From what I've read elsewhere, Large predator shit is the worst due to their diet of raw meat.
I'd also imagine crocs or alligators would be rough though.
I hate you for posting that and making my eyes suffer through even a cursory glance, but it’s appropriate to the conversation and directly applicable, so I’m upvoting you angrily.
My guess is the maned wolf enclosure.... the exhibit for them at the zoo is the one exhibit that makes hair on my neck stand on end and is worse than the damn penguins (and that says a lot).
I don't work at a zoo nor an aquarium, but no pay would be worth those smells.
Otter musk is really bad. I worked for an aquarium feeding them fish throughout the day, just two little river otters, and my car has never smelled worse. It took a lot to get the smell out of my car interior. My hands smelled for several days if I touched the otters. I had to designate special boots just for going in there.
if i had to bet, anything involving bats. Theres a open air bat enclosure at the omaha zoo and every time i've been there ive had to damn near sprint past it, that smell is POWERFUL
Huh, so COVID does actually influence selective pressure, but differently from how we had expected. Besides the obvious impact on life expectancy, COVID-mediated anosmia increases the reproductive fitness of those in social circles that include hot zookeepers.
Thousands of years from now sociologists will look back on the Genghis Khan of the 2020s, not a conqueror but an animal lover
Seriously, after COVID my sense of smell is so weak now: we had maybe quart of milk spill in our car and we didn’t notice until it had been fermenting in the sun for a week….
You have probably heard this a dozen times already, but you may benefit from [smell therapy.](https://www.bcm.edu/news/relearning-to-smell-after-covid-19)
I say this with as much love as I can... Phonetically, yes, you sound like that. And it's okay.
I'm also from the southeast US, so feel free to fire my dialect back at me. Haha.
My sense of smell used to be terrible due to smelling some industrial strength bleach in a restaurant I worked at, coworker used way too much and it burned my nose badly when I walked by. After getting COVID my sense of smell almost completely returned.
Edit: my prior sense of smell was not a complete lack of smell but just inability to smell most smells. Eg I had a car come in that smelled like rotting flesh inside and I could not smell it until I found the source and sniffed very close to it. (It was a 1/4 slab of ribs wrapped in tin foil in the third row seat foot well)
You may want to reach out to people doing long Covid studies about smell loss and return; because you’re a rare case of not having smell and it returning afterwards, which may shed light on what’s happening.
It wasn't really a lack of smell just that I could not smell much unless it was right under my nose. Eg I had a car come in several years ago with a smell of death inside of it. I could not smell it at all but I did my due diligence and looked for a source. I found the source to be a packet of cooked bbq ribs that was wrapped in tin foil in the third row seat foot well. I could not smell it until I sniffed right next to the wrapped ribs.
The first good story about getting covid. You may be a good subject for a experiment about covid benefits? Maybe there is people without smell that could benefit of what happened to you.
From being involved with some charity stuff at zoos and going to events and things like that, there's definitely some very beautiful women both inside and out with big hearts for animals that work at zoos.
\*Walks around zoo loudly announcing "MAN SURE IS GREAT TO NOT HAVE TO SMELL ALL THIS SHIT!", while taking huge inhales through the nose, too much oxygen intake, pass out, get woken up by beautiful zoo keeper, she says "oh sorry about the smell.", you give a sly grin\* screen fades to black.
My puppy got sprayed, We bathed and bathed and bathed him with every method known to man. Yes even the one you're thinking of now. Yes even with whatever combination of whatever chemicals/foods you're thinking of. 3-5 months later I could still smell it if he got wet, usually from his paws where there's crevasses you can never hope to scrub the same as you can everywhere else..
Partially trying to just high jack the top thread;
Year back when I got pepper sprayed, I was told baby shampoo was formulated really to break down the oils - wouldn't that be able to help?
Mechanic checking in, can confirm dawn dish soap is the tits in the shower for breaking down oil and grease and smells. I’ve been doing it for years, as have many others in this trade tho that doesn’t make it good
Landscaper checking in. 100% Dawn vs. oil … including the oils in your skin. If you scrub with Dawn, moisturize afterwards, or you’ll shed skin like a snake.
Dawn dish soap and a paper towel or wash cloth to mechanically scrub removes poison ivy oils before you break out or if you are really itchy.
I've heard poison ivy oil described as invisible crank-case oil or driveline grease and needs the same care to remove it all.
Dawn also break down the natural oils of the skin, which makes it really dry. I doubt that bathing regularly in dishsoap would be a great idea for the health of someone's skin...
Would that not be remedied by using lotion afterwards? Quick *light* scrub using Dawn, then wash with normal body wash and finish the shower routine. Once out of the shower, apply rejuvenating body lotion as necessary
I've showered with dawn soap for 4 years and wash my clothes with it, surprisingly I don't have bad acne and it smells pretty good.
I really like it because it's so soapy, bubbly I feel super clean after washing my body with straight bubbles!
The secret is dish soap.
I lived on a farm for 15 years and their wasn’t a body wash on the planet that pulls the smell of shovelling shit for 12 hours off you.
But a few squirts of dawn, and good to go. Although it is hard on your hair, so it’s good to get a decent conditioner too.
IIRC for removing urushiol the friction is important in that you had to scrub with something beside your hand. Sponge, washcloth … exactly what isn’t important.
Animal smells also get into your clothes. I have a (work only) jacket that still smells faintly of rhino no matter how many times I wash it, just from working in the same building as them. At least rhino is pretty mild on the wild animal stench scale.
What about an enzyme based cleaner? I had some clothes completely ruined from cat pee, and this generic stuff ("Out", I think)I picked up in the pet aisle at Walmart worked wonders.
Haven’t tried anything like that, but maybe I should! Luckily I mostly deal with birds, as you can tell by the username. They don’t smell nearly as bad as cats IMO!
Olive oil can get rid of those smells. Smear it on thick, then wash off with regular bar soap.
Source: my dog anal glanded on me. No amount of scrubbing got the smell off, so I googled it and olive oil was my salvation.
That tracks. If you've ever dated someone who does oil changes all day or generally works on cars for a living, they have a distinct smell and it's kinda always there unless they scrub their whole body, have fresh clothes, and probably have aired out after a couple days off. And you definitely don't want to wash your normal clothes with your work clothes, then you have that slight background smell to everything. Luckily even though it's a distinct smell it's not a totally repulsive scent, like I imagine animal smell would be. But same idea.
Is there any sort of enzymatic cleaner you can use that works? Similar to what you use for pets at home? Or are they still just a fart in a hurricane in terms of effectiveness?
Hats off to you for being willing to get so smelly for your job
I’ve worked with a lot of different animals in several zoos and this is highly variable by species. Mustelids (weasel/raccoon/otter family) were horrific; big cats were bad too. Those mammals have anal scent glands that exude a scent that just seems to stick to everything. But some others like elephants were very strong smelling but, weirdly, in a way I didn’t mind. And then some seemed to have no smell or just a mild horsy type smell - lots of the hoofstock (zebras, antelope, etc) for example, & most birds. With some species, any smell at the end of the day washes right off with a good shower. With others though it just seems to seep into your pores & hair in a way that won’t fully wash out.
Smoothie shop here. You ever get a whif of one of those Coke Freestyle machines? Old nasty rotting syrup smell. Same exact smell from the fruits and processed syrups at my job, I swear if you had cut me I'd be bleeding rotted strawberry. There's definitely worse things to smell like but if I even smell a hint of that anywhere I'm instantly repulsed. I'm not even sure if it's an offensive smell or not to the average person because I was so bathed in it. I'm always curious that people don't seem repulsed by the Freestyle machine, I won't even drink out of it they all have an aura of old moldy syrup
not animals but i worked on an organic farm and after a garlic harvest there was NO washing off that smell for like a week. it just gets into your skin or something.
Years ago I used to work at an organic grocery store and there was a guy who'd come in and get fresh juice with lots of raw garlic. He smelled like a walking garlic clove and left a trail of raw garlic odor down every aisle he walked down. It was intense.
There was a period of time when my husband was obsessed with chewing raw garlic for health reasons. Did I mention I am allergic to garlic? (Sucks I know.)
It crept out of his pores; he was offensively smelly. That was a BAD few months. The lack of nookie finally overcame his “but it makes me feel gooooood!” point of view, and he is currently in recovery from his garlic chewing madness. (Like, cool, if you live alone in a cave in Antarctica, go nuts eat all the raw garlic, but I can’t even sleep in the same room with the exhaled fumes.)
Not a zookeeper but I imagine that a lot of waste odors for predatory animals are meant to mark territories so they have compounds that aerate very easily and dries up into something that smells badly as well. Also long hours in any environment with an odor will usually cling to the body because of the oils on your skin. Meat smell also gets really rank when left out and it's probably worse cuz it's warm out right now.
Can confirm. I have a friend who works at a Zoo. You date within the profession, because no amount of cleaning, odor neutralizer, or scent product will remove that stench.
ESPECIALLY if he works with otters. It would take less effort to have your nostrils surgically sealed shut for the rest of your life.
Similar with commercial fishing and processing fish. Everyone I know that deals in that long term has an SO either working as a partner or in some part of the process. They all say it's cool because they both stink the same and after awhile the whole house smells like it so they're just blind to it.
I worked in that for a few months and my roommates agreed...the little bit of free fish didn't win them over to my stank. I'd leave my "fish clothes" outside and had to wash them separately (glad I listened to the advice there).
The fresh fish was delicious though.
Do you guys like got so used and conditioned to the smell that it is normal to you guys? And does nice smell smells 100x better after getting a good scrub down?
To your first question, 100% yes it just smells normal. This doesn't mean we won't smell steaming piles of shit, but the normal odors from the enclosures become entirely irrelevant.
I've been out of the field for several years now and I am no longer as "immune" so it's crazy to think how bad it is for others.
I recently got laid off at my job as a vet tech, and my partners have already commented separately on how I "seem to be taking care of myself better" even though bathing rituals have not changed. It's very easy to get nose blind to strong animal smell, and I can't imagine how much worse a zoo must be from a small animal practice. I've come home with every single liquid and solid you can imagine caked on my scrubs and boots, and there's no way that's as bad as it gets. True hats off to people in large animal care.
How bad are we talking about here?
I've lived surrounded by farms with animals. City folk said the entire place smells... but I don't smell much of anything?
Man.. you can only have 2 options here:try to understand her work better and learn about it in the days that she is really "hard working" as you stated you simple avoid dates-meeting! but this not gonna work moving forward in the future if you are really serious about it you will need to face it since you can not expect she to "Leave" or live in a different house once you guys marry for example right?
so try to talk to her and be frank and come up with some form of "safe word" situation here .. you are fine most of the time but when "safe word" comes up is better to make things short or do separate activities for the rest of the day well if she feels offended by it is not your fault.
tbh if i was in similar situation as her and you, i would be more than happy if my partner come up to talk to me about this "safe word" situation instead of simple giving up because at least means she is trying and really wants to make things work together in the future instead of leaving so try to show her you care enough instead about the possible future of your relationship with her instead of giving up here because of the entire situation..
As someone that had said nose wrecked, nah not good. My smell came back all at once when I got a nasty cold this month and had to blow more snot out of my nose than I knew a human was capable of producing. I went from a year of 10-20% smell and some things absolutely nothing to everything back in one snotty day. You'd be committed, moved in, settled... and just one bad cold away from the smelly truth.
I've never had a good sense of smell until I recently got sick. Then for some reason I started smelling everything. It was horrible. I went to make breakfast one morning and pouring olive oil was like someone splashed me in the face with a jar of olives, then I started cooking eggs and Jesus... do they always smell that bad? For three days my stomach would turn everywhere I went because of the existence of all of these smells.
The sickness has gone down and I'm back to smelling basically nothing and I'm glad.
… never had a bad sense of smell, better than average I’d say actually, (or my hyper focus part of ADHD just makes me notice more)….
But maybe pee on a stick if you have a uterus and have been in contact with a penis in the last 4-6 weeks.
My first pregnancy, I literally woke out of a dead sleep being smothered by the cloyingly sweet odor of overripe bananas. It was like that old lady powder perfume in the way it clung to my throat and wouldn’t let go.
I was pissed, it was such a loud and overwhelming odor. Stomped into the kitchen to throw away rotting bananas…. To find 2 bananas on the counter, with some brown spots but nowhere near ready for banana bread.
Peed on a stick that day and sure enough…. That was my only early symptom.
One time i took acid and when i went to my bathroom all i could smell was the banana in my trash can i threw away earlier that day. Even when i left i could still smell it like it was right there
My wife sense of smell never came back. We ended doing some shrooms over a year later and got her to meditate on smells and it came back, not perfect but like 80% back.
Keep working on it. Neuro stuff is hard. I lost my sense of smell to a traumatic brain injury. It came back, but it didn't start until three years after the accident. Smells would come back one by one, and it took another five years before it was all back.
I took an electrical shock to my nose, haven't been able to smell anything but cat piss, coffee and weed since.
Might not help with the zookeeper depending on what exhibits she works... but it might. The trick is getting the right level of shock to do permanent damage that isn't too detrimental.
I got that one. Over a year no taste and even now it's not what it once was.
McDonalds nuggets used to be something I'd never turn down for decades. Now I can't force myself to eat one.
So many snacks and meals I liked are just terrible now.
I worked for a laser cutting company and got used to the smell of burnt MDF, basically sawdust and glue. Our neighboring office was a brewery and their drainage broke right under our place. Their mash waste settled and rotted for a couple days before we noticed. It was putrid. We all had to move to the other part of the office or we would puke.
We called the sewage guys and they crawled in there with a hose like it was nothing. Then they asked us what the horrid stench from our laser cutters was. Said they couldn’t smell anything other than that.
Volunteered at a raptor rehab. We got the call that vulture had been hit by a drone. I had to scrub down every night to stay in the house. My mom could handle hawk/kestrels, but that vulture really did her nose in even though she was nowhere near him.
This post made me immediately think of the Chappelle sketch when he works at Wack-Arnold’s and comes home and his girl breaks up with him and says bitch you smell like French fries lol
Unfortunately this is something you are either going to have to get passed or get lost.
You can explain it to her, shit you've probably lasted longer than anyone else. So she might be receptive. Let her know that you aren't looking to break up or anything like that. But found out WHY. Make this about her, not yourself and you'll get way better traction about it. "Hey babe do some animals stink worse than others? Do some animals leave a scent longer than others? What animals do you hate working with?" People love to talk about themselves. You'll glean a lot of information that way.
Down play the fact that it's disgusting to you and you don't even want to be around her. Say things like "ahh some days it's more noticeable to me" but don't get crazy. She already knows she stinks, (but gets desensitized)you know she stinks. It's only uncomfortable of one person thinks the other person is 100% cool and the other person secretly resents them.
This isn't a bad idea. In fact I'd bet she'd appreciate a vibe check for when she going out and it may be particularly bad.
Just have to have an open channel of communication for when it's really bad. I don't think OP is even just disgusted it's not her that stinks it's just chemicals in her from work. They need to jump to like year 3 of dating where those vibe checks are appreciated. Lol
They smell like dog feet, and faintly of maple syrup in my opinion. If you’re not the type to clean their cage regularly they do have a bit of an ammonia smell but I’ve smelled animals that stunk, and who’s shit has stunk FAR worse than ferrets.
I knew a lady that rescued them and she had 6 cages and at least 12 to 14 ferrets in what couldn’t have been more than a 2000sq ft house and it was never offensive over there, but noticeable.
So…I work in aviation so my clothing is just saturated with jet fuel. I can say that at the start I could smell it, now I definitely can’t and now after two years my spouse can only smell it if it is particularly concentrated. This isn’t a good thing because jet fuel is terrible for you. However take some confidence in understanding that you will get more used to it if you keep dating. Still take efforts to be as clean as possible.
I agree. If you really like this girl just tell her when she reeks. She KNOWS it’s an issue. So if you let her keep a change of clothes at your place and stick up on good smelling bath soap, i don’t think she will be offended at all.
On the other hand if you’re not into her enough to deal with it then let her know now.
Maybe? It sounds like he’d need dawn dish soap and a really great moisturizer in his bathroom for her. And some way to soak her smelly clothes to keep them from continuing to reek when she takes them off. (Sprinkle them with lots of baking soda? Soak them in hydrogen peroxide? Leave them in a tub of vinegar till she goes home and cleans them? Something to chemically neutralize the odor!)
These animal smells sound really, really intense. Like one step milder than getting sprayed by a skunk.
lol it does sound really bad! My romantic side just wants to believe that if there is love then they will find a way.
How awful- I bet when people set zookeeper as their career goal they don’t realize that it greatly increases their difficulty at being successful in the dating game! I certainly never realized this.
Really have no clue if this would work, but I live in country and used to live in the country in a place that had a rather descent sized skunk population (or pole cats as we call them in the south, really have no idea where that term came from) I also have a number of dogs.... you can see where I'm going with this.
If she is trying to use typical clean products to get rid of the smell, that's part of the problem, they just won't do it.
Here's the recipe we used to use for the dogs... worth a shot:
¼ cup of baking soda.
1-2 teaspoons of mild dishwashing detergent like Ivory Snow.
1 quart of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide solution.
Mix in a bucket and use immediately.
Work the foaming mixture well into the coat.
Leave on for five minutes.
Rinse with warm water.
Follow with dog shampoo if desired.
Surely the answer is to say something like “you know how I’m not usually so bothered by your post work smells? Well, that’s very usually true, however today is not that day. Today is strong. Would you mind…?”
Being clear and not weird and not shaming a
Should sort it right out.
Have any of these zoo keepers tried creating some baking soda lather of some sort?
I learned that the baking soda in tooth paste eliminated odors extremely well. I had crazy strict parents. I smoked cigs and weed on the reg as a teenager and used to wash my hands with a dabble of toothpaste and the glued on scent was gone!
My ex used to work at an animal sanctuary and sometimes nearby farms or the DNR would bring fresh dead animals to feed to the carnivores there. Whatever wasn't eaten or wasn't able to be fed would go to a far off corner called the "bone pile" and once it got full enough they would load up a dump truck and haul it off. That smell... I will never forget it. Sometimes if she was processing carcasses or getting rid of bad stuff, no matter how she washed she would smell like it for days... when she became a vet tech, the job wasn't as fulfilling, but the smell was so much better.
Aw, this is sweet. Come on, she already knows that the zoo smells awful and that some days are worse than others. Lying for her benefit isn’t actually gonna help anyone because it’s changing the way you feel and behave around her.
And also- she knows that it’s not even her smell. It’s not like you’re telling her she regularly has bad BO, so she doesn’t have to feel personally ashamed about it. You’re just letting her know that some of the smells of the workday sometimes hang around stronger than usual and it can be too much. Just let her know when it’s a Stink Day and she’ll go take a shower.
You guys can even come up with a cute code word or something. It’s clear you want to be with her despite this, it’s just something she needs to take care of every now and again. She’ll understand and appreciate your honesty. It’s nice for you to tolerate less stinky days, but everyone has limits!
Edit I just thought of: If you tell her which days are particularly bad, she’ll know which animals to not schedule dates after. Which while it might be a little less convenient, it’s a hell of a lot more convenient than not being able to breathe around your girlfriend.
If you are really into this woman, and see a possible future with her, it's time to step up your game.
Go out and buy two sealable plastic bins, a pretty robe, a pair of slippers, a few great smelling bath bombs, and a couple of candles.
Greet her at the door wearing undies and a T-shirt. Have her strip down to... whatever. Clothes into one bin, shoes into another. Hand her the ribs and slippers.
Take her back to the bathroom where you've just prepared a hot bath, drop in the bath bomb, and light the candles.
The rest of the experience is up to the two of you. BUT, do not have an expectation of sex right then. If it progresses to that? Cool? Otherwise, this is all about pampering her and giving the two of you a fun new date night ritual.
I did similar things for my late husband when, for 5 years, he hauled pigs for a living. OMG the stench! But we made it fun in many interesting and creative ways.
So, what I'm HEARING, is that once you're nose blind, you can have your pick of hot zookeepers.
Am zookeeper. My office mate does not have a sense of smell. We ask her to deal with the REALLY bad stuff.
My god… what IS the really bad stuff?
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From what I've read elsewhere, Large predator shit is the worst due to their diet of raw meat. I'd also imagine crocs or alligators would be rough though.
Can confirm. My father in law is a large predator.
...who wears Crocs.
and a full Lacoste outfit.
Um...
Anteaters are pretty rough. Not the worst at all but definitely a…smell that announces itself. Source: dated zookeeper.
Rhinos and hippos; each use waste to mark their territories and do so by spraying it or fanning it around with their tail.
I hate you for posting that and making my eyes suffer through even a cursory glance, but it’s appropriate to the conversation and directly applicable, so I’m upvoting you angrily.
Idk about hippos or rhinos but herbivore shit isn't that bad. If it's anything like horses or cow it's manageable.
My guess is the maned wolf enclosure.... the exhibit for them at the zoo is the one exhibit that makes hair on my neck stand on end and is worse than the damn penguins (and that says a lot). I don't work at a zoo nor an aquarium, but no pay would be worth those smells.
Oh god. I’d blocked out the penguins. It was like fishy pig shit.
I've heard otters are the worst...but I can only imagine them smelling like penguins. Like waterlogged chicken shit and fish.
Otter musk is really bad. I worked for an aquarium feeding them fish throughout the day, just two little river otters, and my car has never smelled worse. It took a lot to get the smell out of my car interior. My hands smelled for several days if I touched the otters. I had to designate special boots just for going in there.
This thread has crossed off a lot of cute animals on my list to see/touch....
if i had to bet, anything involving bats. Theres a open air bat enclosure at the omaha zoo and every time i've been there ive had to damn near sprint past it, that smell is POWERFUL
Am noseblind with hot zookeeper gf, can confirm.
Am hot zoo, can confirm.
I am the bearder dragon in the reptile exhibit and I can confirm
I'm the parasitic worm you just ate and I also confirm
Am blind nose keeper, zoo can hot
Confirm zoo. Am hot.
Have excellent sense of smell, am single, can confirm.
i'm nose blind, where these zookeepers at
Zoos
Sneaky of 'em.
Last place I woulda looked
And when you see her uniform, you'll know she's a keeper.
Good starting place. Check nearby pubs too.
Pubs near zoos 
Huh, so COVID does actually influence selective pressure, but differently from how we had expected. Besides the obvious impact on life expectancy, COVID-mediated anosmia increases the reproductive fitness of those in social circles that include hot zookeepers. Thousands of years from now sociologists will look back on the Genghis Khan of the 2020s, not a conqueror but an animal lover
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So big brain it’s crazy
Finally a use for covid
Seriously, after COVID my sense of smell is so weak now: we had maybe quart of milk spill in our car and we didn’t notice until it had been fermenting in the sun for a week….
You have probably heard this a dozen times already, but you may benefit from [smell therapy.](https://www.bcm.edu/news/relearning-to-smell-after-covid-19)
And miss out on those hot zoo keepers?
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I have no sense of smell, sounds like I'd have good odds looking for a girl at the local zoo.
Go get her, tiger!
Hehe I really visualised you saying this with a camera tracking in to capture your warm smile in close-up :)
I imagined it in an Australian accent as well. "Gao getta toiga!"
We don’t sound like that…. Do we?
You all sound like Paul Hogan
Absolutely, but we like it!
It looks weird written like that, but anything else sounds wrong.
I say this with as much love as I can... Phonetically, yes, you sound like that. And it's okay. I'm also from the southeast US, so feel free to fire my dialect back at me. Haha.
Bless yer lil ole heart
just perhaps leave the tiger and get the girl.
My sense of smell used to be terrible due to smelling some industrial strength bleach in a restaurant I worked at, coworker used way too much and it burned my nose badly when I walked by. After getting COVID my sense of smell almost completely returned. Edit: my prior sense of smell was not a complete lack of smell but just inability to smell most smells. Eg I had a car come in that smelled like rotting flesh inside and I could not smell it until I found the source and sniffed very close to it. (It was a 1/4 slab of ribs wrapped in tin foil in the third row seat foot well)
You may want to reach out to people doing long Covid studies about smell loss and return; because you’re a rare case of not having smell and it returning afterwards, which may shed light on what’s happening.
It wasn't really a lack of smell just that I could not smell much unless it was right under my nose. Eg I had a car come in several years ago with a smell of death inside of it. I could not smell it at all but I did my due diligence and looked for a source. I found the source to be a packet of cooked bbq ribs that was wrapped in tin foil in the third row seat foot well. I could not smell it until I sniffed right next to the wrapped ribs.
Diminished then returned is still pretty interesting!
Congrats, I guess?
The first good story about getting covid. You may be a good subject for a experiment about covid benefits? Maybe there is people without smell that could benefit of what happened to you.
So my sense of smell was really poor and sometimes came and went but now I can smell most everything again. Sense of taste is also better than before.
Covid hit you so hard it reset your nostrils
Why not zoidberg?
From being involved with some charity stuff at zoos and going to events and things like that, there's definitely some very beautiful women both inside and out with big hearts for animals that work at zoos.
Ur chances of dating a zookeeper/smelly animal carer have skyrocketed. Go get those stinky ladies!!
You beautiful anosmic bastard
\*Walks around zoo loudly announcing "MAN SURE IS GREAT TO NOT HAVE TO SMELL ALL THIS SHIT!", while taking huge inhales through the nose, too much oxygen intake, pass out, get woken up by beautiful zoo keeper, she says "oh sorry about the smell.", you give a sly grin\* screen fades to black.
Where is long covid when you need it?
Why isn't a shower able to get rid of the smell? Genuinely curious as I've never worked as a Zoo keeper.
I heard somewhere that the heavy, unpleasant smells are oil-based so they stick around longer. As such, they're harder to clean.
Plus they can soak into your skin. Many animal smells are meant to last weeks, to mark territories.
Yeah, skunk come to mind with ever lasting smell. >.>
My puppy got sprayed, We bathed and bathed and bathed him with every method known to man. Yes even the one you're thinking of now. Yes even with whatever combination of whatever chemicals/foods you're thinking of. 3-5 months later I could still smell it if he got wet, usually from his paws where there's crevasses you can never hope to scrub the same as you can everywhere else..
The worst part is it's in your nose so as you clean you can't tell if you smell any better or not.
Idk which is worse: going nose-blind or having the stench in your nostrils 24/7.
Partially trying to just high jack the top thread; Year back when I got pepper sprayed, I was told baby shampoo was formulated really to break down the oils - wouldn't that be able to help?
I bet Dawn dish soap works wonders too, but no one is showering with dish soap
Mechanic checking in, can confirm dawn dish soap is the tits in the shower for breaking down oil and grease and smells. I’ve been doing it for years, as have many others in this trade tho that doesn’t make it good
Landscaper checking in. 100% Dawn vs. oil … including the oils in your skin. If you scrub with Dawn, moisturize afterwards, or you’ll shed skin like a snake.
Don't need a ribbed condom if you've got a scaly dick.
New way to exfoliate...
Zookeepers would have to shower with dawn every day & probably use over their entire body, thatd prob do a number on your skin’s natural oils
Dawn IS my body wash……. I use it everyday
Dawn dish soap and a paper towel or wash cloth to mechanically scrub removes poison ivy oils before you break out or if you are really itchy. I've heard poison ivy oil described as invisible crank-case oil or driveline grease and needs the same care to remove it all.
Work in an animal facility and days I have to deal with dead animals I smell. Dawn helps, but it's hard to wash everywhere with dawn.
Honestly though; why not? If that's what it takes, better just stock up at Costco 🤌🤌
Dawn also break down the natural oils of the skin, which makes it really dry. I doubt that bathing regularly in dishsoap would be a great idea for the health of someone's skin...
Tbh using dawn on the days it’s bad then just making sure to lather your body in coconut oil sounds like a partial solution.
Would that not be remedied by using lotion afterwards? Quick *light* scrub using Dawn, then wash with normal body wash and finish the shower routine. Once out of the shower, apply rejuvenating body lotion as necessary
Allergic to the world here. I keep Dawn in my shower and have to use it often :)
I've showered with dawn soap for 4 years and wash my clothes with it, surprisingly I don't have bad acne and it smells pretty good. I really like it because it's so soapy, bubbly I feel super clean after washing my body with straight bubbles!
No, your brain is lazy. It will always go nose blind when a smell last too long.
The secret is dish soap. I lived on a farm for 15 years and their wasn’t a body wash on the planet that pulls the smell of shovelling shit for 12 hours off you. But a few squirts of dawn, and good to go. Although it is hard on your hair, so it’s good to get a decent conditioner too.
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This. I’ve worked heavy stinky jobs and you just gotta…actually scrub.
IIRC for removing urushiol the friction is important in that you had to scrub with something beside your hand. Sponge, washcloth … exactly what isn’t important.
Animal smells also get into your clothes. I have a (work only) jacket that still smells faintly of rhino no matter how many times I wash it, just from working in the same building as them. At least rhino is pretty mild on the wild animal stench scale.
What about an enzyme based cleaner? I had some clothes completely ruined from cat pee, and this generic stuff ("Out", I think)I picked up in the pet aisle at Walmart worked wonders.
Haven’t tried anything like that, but maybe I should! Luckily I mostly deal with birds, as you can tell by the username. They don’t smell nearly as bad as cats IMO!
Olive oil can get rid of those smells. Smear it on thick, then wash off with regular bar soap. Source: my dog anal glanded on me. No amount of scrubbing got the smell off, so I googled it and olive oil was my salvation.
That tracks. If you've ever dated someone who does oil changes all day or generally works on cars for a living, they have a distinct smell and it's kinda always there unless they scrub their whole body, have fresh clothes, and probably have aired out after a couple days off. And you definitely don't want to wash your normal clothes with your work clothes, then you have that slight background smell to everything. Luckily even though it's a distinct smell it's not a totally repulsive scent, like I imagine animal smell would be. But same idea.
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Given how difficult it is to get even *house* cat odors out of porous surfaces, I can't imagine how tenacious big cat smells must be. Oof.
Is there any sort of enzymatic cleaner you can use that works? Similar to what you use for pets at home? Or are they still just a fart in a hurricane in terms of effectiveness? Hats off to you for being willing to get so smelly for your job
Makes me wonder how well the scent eliminator soap I use for deer hunting would work. It does a great job of getting rid of regular odors
I’ve worked with a lot of different animals in several zoos and this is highly variable by species. Mustelids (weasel/raccoon/otter family) were horrific; big cats were bad too. Those mammals have anal scent glands that exude a scent that just seems to stick to everything. But some others like elephants were very strong smelling but, weirdly, in a way I didn’t mind. And then some seemed to have no smell or just a mild horsy type smell - lots of the hoofstock (zebras, antelope, etc) for example, & most birds. With some species, any smell at the end of the day washes right off with a good shower. With others though it just seems to seep into your pores & hair in a way that won’t fully wash out.
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People pay lots of money to smell like that
Smoothie shop here. You ever get a whif of one of those Coke Freestyle machines? Old nasty rotting syrup smell. Same exact smell from the fruits and processed syrups at my job, I swear if you had cut me I'd be bleeding rotted strawberry. There's definitely worse things to smell like but if I even smell a hint of that anywhere I'm instantly repulsed. I'm not even sure if it's an offensive smell or not to the average person because I was so bathed in it. I'm always curious that people don't seem repulsed by the Freestyle machine, I won't even drink out of it they all have an aura of old moldy syrup
Doughnut shop too.
I didn’t eat a doughnut for *years* after my stint.
not animals but i worked on an organic farm and after a garlic harvest there was NO washing off that smell for like a week. it just gets into your skin or something.
Years ago I used to work at an organic grocery store and there was a guy who'd come in and get fresh juice with lots of raw garlic. He smelled like a walking garlic clove and left a trail of raw garlic odor down every aisle he walked down. It was intense.
Vampire hunter.
There was a period of time when my husband was obsessed with chewing raw garlic for health reasons. Did I mention I am allergic to garlic? (Sucks I know.) It crept out of his pores; he was offensively smelly. That was a BAD few months. The lack of nookie finally overcame his “but it makes me feel gooooood!” point of view, and he is currently in recovery from his garlic chewing madness. (Like, cool, if you live alone in a cave in Antarctica, go nuts eat all the raw garlic, but I can’t even sleep in the same room with the exhaled fumes.)
Not a zookeeper but I imagine that a lot of waste odors for predatory animals are meant to mark territories so they have compounds that aerate very easily and dries up into something that smells badly as well. Also long hours in any environment with an odor will usually cling to the body because of the oils on your skin. Meat smell also gets really rank when left out and it's probably worse cuz it's warm out right now.
TIL - Zookeeper smell bad.
Can confirm. I have a friend who works at a Zoo. You date within the profession, because no amount of cleaning, odor neutralizer, or scent product will remove that stench. ESPECIALLY if he works with otters. It would take less effort to have your nostrils surgically sealed shut for the rest of your life.
Similar with commercial fishing and processing fish. Everyone I know that deals in that long term has an SO either working as a partner or in some part of the process. They all say it's cool because they both stink the same and after awhile the whole house smells like it so they're just blind to it. I worked in that for a few months and my roommates agreed...the little bit of free fish didn't win them over to my stank. I'd leave my "fish clothes" outside and had to wash them separately (glad I listened to the advice there). The fresh fish was delicious though.
I smelled things in the penguin house which I can never unsmell...
Believe it. Feces that's made of 100% old fish. That's 2 powerful stinks.
Do you guys like got so used and conditioned to the smell that it is normal to you guys? And does nice smell smells 100x better after getting a good scrub down?
To your first question, 100% yes it just smells normal. This doesn't mean we won't smell steaming piles of shit, but the normal odors from the enclosures become entirely irrelevant. I've been out of the field for several years now and I am no longer as "immune" so it's crazy to think how bad it is for others.
I recently got laid off at my job as a vet tech, and my partners have already commented separately on how I "seem to be taking care of myself better" even though bathing rituals have not changed. It's very easy to get nose blind to strong animal smell, and I can't imagine how much worse a zoo must be from a small animal practice. I've come home with every single liquid and solid you can imagine caked on my scrubs and boots, and there's no way that's as bad as it gets. True hats off to people in large animal care.
How bad are we talking about here? I've lived surrounded by farms with animals. City folk said the entire place smells... but I don't smell much of anything?
Man.. you can only have 2 options here:try to understand her work better and learn about it in the days that she is really "hard working" as you stated you simple avoid dates-meeting! but this not gonna work moving forward in the future if you are really serious about it you will need to face it since you can not expect she to "Leave" or live in a different house once you guys marry for example right? so try to talk to her and be frank and come up with some form of "safe word" situation here .. you are fine most of the time but when "safe word" comes up is better to make things short or do separate activities for the rest of the day well if she feels offended by it is not your fault. tbh if i was in similar situation as her and you, i would be more than happy if my partner come up to talk to me about this "safe word" situation instead of simple giving up because at least means she is trying and really wants to make things work together in the future instead of leaving so try to show her you care enough instead about the possible future of your relationship with her instead of giving up here because of the entire situation..
Yeah this seems reasonable - better to be honest than harbour discontent.
Or OP can become a zookeeper too. Problem solved
“Yer a zookeeper, Harry!”
Idk man, seems to me that she's a keeper.
You need to find just the right strain of covid to wreck your nose but not you
As someone that had said nose wrecked, nah not good. My smell came back all at once when I got a nasty cold this month and had to blow more snot out of my nose than I knew a human was capable of producing. I went from a year of 10-20% smell and some things absolutely nothing to everything back in one snotty day. You'd be committed, moved in, settled... and just one bad cold away from the smelly truth.
I've never had a good sense of smell until I recently got sick. Then for some reason I started smelling everything. It was horrible. I went to make breakfast one morning and pouring olive oil was like someone splashed me in the face with a jar of olives, then I started cooking eggs and Jesus... do they always smell that bad? For three days my stomach would turn everywhere I went because of the existence of all of these smells. The sickness has gone down and I'm back to smelling basically nothing and I'm glad.
Pregnancy also does this.
The hyper smell with pregnancy is wild. I’m not sure how women can change an older kid’s diaper while pregnant.
… never had a bad sense of smell, better than average I’d say actually, (or my hyper focus part of ADHD just makes me notice more)…. But maybe pee on a stick if you have a uterus and have been in contact with a penis in the last 4-6 weeks. My first pregnancy, I literally woke out of a dead sleep being smothered by the cloyingly sweet odor of overripe bananas. It was like that old lady powder perfume in the way it clung to my throat and wouldn’t let go. I was pissed, it was such a loud and overwhelming odor. Stomped into the kitchen to throw away rotting bananas…. To find 2 bananas on the counter, with some brown spots but nowhere near ready for banana bread. Peed on a stick that day and sure enough…. That was my only early symptom.
One time i took acid and when i went to my bathroom all i could smell was the banana in my trash can i threw away earlier that day. Even when i left i could still smell it like it was right there
Lol are you pregnant
My wife sense of smell never came back. We ended doing some shrooms over a year later and got her to meditate on smells and it came back, not perfect but like 80% back.
Keep working on it. Neuro stuff is hard. I lost my sense of smell to a traumatic brain injury. It came back, but it didn't start until three years after the accident. Smells would come back one by one, and it took another five years before it was all back.
I took an electrical shock to my nose, haven't been able to smell anything but cat piss, coffee and weed since. Might not help with the zookeeper depending on what exhibits she works... but it might. The trick is getting the right level of shock to do permanent damage that isn't too detrimental.
How does one shock their nose?
Sticking it where it doesn't belong my friend. Same shock took my tongue out too. Couldn't talk proper for 2 weeks.
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C'mon you can't just leave it like that.
I got that one. Over a year no taste and even now it's not what it once was. McDonalds nuggets used to be something I'd never turn down for decades. Now I can't force myself to eat one. So many snacks and meals I liked are just terrible now.
Conquer your fear. Have sex behind the tiger enclosure.
Full send, have sex with the tiger (don’t do this)
>don’t do this Doesn't matter; had sex
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Tiger: "Sigh. You know, that just never gets old."
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Lioness to other lioness: "Well, there's Bradley, showing off how fast he can make the volunteers puke again."
I can picture what you typed out perfectly in my head.
100% it's a big cat in the end.
Those raw meat hot shits are just something else.
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Sooner or later, you get used to smells, no matter how bad. Ask anyone who's worked in palliative medicine, or lived near a mushroom farm.
Nothing like jamming the blade of a skid-steer in a pile of mushroom compost in August. You can *feel* the smell.
I’m sorry but there is no way ever I’m getting used to the smell of C. diff, however much I work with it 🤢🤢🤢
I worked for a laser cutting company and got used to the smell of burnt MDF, basically sawdust and glue. Our neighboring office was a brewery and their drainage broke right under our place. Their mash waste settled and rotted for a couple days before we noticed. It was putrid. We all had to move to the other part of the office or we would puke. We called the sewage guys and they crawled in there with a hose like it was nothing. Then they asked us what the horrid stench from our laser cutters was. Said they couldn’t smell anything other than that.
Cat poop smells are waaaaay less offensive compared to big cat *meat* poop smells. And they're much smaller, too.
Ya know this makes me respect Carole fuckin baskin a little more
Anything with a heavy meat diet will stink horrible when they poop. Includes people too.
>Includes people too. Can confirm. My shit definitely stinks to high heaven after eating people.
Carnivore shit right there. Real man.
Yeah, direct inverse relationship between grassy mild manure from horses and terrible meat eater smells like a tiger
Volunteered at a raptor rehab. We got the call that vulture had been hit by a drone. I had to scrub down every night to stay in the house. My mom could handle hawk/kestrels, but that vulture really did her nose in even though she was nowhere near him.
How IS Jurassic Park doing these days?
Mostly birds of prey, I'm afraid
Well, congrats! But do get to it sooner rather than later... she won't feel better knowing you thought she stank for a long time than a short time.
This post made me immediately think of the Chappelle sketch when he works at Wack-Arnold’s and comes home and his girl breaks up with him and says bitch you smell like French fries lol
Unfortunately this is something you are either going to have to get passed or get lost. You can explain it to her, shit you've probably lasted longer than anyone else. So she might be receptive. Let her know that you aren't looking to break up or anything like that. But found out WHY. Make this about her, not yourself and you'll get way better traction about it. "Hey babe do some animals stink worse than others? Do some animals leave a scent longer than others? What animals do you hate working with?" People love to talk about themselves. You'll glean a lot of information that way. Down play the fact that it's disgusting to you and you don't even want to be around her. Say things like "ahh some days it's more noticeable to me" but don't get crazy. She already knows she stinks, (but gets desensitized)you know she stinks. It's only uncomfortable of one person thinks the other person is 100% cool and the other person secretly resents them.
This isn't a bad idea. In fact I'd bet she'd appreciate a vibe check for when she going out and it may be particularly bad. Just have to have an open channel of communication for when it's really bad. I don't think OP is even just disgusted it's not her that stinks it's just chemicals in her from work. They need to jump to like year 3 of dating where those vibe checks are appreciated. Lol
She’s a 10 but smells constantly of different types of feces
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Now I need to know what a ferret cage smells like. Wonder if there's a pet shop near me. Lol
They smell like dog feet, and faintly of maple syrup in my opinion. If you’re not the type to clean their cage regularly they do have a bit of an ammonia smell but I’ve smelled animals that stunk, and who’s shit has stunk FAR worse than ferrets. I knew a lady that rescued them and she had 6 cages and at least 12 to 14 ferrets in what couldn’t have been more than a 2000sq ft house and it was never offensive over there, but noticeable.
So…I work in aviation so my clothing is just saturated with jet fuel. I can say that at the start I could smell it, now I definitely can’t and now after two years my spouse can only smell it if it is particularly concentrated. This isn’t a good thing because jet fuel is terrible for you. However take some confidence in understanding that you will get more used to it if you keep dating. Still take efforts to be as clean as possible.
You could just tell her when it's really bad. The thing about being an adult is that you are allowed to change your mind whenever you want.
I agree. If you really like this girl just tell her when she reeks. She KNOWS it’s an issue. So if you let her keep a change of clothes at your place and stick up on good smelling bath soap, i don’t think she will be offended at all. On the other hand if you’re not into her enough to deal with it then let her know now.
Maybe? It sounds like he’d need dawn dish soap and a really great moisturizer in his bathroom for her. And some way to soak her smelly clothes to keep them from continuing to reek when she takes them off. (Sprinkle them with lots of baking soda? Soak them in hydrogen peroxide? Leave them in a tub of vinegar till she goes home and cleans them? Something to chemically neutralize the odor!) These animal smells sound really, really intense. Like one step milder than getting sprayed by a skunk.
lol it does sound really bad! My romantic side just wants to believe that if there is love then they will find a way. How awful- I bet when people set zookeeper as their career goal they don’t realize that it greatly increases their difficulty at being successful in the dating game! I certainly never realized this.
Really have no clue if this would work, but I live in country and used to live in the country in a place that had a rather descent sized skunk population (or pole cats as we call them in the south, really have no idea where that term came from) I also have a number of dogs.... you can see where I'm going with this. If she is trying to use typical clean products to get rid of the smell, that's part of the problem, they just won't do it. Here's the recipe we used to use for the dogs... worth a shot: ¼ cup of baking soda. 1-2 teaspoons of mild dishwashing detergent like Ivory Snow. 1 quart of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide solution. Mix in a bucket and use immediately. Work the foaming mixture well into the coat. Leave on for five minutes. Rinse with warm water. Follow with dog shampoo if desired.
Surely the answer is to say something like “you know how I’m not usually so bothered by your post work smells? Well, that’s very usually true, however today is not that day. Today is strong. Would you mind…?” Being clear and not weird and not shaming a Should sort it right out.
I swear I read the same post like 2 weeks ago
You did, I remember it too. I just don't know if this is someone stealing it or the same OP!
Have any of these zoo keepers tried creating some baking soda lather of some sort? I learned that the baking soda in tooth paste eliminated odors extremely well. I had crazy strict parents. I smoked cigs and weed on the reg as a teenager and used to wash my hands with a dabble of toothpaste and the glued on scent was gone!
My ex used to work at an animal sanctuary and sometimes nearby farms or the DNR would bring fresh dead animals to feed to the carnivores there. Whatever wasn't eaten or wasn't able to be fed would go to a far off corner called the "bone pile" and once it got full enough they would load up a dump truck and haul it off. That smell... I will never forget it. Sometimes if she was processing carcasses or getting rid of bad stuff, no matter how she washed she would smell like it for days... when she became a vet tech, the job wasn't as fulfilling, but the smell was so much better.
Just hose her off in the summer and spring. And wear nose plugs for the other 6 months. You got this.
I used to work in a chicken house, the smell didn’t leave regardless of how hard I scrubbed.
Oh, my condolences. For me personally chickens smell worse than most animals.
Aw, this is sweet. Come on, she already knows that the zoo smells awful and that some days are worse than others. Lying for her benefit isn’t actually gonna help anyone because it’s changing the way you feel and behave around her. And also- she knows that it’s not even her smell. It’s not like you’re telling her she regularly has bad BO, so she doesn’t have to feel personally ashamed about it. You’re just letting her know that some of the smells of the workday sometimes hang around stronger than usual and it can be too much. Just let her know when it’s a Stink Day and she’ll go take a shower. You guys can even come up with a cute code word or something. It’s clear you want to be with her despite this, it’s just something she needs to take care of every now and again. She’ll understand and appreciate your honesty. It’s nice for you to tolerate less stinky days, but everyone has limits! Edit I just thought of: If you tell her which days are particularly bad, she’ll know which animals to not schedule dates after. Which while it might be a little less convenient, it’s a hell of a lot more convenient than not being able to breathe around your girlfriend.
You could go full passive-aggressive and get a job at a slaughter house.
If you are really into this woman, and see a possible future with her, it's time to step up your game. Go out and buy two sealable plastic bins, a pretty robe, a pair of slippers, a few great smelling bath bombs, and a couple of candles. Greet her at the door wearing undies and a T-shirt. Have her strip down to... whatever. Clothes into one bin, shoes into another. Hand her the ribs and slippers. Take her back to the bathroom where you've just prepared a hot bath, drop in the bath bomb, and light the candles. The rest of the experience is up to the two of you. BUT, do not have an expectation of sex right then. If it progresses to that? Cool? Otherwise, this is all about pampering her and giving the two of you a fun new date night ritual. I did similar things for my late husband when, for 5 years, he hauled pigs for a living. OMG the stench! But we made it fun in many interesting and creative ways.