Most people have a couple keys on their key chain: a house key, a car key or two, maybe one or two others. The animal keepers, however, carry about 17 keys, and I carry 23 keys.

Let me list them for you:
Carolina Wildlife exhibits, education animal rooms, bunny barn, outdoor animal exhibit padlocks, bear padlock, Museum gates, snake cage, venomous snake cage, drug cabinet, drug box, needle cabinet, “gator” vehicle, “mule” vehicle, alligator cage, Science Resource Center, “Master key”, boat lock, lunar lab, facilities shop, file cabinet, gun lock, office, locker, storage locker.

Setting up my key chain so I can function is very important: actually, it’s crucial. I don’t want to be fumbling through my keys trying to remember which one accesses the emergency drugs. Keys that are directly animal related are on one end, and keys that are office or storage related are at another. The keys can be separated, so I don’t need to carry the file cabinet key in when doing work in the bear pool. The three keys that look exactly the same go in a specific order, so I know that the gate key is next to the bunny barn key and the animal lock key is in the middle and the bear key lives next to the locker key. It might not make much sense to you, but all that matters is that it makes sense to me.

If you liked hearing about my keys, let me know (in the comment section). You might enjoy reading a future post about how many padlocks we have!