animals has helped me develop the skills I needed for motherhood,” Grove said.
READ ALSO: A DAY IN THE LIFE: LAUREN ALEXANDER, ANIMAL CHIROPRACTOR
