Photograph by Mike DeFilippo
Timoteo (Timothy in Spanish) is getting frisky—and it’s not with his girlfriend, Chica. The molting Humboldt penguin and new father eyes a small fish in the hand of keeper Reneé Van Deven. He makes his move.
Van Deven is ready. She spins around, silver bucket of fish in hand, and carefully grabs him by the neck, sitting him down several feet away. After another failed attempt, the penguin waddles away. “Dad’s very aggressive right now,” Van Deven says with a smile, emerging from the exhibit several minutes later.
After working at the Zoo for nearly a decade—even before the opening of the popular Penguin & Puffin Coast (an especially cool place to be this month)—the 32-year-old St. Louisan knows the birds well. She can rattle off their numbers without hesitation: 22 Humboldts, 20 Gentoos, 16 horned puffins…
In Her Words…
- Most of them have names. For those who don’t, the perfect name just hasn’t come along yet—but we’re working on it.
- They’re banded for identification, but you know them—you can tell by their behavior.
- Experience means a lot. You can recite anything you want out of a book, but you have to know how to read the birds.
- We hand-feed the penguins over 100 pounds of fish per day. Some are more difficult to feed than others. The puffins are more skittish, so we use a paste.
- When I’m feeding, I have the best job in the world. When I’m cleaning, I must not have studied in school. You go from one extreme to the other.
- I’m known at my kids’ school as the Penguin Lady.
- One bird, Trouble, jumps out and helps me close every night. She’s my buddy.
- When they first started jumping down from the exhibit, we thought it was a novelty. But certain birds are still like, “This is cool.” Since there’s no harm, we put up a ramp. So they have their party overnight, and then they go back in the morning.
- I’m very proud of the fact that the birds trust me so much. I feel they know me as well as I know them.
