[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 41 (Wednesday, March 12, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1575-S1576]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO DAVID KESSLER
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, earlier this year, after 39 years of public
service, most recently as the National Zoo's keeper for the Small
Mammal House, David Kessler turned in his keys and turned toward
retirement. He has dedicated two-thirds of his life to caring for the
howler monkeys, lemurs, and shrews living at the zoo.
In addition to feeding the animals and cleaning out their enclosures,
Kessler spent his days watching, closely observing any changes in
appetite or behavior that might suggest something was amiss. He
remembers the endless hours he spent with William, a gibbon, after
William's traumatizing experience at the hospital that left him afraid
of humans and ostracized from his parents. Kessler holds on to a photo
of William sleeping on his shoulder.
At the zoo, it wasn't just about Kessler caring for the animals; it
was about connecting with them. They kept him as much as he kept them.
He admits he wouldn't be the same person if it weren't for the animals.
Their connection has kept him in the moment and happy.
I was touched to read a moving profile of David's career and of his
last day in the Small Mammal House. His love for the small mammals for
which he cared is evident. Health may have rushed his retirement, but
by any measure his was a career spent in service to some of the most
interesting creatures visited at our Nation's zoo. I ask unanimous
consent to have printed in the Record this touching profile from the
Washington Post of a career well worth celebrating.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, March 6, 2014]
National Zoo's Longest-Serving Keeper Bids Farewell
(By Rachel Manteuffel)
On his last night as the longest-serving keeper at the
National Zoo, David S. Kessler checks and rechecks the locks
on the enclosures in the Small Mammal House. He collects his
farewell gifts and mementos and softly narrates to himself
what needs to be done. ``Okay, lights out here, good. Hi,
babies!'' he says to Reuben and Jolla, the howler monkey
couple. ``Aagh, g'night, sweetheart. Did I wake you up? I'm
sorry.'' He checks the seven timers on the lights, saying
``timer'' aloud at each. He's not thinking, he says, about
how this January night is the last time after 39 years, two-
thirds of his life, at the zoo. Now Gus the rock hyrax--who
looks like a four-pound guinea pig but is more closely
related to the elephant--catches his attention in the dark.
It's as if the little guy knows something is up.
Considering the personal magnitude of the occasion,
everything is going fine as Kessler prepares to walk away
from the animals who he says rescued him, who might just have
saved his sanity.
``Gus is sticking his head out--'' Kessler notes, then
stops. He sobs once, his knees buckle, and he drops face-down
on the floor of his House.
Earlier in the day, Kessler talked about his career. ``I
like to work with animals that nobody thinks about,'' he
said. Small mammals, it's true, are not headliners. Hey,
kids, let's go see the shrews! In the past few years, Kessler
has been lavishing his attention on the naked mole rat, an
animal that resembles a flaccid penis with buck teeth. He
always has a favorite weirdo. He has been the red panda guy,
the house shrew guy, the Prevost's squirrel guy and the
moonrat guy. Moonrats have no natural predators, Kessler says
with admiration and a little pride, because they smell so
bad.
There aren't a lot of jobs like zookeeper. Technically,
Kessler's job has been biologist, but the caretaking--the
keeping--is what he loves best.
``It's the care of living things. To keep, that's a
beautiful thing. The longer you watch an animal or a person
just doing their thing, the more you feel connected to
them.''
A keeper feeds the animals and mucks out their enclosures,
but the real work is observation, watching their bodies and
behavior closely for subtle changes that mean something is
wrong. And figuring out how to fix it.
Take the lemurs, smallish primates with doglike faces, some
of the most social creatures in the Small Mammal House.
Cortes and Coronado are recent acquisitions--Kessler drove
them down from the Bronx Zoo in his Honda Civic--who are
being carefully phased in with Molly, who has been the sole
lemur at the Small Mammal House since her mate died. The
keepers noticed the new lemurs were keeping low to the
ground, un-lemurlike behavior. Lemurs are at home in
treetops, and the damp ground was irritating one of Cortes's
paws. Perhaps Molly was being territorial. They would wait
and see, maybe give Molly more attention. And keep watching.
Kessler and his colleagues would eventually determine Molly
wasn't behaving aggressively toward the other two lemurs. A
volunteer noticed it was the rock hyraxes antagonizing Cortes
and Coronado. The rock hyraxes were moved to a different
exhibit and, voila, the lemurs returned to the trees.
Lemurs are comparatively easy to read. You can spend less
than half an hour watching Molly and feel as if you almost
understand her thought process. You can become so absorbed
you forget who and what you are, and that you are watching.
It can become like reading a novel, the closest humans can
get to having someone else's consciousness for a change.
It took a year and a half in the reptile house, but
eventually Kessler could tell when something was wrong with a
snake.
He's about average height, and he has had a beard most of
his 59 years, but not now. He wears khakis and polos to work,
with big rubber boots, disposable gloves and face masks.
Primates can pass each other disease easily, he says. A
keeper's herpes cold sore can kill a gorilla.
In conversation, Kessler tosses out bits of philosophy,
science, novels, plays--knowledge you should have, if you had
time to read, and he acts as if you probably know them, too.
He knows each of the hundred-odd residents of the Small
Mammal House by their six-digit reference number. He has also
published or co-written about a dozen research papers.
Written three unpublished novels. He once went on a radio
show to compose sonnets on demand. He mentors high school
students and oversees their research projects. Every year
Kessler takes off work to see as many shows in the Capital
Fringe Festival as possible, since they often run past
midnight and his work would start at 6:30 a.m. He spends an
hour a day on the treadmill. He lives in Silver Spring and
has been married for 30 years--he still writes his wife,
Patricia, sonnets. He smiles when he happens upon a picture
of her unexpectedly. They have a grown son, Ben, who co-owns
an urban farming company in Charlottesville.
When friends asked, he officiated their 2006 wedding,
working with them to write a personalized service, complete
with sermon. Kessler took lessons from an actor friend on how
not to cry. He always cried at weddings but didn't want to
distract while performing one. He was asked to officiate
another wedding in Rockville, even though he was racing to
New Jersey and back to be with his dying father. His father
died. Kessler made the arrangements so his mother and sisters
wouldn't have to, then drove from New Jersey to the rehearsal
dinner that night. When another friend needed him to, he was
the one to officially identify her husband's body.
For a while he fronted a calypso-reggae band. He is
universally beloved among colleagues and friends--
suspiciously so, if you are a person suspicious of that sort
of thing.
Kessler's last ``Meet a Mammal'' demonstration for
zoogoers, on his last day at work, was attended by Linda
Hopkins, a zoo electrician who'd known him 11 years and
brought him a bottle of wine, and Susie Kane, who had never
met him, but she had heard he was leaving, and in 2005 he had
kindly answered her e-mailed question about building a naked
mole rat habitat for her dorm room.
In December, Scientific American declared the naked mole
rat Vertebrate of the Year. He is a happy man who's leaving
the job he loves.
He's retiring young because of his psoriatic arthritis.
It's much better these days----he gets injections of
monoclonal antibodies. But it is progressive. ``I only have
so much health left,'' he says, and zookeeping is physically
taxing. He wants to travel with his wife, and write.
A loved one once told him that he would probably be happier
as a hermit. He wasn't insulted.
``I'm more comfortable by myself and with animals than I am
with people,'' he says. ``I
[[Page S1576]]
don't feel like I fit around people.'' Around people, he is
giving a sort of performance. ``But an honest performance.''
Sometimes he loves it, performing, fronting a band,
officiating at weddings. ``There's tension, but fun tension,
like scary movies. I like the attention and the tension.''
So ask to watch him work, ask him to ignore you, and it
doesn't work. That's a private part of him, reserved for
himself and the animals. He'll start offering you books or
telling you stories, and if you patiently sit around,
pretending to use a computer in his office until he forgets
you're there, he will not forget you're there. He will grow
slightly agitated and need some alone time with the lemurs
after you're gone.
His last day is a whirl of well-wishers, friends, leftover
food from the party the day before, paperwork, gifts, tears
and hugs. ``I don't like to be touched,'' he says to one
hugger, ``but being hugged is fine.''
He hadn't been assigned to do the lines that morning--the
shift that starts before sunrise, when the animals get their
breakfast and their enclosures are cleaned out. He had e-
mails to read, but people kept coming by for hugs and
predicting he'll be back. He says no, never coming back. He
seems to mean it.
Even friends who aren't physically present are distracting
him. ``Happy birthday to you,'' he sings into a friend's
voice mail, gargling the last line. ``Happy Jimmy Page's
birthday, happy your birthday, happy your aunt's birthday
yesterday.'' He attends to the needs of the humans for hours,
their need to say goodbye, to say they would miss him. He
almost always has a specific memory or thought for each, as
he thanks them and assures them he won't miss this place and,
after some time, they won't miss him.
He's proudest of his work with William the gibbon in 1978.
William was a juvenile living with his parents when he got
stuck in the enclosure and broke his arm. He was in the
hospital so long--so long in the company of humans--that his
parents rejected him when he got back. And because his
hospital experience was scary and painful, people now made
William fearful and angry. He was kept out of the exhibit for
a while, off by himself.
Kessler sat in his enclosure each day, doing nothing except
being nonthreatening. No mask, no gloves. Back then, this was
acceptable zookeeper behavior--interaction not initiated or
welcomed by the animal.
William would brachiate around in the farthest corner from
Kessler, swinging limb to limb, elaborately ignoring the 130-
pound human in the room. Over the course of a week, William
came closer and closer, until his feet would brush his
keeper's head as he swung by. Eventually he would put his
head on Kessler's sweatshirt and go to sleep. There's a
picture with William's arms around Kessler's head.
One thing he will miss from the zoo: watching the howler
monkeys eat. Jolla likes beets but not the squiggly end of
the taproot. She will pick it up, put it down, eat something
else, return as if to see if the bit she doesn't like is
still there. Maybe it got better! You can learn so much about
optimism from her, Kessler says. ``People tell me she's just
stupid,'' he says, shaking his head at that human stupidity.
Twelve years ago, Kessler walked with a cane, couldn't turn
his head and could sleep only an hour and a half at a time
because of his arthritis.
Thirty-six years ago he called his psychiatrist to say he
had everything ready to commit a tidy, no-fuss suicide, just
a hose and towels in a car exhaust pipe. His doctor had him
hospitalized for four days.
Then, at 27, he taught himself to be happy. ``You learn
from evolution, from animals. If you have a strategy that
doesn't work, change your strategy.''
His new strategy was to avoid introspection. Completely.
``Working with animals made me start thinking about other
things more. And when I was able to start thinking about
other animals more, I was able to include humans in that
group.'' Understanding William the gibbon, for example, and
building his trust, was a big ``breakthrough with myself.''
``The real change was Patricia,'' he says. ``But I probably
couldn't be with her if I hadn't been working with animals.''
According to dominant psychology and philosophy,
introspection is the key to living right. But Kessler's
unexamined life is the only kind he wants to live.
For obvious reasons, it's difficult for him to explain how
he stopped being introspective. Working with animals is one
way, but there were others. When he worked alone off-exhibit,
he narrated his novels in his head. He noticed that closing
certain doors in the building was musical, producing two
notes, a seventh interval: the first two notes of a song from
``West Side Story": ``Somewhere.''
Sometimes he needs to go alone to see if Molly wants a
belly rub. Lemurs and Reuben the howler are the only ones in
the Small Mammal House to much enjoy the touch of a human.
But lemurs are not pets. They did not evolve to be companions
for humans, to cheer us up or give us something to love.
Molly indicates if she wants a belly rub, not unlike a dog,
and a keeper may administer it, but the belly rub is entirely
for the animal. That's important to Kessler.
It turns out Molly wants a belly rub on Kessler's last day,
after he has finally gotten rid of all the people and sneaks
off to see her.
Afterward, he keeps putting off leaving, until his shift
stretches to 11 hours. And because the rock hyraxes have been
moved away from the lemurs they were scaring, here's Gus, too
present-focused to understand ``goodbye'' but seeming to say
goodbye, popping his head up, watching the keeper leave for
the last time, and the keeper--finished with crying, hugs and
goodbyes with people--goes down, face first.
Suzanne Hough, the volunteer coordinator, is leaving with
him, and she joins him on the floor. ``I'm sorry, I'm
sorry,'' he says. ``No. No, no, it's okay.''
After a moment, Hough speaks. ``The floor can be tricky
this time of night,'' she says, generously. She helps him up.
He's fine, as far as he lets anyone know.
Moments later he is calm again, and performing. ``Well,
that was a surprise!'' he says breezily. Hough and Kessler
walk out into the cold night.
Inside the House, the hundred-odd residents have no sense
that their time as keepers of David S. Kessler has come to an
end.
____________________