When Helen Clarke was growing up, her zookeeper father looked after primates in the family home. That unusual experience led Clarke to make her own career in Dublin Zoo, a place she has known since childhood.
“We had chimps come home with us, back in my father’s time. We were just different types of chimps,” says Clarke, team leader in the zoo’s African Plains, an expansive area within the beloved Phoenix Park facility that is home to giraffes, white rhinos, ostriches and zebras.
Between their eight children and a couple of hand-reared chimps, Clarke’s parents certainly had their hands full. There was no shortage of nappies and bottles of milk to go around the family home in Ashtown, next to Phoenix Park.
Keeping a watchful eye on Minnie the baby bongo, the zoo’s newest arrival, and one of a critically endangered species of antelope, Clarke recalls her unconventional upbringing.
She is a second-generation head chimpanzee keeper, having taken up the reins from her late father, Michael Clarke.
“Dad worked here for over 40 years,” she says.
“He started off on the horticultural end of things and then he progressed to being a keeper. That would’ve been quite common, back in the day ... If you showed an aptitude towards working with the animals, then you got a chance to be a trainee keeper and that was how he got his foot in the door.”
Although Clarke’s mother never worked at the zoo, she played an active role in caring for the animals that came into their home over the years.
“Her father was actually head gardener at quite a few of the big houses. She was born in Shelton Abbey, so they moved around from big house to big house, whatever job he had.”
Shelton Abbey is known today as a prison but the mansion was home to the earls of Wicklow until the 1950s.
When Clarke’s parents met at a dance in Clonsilla, it was love at first sight. “He was from Castleknock and she was from Clonsilla at the time and I think she was only 16, he was 20.”
Growing up, the zoo was a constant presence. Clarke started working in Pet’s Corner when she was only 11.
“I used to ride the pony and trap then after that, when I was 13. I did that all through school – this used to be my weekend and summer job.”
She is third-youngest in the family. Each of her siblings worked at the zoo, “be it in the shops” or in the grounds.
“It was great for having pocket money; our parents never had to give us any pocket money. Father on the keeper’s wage at the time, it was just as well.”
The way I looked at it was, the animals are better off with me being here than not, because I would always give my all to make sure they were looked after as best they could be
— Helen Clarke
“Always mad about animals,” Clarke was the only child to seek a career as a keeper. When she finished school in 1982, however, there were no job openings at the zoo. Clarke trained as a riding instructor until an opportunity came up in 1987 to work there full time.
As a young woman with aspirations to work with gorillas, giraffes, rhinos and other large animals, there were challenges. “The male egos were hilarious,” says Clarke, reflecting on the attitudes of the time.
Clarke recalls being told, “Oh, you wouldn’t be strong enough,” or even, “How dare you think that you can work with a rhino?” This called for a thick skin.
“Back in the 80s you were lucky to get to work with a rhino or anything like that as a keeper because before that woman keepers could just look after birds and small monkeys so you had to fight your way up.”
Nowadays, “about half the staff” are women and the stigma around female keepers working with larger animals has been broken down.
“The zoo was a different place then ... you really had to stand your corner back in the day,” says Clarke, who paved the way in challenging gender norms at Dublin Zoo.
Much else has changed in the last four decades, including precautions around health and safety. For Clarke, some of these changes have come a bit too late. Similarly to her father, the physical nature of the job left its mark.
“It’s funny because I have all his ailments. He had a knee replacement, I’ve also had a knee replacement and my shoulder’s a bit dodgy. So it’s obviously the physical end of the job as well,” she says.
“Now we have machines that do a lot of the work for us, and we have manual handling training. We wouldn’t have had that when I was 13 years of age, lugging sacks around and what have you, so definitely there has been a huge improvement.
“There still has to be a physical element to the job ... You just have to look after yourself, I probably didn’t in the early days.”
In her father’s last years, Clarke would visit him on her lunch break. “He would still want to know about everything that was going on,” she says.
“He had heart disease, so his vitamin and mineral levels wouldn’t be great. Whenever he’d get low ... he wouldn’t be thinking clearly and would be telling the carers that he needed to get up and give me a hand down at the zoo, that I was very busy and everything. It was heart-warming, he still had such a genuine interest in the zoo.”
Clarke remembers strong “anti-zoo sentiment” among some members of the public in the 1970s. “The way I looked at it was, the animals are better off with me being here than not, because I would always give my all to make sure they were looked after as best they could be.”
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Although attitudes have shifted, she says “you’re never going to convince everybody that what we’re doing is right.”
“But when you look at how natural habitats are being devastated on a daily basis, people need to sit up and think about what we’re doing to the world. Having a zoo that explains these stories, I think, helps educate people.”
Clarke will feature on the first episode of RTÉ 1’s The Zoo series, which resumes on April 25th.
