ALONG THE WAY

Dirty Laundry, Peanut Butter-smeared Walls and Other Smelly Stuff Enrich Life in the Zoo

They are running amok at Reid Park Zoo in Tucson. Macaque monkeys tear around on two legs like hairy little men, flinging their food into the small canal in their enclosure. One was caught working at the wires with a stick, planning the big break.

Baboons gleefully anoint themselves with lemons and fish, rubbing them on their chests. The lions loll around, listening to '60s rock 'n' roll on their radio.

The person responsible for this mammal mayhem? The very one charged with the oversight of these animals, zookeeper Leslie Waters. Animal enrichment, a program used at this zoo and others to make life in captivity a little less humdrum, requires devising ways of stimulating the animals. Waters works with their natural instincts for foraging, hunting and playing.

"Everything needs stimulation," she says.

I got my daily dose running after Waters as she planted food treats and natural toys in the exhibition areas of the zoo. A limb from a mesquite tree went into the polar bears' enclosure. Peanut butter was smeared on the walls, hidden in the crevices. I rubbed my hands on the tree trunks, and provided the two bears with some new sensations by showing up in their nighttime resi-dence, a six-room bear condo complete with small pool.

The polar bears were close enough to touch. I didn't. I was close enough to be stared at and sniffed. I was.

"You're just enrichment to them right now," Waters told me. Yes, a new-smelling, fastmoving food.

Food rates as a major enrichment item. The day I visited, the canapes included pinecones To enrich, the food needs to intrigue, provide a challenge, something the animals can poke into, unwrap. Fruit frozen in ice will get the macaques right up on their hind legs and running for the water. They have figured out they can get to that fruit faster by melting the cube in it. rolled in peanut butter, honey challenge, and they stay interand oatmeal, and pumpkin ested. paste wrapped in tortillas, a very popular item with the animals, Waters said of the zoo's version of nouvelle Southwestern cuisine.

The animals are encouraged to look for their edible surprises. That's why the peanut butter, another favorite, gets smeared onto the walls of the polar bears' canyon. Waters also hides fish in the jaguars' territory.

Feed an animal once or twice a day, and they finish in minutes. Hide the food, create a Smells also enrich. Waters' charges like theirs stinky. Baboons apply strong-smelling foodonions, fish, lemons directly to their bodies. Exotic manure, certainly abundant here, constitutes a turn-on for the lions. Give them rhino and elephant leave-behinds, and they are stimulated into a tizzy.

"They roll in it, they taste it, they sniff it," reported Waters.

She's tried different types of manure with different results. The lions don't like any that comes from the source in pellet form. They are picky about their dung. The two beautiful jaguar sisters are equally choosy. They won't have anything to do with lion dung. The polar bears don't seem intrigued with any dung. What they do like belongs to Waters' husband, Charles. "Sometime I bring his dirty, stinky T-shirts in," said Waters, always on her own hunt for something different. The scent that clings to those shirts must rank as the Chanel No. 5 of the animal kingdom. The polar bears leaped onto the shirts, played tug-of-war with them. One carried a shirt with her when she went to eat. The jaguars had better things to do than tote around dirty laundry. They ate the shirt.

The less-than-natural enrichment toys collect in other cages, where the lions play with ropes and traffic cones. A radio supplies sound-stimulation. The polar bears have their way with plastic milk bottles and cardboard boxes.

"It really kind of makes my world go round," said Waters of the enrichment program. "I can do more and more all the time to make their lives better."

Two of those lives already seem quite content. Waters has charge of Herbie and Dolcie, the tortoises. No jungle cat flash and dash here. No laugh-producing antics of the neon-bottomed, high-smellers over in the baboon cage. Herbie and Dolcie need just food and a bath to make their day complete. But they do have one sweet trait.

"They love people," explained Waters, "and they love to be petted and scratched."

Herbie, as big as a table, will stretch out his neck like the Indian Rubber Man, stretch it to an impossible length and stay that way as long as you are willing to scratch. Waters left me to the task.

She undoubtedly knew that this zoo activity would enrich two animals at the same time: The one with the shell delighted in the scratching; the one with the hands thrilled at being asked.