As kids, Sue Tygielski’s two older brothers pleaded with their parents for a dog — no such luck.
Good thing their younger sister loved animals.
“They didn’t let me keep anything until second grade,” says Tygielski, a zoo area supervisor at the Reid Park Zoo. “My brothers were so upset because they had been trying to get a dog forever, and finally the baby of the family got the dog.”
Instead of dolls, stuffed animals filled Tygielski’s childhood bedroom in Chicago. She considered becoming a vet but didn’t like the idea of working with sick animals all the time.
“I used to love going to the elephant house,” she says of childhood trips to the Brookfield Zoo. “So there was a part of me that thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be cool,’ and as I started working here at Reid Park and started watching the elephant keepers, I thought, ‘Wow, the amount of responsibility is enormous.’”
Literally.
Tygielski, 43, began working at the Reid Park Zoo in 2009 and took on the elephants around 2011. Previously, she was a zoo area supervisor managing South American exhibits and the kitchen. Her additional work as the zoo’s training coordinator brought her in contact with the elephants.
“With other animals, if something breaks in their exhibit, sometimes you can fix it, but with elephants, you need a welder,” Tygielski says, half joking, half serious. “The whole size of everything is upscale, and that was a little bit intimidating to me.”
When the zoo’s previous elephant manager retired, Tygielski was hesitant to take the position but received encouragement from other zoo professionals.
“I asked Sue if she would be interested not just in managing the current elephants, the two, but also in becoming part of the program to move into the new exhibit with the new elephants,” says the zoo’s general curator Jim Schnormeier.
Not only does Tygielski manage the elephants as a zoo area supervisor, but she also oversees the education animal collection and coordinates training and enrichment throughout the zoo.
“Over 20 years ago, when she was in college, she was my intern at the zoo...” says Leslie Waters, another zoo area supervisor. “She was a young college student back then, and I was always impressed with her from the beginning and kept contact over the years, and I don’t do that with many interns.”
Tygielski got a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona studying wildlife and later got a doctorate degree in teaching and teacher education from the university. While earning her master’s degree from Yale University, she studied birds and later learned to train hawks helping on a National Geographic film — the start of her training background. A job at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum working with raptors and the collection of animals for education preceded the zoo.
That experience in training keeps both the elephant staff and their charges engaged throughout the day.
“She is one of those people who is a natural-born leader and does it so well that her staff and the elephants are lucky to have her,” says elephant keeper Savannah Lohse.
The Reid Park Zoo’s breeding herd moved into Expedition Tanzania in 2012 from the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The park still owns the elephants and continues to work with Tygielski and the other elephant keepers.
Having a calf keeps things fun.
The staff spends more time watching the herd on exhibit — an especially entertaining pastime as the eight keepers have developed voices for some of the elephants.
For example, middle child Sundzu is über-polite when he interacts with the herd. Nandi, though sassy, still has no official voice.
The other five elephants came to Tucson with at least a little training, but Tygielski and her team have had to start from scratch with Nandi — including baby proofing the exhibit.
“We prepared by making the enclosures baby proof so that she couldn’t get stuck or squeeze out,” Tygielski says. “While it would have been quite an adventure for her to squeeze out of the stall, we’re glad that she didn’t. ... Since it was our first baby, it was all new to us.”
The night Semba gave birth, Tygielski got a call from keeper Mara Jameson telling her they thought it was time. Tygielski hopped into her car and raced to the zoo — just 15-minutes from her home, she says. Jameson narrated in a hushed whisper as Nandi entered the world.
By the time Tygielski arrived, it was over.
For seven weeks before the birth and five weeks after, someone stayed at the zoo 24 hours. Tygielski’s work-life balance was shot.
Now, as the elephant keepers get the hang of caring for a baby, Tygielski has more time for hobbies — bicycling, hot yoga and reading fiction.
Unlike many, she likes to spend some of her down time indoors. Her job keeps her under the sun all day. Every day, the keepers clean the yard and barn, reshape mud wallows and sand hills, feed and train the elephants, refill water, and check animal health and exhibit integrity.
It’s an elephant-size job, just like she thought.
“She carries a lot of stress during the day because she has such a huge job of maintaining the herd and their health and our safety,” Lohse says.
But the little girl who loved the elephant house wasn’t wrong either.
“I think that everyone has a bad day coming into work every now and then, but being able to see (Nandi) first thing in the morning definitely lightens the mood,” Tygielski says. “If you’re tired coming into work, then you get to watch her be silly.”
