How Gertrude the Hippo led me to the Burke

By Norah Farnham
Guest Writer

When I was hired as the hippo zookeeper at Woodland Park Zoo in 1999, the hippos were the first animals I was assigned to care for, and I have been with them ever since.

Though I had worked as a zookeeper for 13 years at two previous zoological facilities, I had never worked with Common, or Nile, Hippos. I was instantly fascinated by 36-year-old Gertrude (Gertie) and 21-year-old Water Lily – and so were the zoo visitors.

The hippopotamus is one of Africa’s most iconic animals, and a favorite among zoo visitors. Their immense size and aquatic habits make them one of the most recognizable and popular animals, and one that people expect to see when they visit a zoo.

Since hippos commonly live only into their 40s, and hippos are highly social animals, it was not long after I became the hippo keeper that we began discussions about adding a third hippo to our group, as company for Lily when Gert eventually passed. In 2003, we welcomed 2-year-old Guadalupe as the newest member of our little herd.



Water Lily, Gertrude, and Guadalupe
Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo

Volunteer Spotlight: Fish Collections

I love profiling volunteers at the Burke Museum because it gives me the opportunity to share unique stories and people who work hard and are dedicated to the museum, all without being on salary! These aren’t usually people you will see in the news, but they do a lot of great work at the museum deserving of newsworthy coverage. Today I’d like to introduce you to Saul Rico, a volunteer in the Ichthyology collections.

Jessica: Saul, tell me a little bit about what you do in the Ichthyology collections.

Saul: I process newly acquired specimens, loans and loan returns, enter data, re-label existing specimens, and any other tasks as needed.

Jessica: How did you end up volunteering for the Burke Museum’s Ichthyology collections?

Saul: I recently moved to Seattle and decided the transition would be a good time to make a career shift that aligned better with my interests and passions. I have always been interested in marine biology, particularly marine mammals and fishes, so I decided to quit my job of 10 years to pursue a career in fisheries management/research and perhaps apply to the graduate program at School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. I've been taking classes as a non-matriculated student to boost my knowledge in marine sciences and became aware of the fish collection when I took Ted Pietsch's Biology of Fishes course. He gave us a tour of the facility early in the course and I knew immediately that I wanted to be involved in some capacity. I approached him and asked if I could help and luckily there was some work I could do.

Jessica: What do you like most about volunteering at the Burke?

Saul: I really enjoy learning about the different fishes that inhabit our local waters and getting to see them first hand.  I also really enjoy working with the staff and other volunteers in the collection.  Not only are they very knowledgeable which presents a learning opportunity for me, but they are fun too. 

Jessica: Tell me a funny story that’s happened while working in the fish collections.

Saul: I think seeing school children come through the collection as part of a school field trip presents lots of opportunity for spontaneous fun. Some of the questions are very insightful and well thought out, while others are questions that only a child could come up with.  During one particular tour one kid had a question about a half-man, half-alligator that I thought was pretty funny. He really seemed to think that one existed and must have thought that as a scientist, the collections manager should be an authority on the topic and must know something about it.

Jessica: What would surprise people about what you do?  

Saul: I think people don't quite grasp what the fish collection is about and why it's important. But when they realize that it truly is just like a library of fishes that other researchers can "check out" to study them more carefully, it becomes clear that I'm a kind of like a librarian.  Oh, and some people are surprised that I don't get paid for what I do!  

Astroscopus y-graecum specimens. Some of Saul's favorite specimens from the Burke's Icthyology collections, these fish are a shallow water species from the East Coast.

Jessica: Briefly describe your most memorable project.  

Saul: I had a nice opportunity to work with another volunteer identifying some fish that had only been identified to the genus level. Many fishes can be easily classified by ichthyologists to the family or even genus level, but once you get to the actual species level, it gets difficult to differentiate them, particularly since some differences between species can be quite subtle.  So in order to identify them, we used a dichotomous key to correctly identify their species.  A dichotomous key is kind of like a map of fish characteristics.  If followed correctly it can help distinguish fish species from one another. I'd never done this before, so it was not only fun but a great learning opportunity for me.  

Posted By: Jessica Newkirk, Volunteer Coordinator

Volunteer Spotlight: Paleobotany

This month’s Volunteer Spotlight blog features Jeff Benca, a UW undergraduate student and volunteer in the Burke Museum’s Paleobotany division.

Jessica: How did you begin volunteering at the Burke?

Jeff: I started volunteering at the Burke back in high school for the arachnid collection with Rod Crawford.  While spiders, insects, and reptiles were a major interest for me, I had thought that plants were rather boring until I started raising carnivorous plants.   After I started working at the UW Botany Greenhouse before graduating from high school, I got particularly interested in early land plants and started building up a teaching and research collection of the most ancient group of vascular plants alive today: clubmosses.  It was after I had started this collection that I met Dr. Caroline Strömberg, Burke Curator of Paleobotany. Through her I met another volunteer, Maureen Carlisle, who found plant fossils from a new fossil locality which included clubmosses and she was looking for someone that might be interested in describing these fossils.  I happily got on board with describing clubmosses from this new fossil flora, which is what I do now at the Burke.

The work I do essentially allows me to be a perpetual kid – I get to work with ridiculously cool plants at the UW Botany Greenhouse, dig for fossils in near and far-off places while working with awesome fossil collections at the Burke.  On top of this I actually get to grow plants that are extremely similar to the 390 million year-old fossils I study.

Jessica: What are you researching at the museum?

Jeff: I am studying clubmoss fossils found in northern Washington that existed 390 million years ago in the Devonian Period; for context: the bolide impact that played a role in wiping out the dinosaurs occurred approximately 65 million years ago.  In the Early and Middle stages of the Devonian, the landscape was pretty bare; there were lots of open wetlands dominated by small spore-bearing herbs but no trees.  Giant sea scorpions and armored fishes patrolled the world’s vast tropical oceans and the poles had little to no icecaps.  It was a pretty alien sounding environment, which is also why I find it so interesting.

Jessica: What do you like most about volunteering at the Burke?

Jeff: I get access to all these crazy fossils that are so nicely organized and taken care of as well as a fantastic team of curators and paleobiologists.  I want to encourage other students interested in paleobotanical or paleontological research in general to get involved at the Burke because they can give undergraduate research students incredible access to the collections.  The faculty and collections managers at the Burke are welcoming to students with research project ideas that are mentored by Burke or university faculty, or to students that are interested in volunteering through helping organize and catalogue the fossil collections or help prep fossils.

Jessica: I heard you’ve won some awards and recognition recently – can you tell me about that?

Jeff: Dr. Strömberg and I are currently writing a paper on a potentially new species of clubmoss as well as a second paper on a global analysis comparing morphology in Leclercqia across six continents.  Recently, I received the Isabel C. Cookson Paleobotanical Award for the best paper presented by a student in paleobotany and palynology at the Botanical Society of America conference this summer for presenting on these two projects.  Usually this award is given to a graduate student, so I was surprised to receive it as an undergraduate.  I feel fortunate as this award can possibly help generate additional recognition for the Burke Museum and its Paleobotany Collection as a great resource for researchers.  I also recently received a National Geographic Young Explorer grant to study changes in clubmoss and fern leaf structure in response to climate change in Hawaii this September for a few weeks and will be joined by another regular at the Burke Museum, Adam Huttenlocker, a graduate student of vertebrate paleontology curator Dr. Christian Sidor for this work.

Thank you, Jeff, for the great work you do for the Burke and congratulations!

Posted By: Jessica Newkirk, Volunteer Coordinator

Volunteer Spotlight: Paleontology Edition

This month's Volunteer Spotlight features the work of Don, a volunteer in the Burke Museum's Paleontology division.

Jessica, volunteer coordinator: Hi Don! Tell me a little bit about the volunteer work you do at the Burke.

Don: I volunteer in Paleontology in the basement at the Burke, but I get to spend a lot of time outdoors in the field collecting specimens, which I’ve been doing on and off since 1983.

Jessica: How did you end up volunteering at the Burke Museum?

Don: Originally I received my MFA from UW and worked in the gardens on campus, and I got involved after I found a fossil out at the Swauk Formation in Kittitas County in 1983. I didn’t know what it was, so I brought it in to the Burke and Bev Witte, one of the long time volunteers here, immediately identified it as part of a turtle from the Middle Eocene. Since then I have continued to hunt for fossils, volunteer at the Burke and learn about paleontology. I volunteered from 1983-95 and then moved across the country, but continued to come back and volunteer for short periods before finally moving back to the area in 2009 and volunteering regularly since then.

Jessica: What do you like most about volunteering at the Burke?

Don: I like field work the most. Usually I do field work locally, but most recently I went to Colorado for a week to work at the Denver Museum Snowmastodon Project with several other volunteers and paleontologists Kirk Johnson and Ian Miller. We found bones from mastodons, sloths and tiger salamanders.


Jessica: What is the funniest thing that has happened while volunteering?

Don: Usually I collect by myself, so there aren’t too many funny stories to tell! I collected for a week at the Snowmastodon Site for the Denver Museum in June. Paleontologist Kirk Johnson was very loud and encouraging to the volunteers, and was working hard while digging for bones right alongside us. At one point he yelled out to motivate the volunteers, “Bring me the head of a sloth!” and not too long after, someone found one!

Jessica: What would surprise people about what you do?

Don: I think people would be surprised about the size a collection can reach over a period of time. I volunteer at the Burke about 50 hours per week, plus field work. I have worked on developing the collection related to the Tertiary period, primarily at the Swauk Formation where I found the partial turtle, but I have collected throughout Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia.

Before modern technology, we used to heave fossils onto the photocopier and send the copies to researchers around the country. This helped identify the Burke Museum among researchers, and bring graduate students and academic interest to the museum. The Burke Museum has come a long way, and now we have three curators in paleontology – paleobotany, vertebrate paleontology, and invertebrate paleontology.

Jessica: Briefly describe your most memorable project.

Don: One of the biggest finds I have made was one of my first – the partial turtle found at the Swauk Formation. Since then I have continued to focus my collecting on that area, collecting on Chuckanut Drive at first and then moving inland. We are accumulating a collection of animal footprints including the Terror bird from the foothills around Mt. Baker, similar to one found in the Burke Museum lobby right now.

Thanks, Don, for all of your contributions to the Burke Museum and for sharing your wonderful stories with us!

Posted By: Jessica Newkirk, Volunteer Coordinator

Volunteer Spotlight

I’m excited to announce that the Volunteer Spotlight will now be a regular feature on the Burke Blog! This month, I interviewed mammal collections volunteer Adrienne, who is also a member of the Burke Museum Student Advisory Board (BMSAB).

 

Jessica, volunteer coordinator: Hi Adrienne! Tell me a little bit about the volunteer work you do at the Burke.

Adrienne: In Mammalogy, I assist Jeff, the collections manager, with whatever needs to be done on a given day. Most of the time this involves either bone washing or bone numbering. 

Also, as a member of the BMSAB, I work with a small group of UW students on improving the Burke Museum’s presence on campus by increasing student awareness of the Museum.  We just hosted After Hours @ the Burke, an evening event exclusively for UW students.  We spent several months planning the event and were responsible for obtaining donations, marketing and running the event. 

Jessica:  How did you end up volunteering at the Burke Museum? 

Adrienne: I am currently in my second year as a student at UW, working on a major in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology. I got involved with the BMSAB, and met Jeff [mammal collection manager] in mammalogy while on a behind the scenes tour. My personal interests and career goals lie within conservation biology, so it’s been a great opportunity to work at the Burke where so many fascinating organisms are being preserved, and I love getting the student community involved with the museum.

Adrienne preparing whale bones for the mammal collection.

Jessica: What do you like most about volunteering at the Burke?

Adrienne: I love volunteering here at the Burke because I finally feel involved with my school. It has been so much fun to work with both the students on BMSAB and the people in Mammalogy who are all outgoing, friendly, and as excited about natural history as I am. 

Jessica: What is the funniest thing that has happened while volunteering? 

Adrienne: It was during the winter After Hours event and I had signed up for ice cream scooping. We knew the ice cream would be popular, but we had no idea to what extent. For two hours straight, two others and I frantically scooped bowl after bowl of ice cream, going through the entire stock of 14 gallons! It was really funny to watch us trying to keep up with the never-ending waves of people wanting ice cream, and sneaking bowls for ourselves!

Jessica: What would surprise people about what you do?

Adrienne: Most people are really surprised by some of the gory things I do in mammalogy. I have gotten used to picking beetles out of squirrel skulls, scraping off the cartilage from not-quite-clean bones, and digging through a pile of elephant poop for composting hippo bones, but it never ceases to gross people out when I describe it to them for the first time!

 

Jessica: Briefly describe your most memorable project. 

Adrienne: I went to the Woodland Park Zoo with Jeff to check on the status of the composting hippo bones. After looking at the bones, the hippo caretaker offered for us to come watch her as she fed the live hippos. I jumped on the opportunity since it is always fun to see the animals at the zoo, but I had no idea how up close I was about to get! I got to feed both Water Lily and Guadalupe, tossing whole apples and carrots into their gaping mouths. This is another reason why I love volunteering at the Burke: unexpected opportunities are always coming up, and I have gotten to interact with so many fascinating people and animals along the way.

Posted by Jessica Newkirk,Volunteer Coordinator

Volunteer Spotlight

With Volunteer Appreciation Month coming to a close, we'd like to spotlight one of our long time volunteers, Doug, who has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours helping out in the Burke's ethnology and education departments.

Jessica, volunteer coordinator: Hi Doug! Tell me a little bit about the volunteer work you do at the Burke.

Doug:  I have been volunteering as an education docent for the past 14 years, as well as in the Ethnology Division photographing objects for the past 10 years.

Jessica:  How did you end up volunteering at the Burke Museum? 

Doug: My father is from Canada and the family spent a lot of vacation time in Vancouver, B.C. with relatives. Through that Vancouver connection, I became fascinated by Northwest Coast formline art. Through some friends, I started collecting Northwest Coast baskets. In the Seattle area, all the good baskets are at the Burke, so in 1990 I became a member of the Burke Museum. In their newsletter I saw a notice that they were looking for new Docents. That was almost 15 years ago.

Jessica: What do you like most about volunteering at the Burke?

Doug: There are a lot of bright and intelligent people working here, and there is always something interesting going on somewhere in the building. I have become a “Museum Geek” and I love it.

Jessica: What is the funniest thing that has happened while volunteering? 

Doug: It is probably not the funniest, but the most humorously frustrating is that when you start a tour – any kind of tour – if you ask the kids what they want to see, it’s always the dinosaurs!  I started out not knowing a thing about dinosaurs. I have learned a few things, but the nine-year-olds always know more than I do!

Jessica: What would surprise people about what you do?

 

Doug: In spite of all my rambling-on about Northwest Coast art, I personally cannot even draw a straight line. I am artistically challenged when it comes to actually making or drawing something.

Jessica: Briefly describe your most memorable project. 

Doug: I was working in ethnology at the right time when the Steinman Collection of Contemporary Northwest Coast art objects were donated!  I got to be ‘up-close-and-personal’ with each object as part of my photography duties. It was an amazing opportunity to compare a lot of great Northwest Coast artwork.

In Education, the most rewarding times are when you are explaining something to a ten-year-old kid, and suddenly you see ‘the light go on’. The opportunity does not happen every day or every tour, but when it does, you can see the comprehension in the kid’s face.

Doug leads a discussion on the glass sculpture Killer Whale created by Preston Singletary in 2008. Doug and his wife Thelma donated Killer Whale to the Burke's permanent collection. 

The Burke has so many wonderful volunteers that we'll continue sharing their stories.  Check back in May for another interview.

Posted by: Jessica Newkirk, Volunteer Coordinator 

April is Volunteer Recognition Month!

Did you know that over 200 volunteers donate more than 12,000 hours each year at the Burke Museum? Volunteers are a quiet but powerful force at the museum, often times working on tedious projects like prepping mammals and birds in the biology department, sorting shells in archaeology or preparing materials for tours in education. Since April is Volunteer Recognition Month, I’d like to highlight a few individuals who represent the volunteer work occurring every day at the museum.  Recently, Jess was kind enough to sit down and chat with me about her experiences volunteering at the Burke.

Jessica, volunteer coordinator: Hi Jess!  Tell me a little bit about the volunteer work you do at the Burke.

Jess: I have been working in the education department for about a year now.  I help lead tours for K-12 school groups, lead hands-on educational opportunities in the galleries on First Thursdays and assist with various office tasks. 

Jessica:  How did you end up volunteering at the Burke Museum?

Jess: I like teaching pre-kindergarten kids, and once I found out I could do that at the Burke I applied to volunteer early last year.  I am currently a UW student double majoring in history and anthropology.  I graduate next fall and I'd really like to work in museums so I hope that my volunteer experience will give me an edge when I'm applying for jobs.

Jessica: What is the funniest thing that has happened while volunteering?

Jess: Last summer during the Little Dinos summer camp, a 5 year old girl corrected my pronunciation of “ammonite”. Sometimes it’s hard to teach dinosaurs to kids because they already know everything!

Jessica: What would surprise people about what you do?

Jess: I spend a lot of time cutting cardboard for crafts such as bentwood boxes.

Jessica: Briefly describe your most memorable project.

Jess: Last year, I helped develop a “kid mail database” so education staff could easily find and reflect on fan mail received from children. I scanned all the thoughtful and creative letters, and then organized them by type, such as tour, quotes, and drawings.  The education department now uses them for outreach in Olympia and promoting events. Some of them have even been featured on the Burke Blog here.

Jessica: Thanks for your time today and thank you so much for all you do for the Burke!

In addition to volunteering for education, Jess is a member of the Burke Museum Student Advisory Board.  BMSAB promotes the museum and plans student events.

Interested in volunteering for the Burke?  Check out current volunteer opportunities here. 

Posted by: Jessica Newkirk, Volunteer Coordinator