Wild Animals Follow the Zoomobile Driver on Road to Education

Ever since her high school days, Tish Flynn has wanted to work in a zoo.

It took some time, but Flynn, 39, fnally got her wish.

Not only does the Cal State Long Beach graduate work for a zoo, but most days she accompanies many of the exotic and domestic animals on trips in her zoomobile throughout Orange County.

She loads a boa constrictor, chicken, duck, iguana, opossum, rats, chinchilla, frogs, owl, rabbits, a macaw and sundry other animals in her white zoomobile and delivers “her kids”--as she calls the animals--to schools so students can get a close look and touch them.

“I like the personable way some rabbits take to people and the way the beauty of a boa constrictor sparkles in the sun,” Flynn said. “It almost looks fluorescent.”

The animal trainer and educational specialist makes three to four visits a week with her compact zoo. “This is the fun part of this job,” she said. “The boorish part is the desk work that goes along with it.”

Before her job with the Santa Ana Zoo, Flynn trained walruses, dolphins and killer whales at now-defunct Marineland. Earlier, she said, she worked with mentally ill and retarded children at community recreation centers. She majored in recreational therapy in college.

“I’ve always been interested in animals,” said Flynn, who noted that working at Marineland was comparable to working at the zoo. “The theory is the same. The subject is different.”

But Flynn feels what is as important as the animals is the environment they live in.

“The best thing we bring in the zoomobile is the environment message,” said the Westminster woman, whose favorite clientele are preschool children. She feels that they are eager to make contact with new things without having developed many negative feelings, especially about animals.

“If we don’t start taking care of the environment and the animals that live in it, our world is going to be a lot more sterile and unhealthy to live in,” she said.

“The best thing is teaching the conservation message,” said Flynn. “It’s fun getting an important message across and being able to get people and animals together so they can relate to one another.”

During animal-handling classes at the zoo on Saturdays, Flynn also weaves in environmental and conservation messages for visitors.

“I really love to see a kid get turned on with animals they’ve only seen in pictures,” Flynn said.

All in all, she said, she has a perfect job. “I have the teaching aspect, the people and the animals all in one package.”

Batman and Robin have come full cycle for Robert Schneider, 69, a retired government worker.

Thirty years ago, Schneider built an animated Batman and Robin clock that also featured Cat Woman, the Joker and the Penguin trying to blow up Robin with a bomb. The scene shows Batman trying to rescue Robin.

“I made it when Batman and Robin were popular around the late 1950s,” said the Garden Grove man, who has placed the clock in a red plexiglass frame. “It really didn’t go well in our living room so I put it on a shelf in the garage.”

Now that Batman and Robin have made a comeback, Schneider has reconsidered. “I have it back in the house in a corner and it looks better than it did 30 years ago.”

He said he hopes to entice some enterprising entrepreneur to market replicas of the clock.

“Maybe we can both make some money,” said Schneider, who said he made the clock “just for fun.”

“Back then, people used to call me Batman,” he added.

Acknowledgments--Kristen Olson and Erin Murphy, both students at Woodbridge High School in Irvine, will be among 500 dancers performing in today’s nationally televised Macy’s 63rd Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.