Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 every year. In San Diego, there is a large gathering of people in Balboa Park (where the San Diego Zoo is located) to learn about the Earth and its state of balance. The Zoo gets pretty busy on this occasion as well, so you can imagine that our animal shows are well attended. What better time for Sven to recycle (read Maureen’s previous blog, Sven Olof, Conservation Star) than to an audience already primed for conservation? The only glitch was the fact that Sven had not practiced his recycling skills during my 10-day vacation. Knowing that this might be a problem, I started Sven’s music early and began to dance with him–shuffling my feet, moon walking, flapping my arms–whatever it took to get our dog “charged” for his show spot. He loved it, barked happily, and I sent him out for his solo spot before the show.

The people in the audience clapped so loudly after he dropped the first item in the can that he looked up at them and stared for a while; they laughed and he went on to grab another piece of trash. I must have placed this piece too far from the can or too close to the grass pit because our beautiful white dog became distracted, carried his piece of trash off in the wrong direction, dropped it, and began to mark his territory. The audience loves it when any show critter takes a turn all on their own and runs amuck. I called for Sven several times, but the audience was laughing so loudly that I don’t think he could hear me. After he marked his territory, he ran over to the moat in the front of the stage area and took a drink of water, apparently completely forgetting that he was doing a show or that he had three more pieces of trash to put into the bin and one of those pieces was now halfway across the stage.

Finally, he heard my call and, wagging his tail, he ran to me. I danced a little and sent him back out to finish the job he had started. Again, when his next piece hit the can the audience broke out in a thunder of applause; again he looked up at them like, “What is the deal here?” Thankfully this time it didn’t cause him to wander and he picked up the third piece and dropped it into the can. But we still had the missing piece of trash to go and I knew the audience was sitting on pins and needles waiting to see how Mr. Sven Olof was going to complete this task. Because he didn’t start walking to the lost piece, I called him off a second time and then sent him out a third time, but he still didn’t head over to the lost piece; instead, he ran over to a stump and sat down! So I came out from behind the wings and walked over to the missing piece and called him over, pointing to it. He, of course, wagged his tail, grabbed the trash, and…did not put it into the bin! No, he jumped up onto the spool in the middle of the stage and started tearing it apart into tiny pieces, all to the audience’s amusement. I, too, was laughing but said, “recycle” in the sweetest voice. He jumped off the spool and dropped the trash into the bin. Sven and I earned our penny for Earth Day!

Maureen O. Duryee is an animal trainer at the San Diego Zoo’s Hunte Amphitheater.

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