6 minute read
ANIMAL TEACH
We had the pleasure of interviewing Naomi Ennis, the person behind Animal Teach an exciting, educational workshop provider based in Runcorn. We managed to grab her for a quick chat between all the workshops she was doing and ask he about her animal journey.
Serial Culture: Where did your love of animals start?
Naomi: I remember being about six years old, when my mum asked me to stop feeding the snails in the garden. I wasn't allowed any animals, so I used to take out lettuce to the garden and collect snails and they had names,then the snails become a squirrel. My love of animals then went to feeding the squirrels in the garden and then dropping my mum off for work and seeing the Heron on the fields in the same place. So yeah, from a very young age, I just found them incredibly fascinating. That's probably where it started. The animal keeper inside.
Serial Culture: Have you ever seen any foxes out in public? If so do you ever feed them?
Naomi: I have. So I went to London quite a while ago, and there was a fox sat next to a taxi, which was really weird. So that was odd. But I do get them every now and again in front of my house. At a similar time, 3am or 4am, which I'm normally awake because one of the kids will be so yeah, that's quite nice to see.
I don't feed (foxes) at the minute. I don't put any food out on the front. I'm not sure the neighbours would agree.
Serial Culture: You have enough animals to feed as it is.
Naomi: Yeah, I have a lot of animals. So I'm probably on 35+ plus different species.
Serial Culture: What is your dream animal to add to your collection? Naomi: I would love a Komodo dragon. But that's not viable. I find it so hard to have any favourite animal and I will say it's a chameleon. Like it's on my logo and and everything. I find them weird and wonderful and unique and that's how I often describe myself because I'm not a typical person by any means. But yeah, Komodo dragon. Oh my goodness, marine iguanas; it is just all the animals that you can keep in the house. So I probably need to open a zoo.
Serial Culture: What was the first real animal that you kept and didn't just feed in the garden?
Naomi: I was 16 when I started doing animal care at college. I had a placement at a pet shop and quite often animals were not wanted and so of course I give me Mum and Dad a sob story of a bearded dragon with a missing foot and metabolic bone disease. It needed a nice home and I was somebody's home that it needed. They said if I pay towards electric ‘okay’, so I did. It had gorgeous orange bands on the face and lived with me for about four or five years. I was told it would last a night. Then one (animal) became thirty, my mum and dad used to ask me what I was carrying upstairs. So yeah, I had the bearded dragon, Yemen chameleon Berber skinks, Leopard gecko, Crested gecko, and one which is still with me. Gecks the Crested gecko.
Serial Culture: You seem to have had a lot of Geckos!
Naomi: Geckos are really, really nice. They come in lots of different colours. There's many different species from around the world. There's always something striking about each different species. Cresty’s are also known as the eyelash geckos. (They’ve) got these beautiful crests and eyelashes on the eyes, for leopard gecko it’s got to be their eyes. They have a beautiful body, you can get them in different colours for their eyes. Gargoyles are beautiful for their coloration. So very mottled very leathery and they camouflage so so well. Yeah, so there's just something fascinating about each of them.
Serial Culture: I guess a good one to ask really is how has the temperature (heatwave) affected them?
Naomi: Yes! Everything I've got has its own thermostat, so everything is tailored towards species specific needs and seasonality. However, the current heat wave which I've hated with a passion has meant that I've turned every light to UV source and heat source off. They come from very warm areas but equally when you put them into a micro habitat that really condenses down their environment, so everything got switched off, waters were increased and then I’ve been monitoring them closely. Yeah, so it's it's not been pleasant.
Serial Culture: Why did you start animal teach?
Naomi: A few different reasons. So I have studied animals since college. All of my qualifications are based in it, I was a zookeeper at Knowsley Safari and I was teaching at Myerscough college, and then Covid hit, which made me reevaluate a lot of things being based at home. At that point, I had my eldest, and then my youngest came along, and we had a few little health issues with her, so I looked at everything as a whole picture. Me as a mum with two young children wasn't the work life balance that I could envision for the family. I said to John (husband), I'm gonna quit my job and I'm going to set up a business and he just looked, he's like, what are you're gonna do with that?I was like, we are going to have a zoo. He's very used to me being quite spontaneous, but in my head, I could see that. Everything I'd worked and studied for I did not want to lose, I put so much effort into looking after animals and caring for them, that I didn't want to lose that. My brain loves animals and that's what it's geared towards. So I wanted a business that works with animals and I also love teaching people.
So Animal Teach. I can still be me and not worry about getting home and marking lots of work or following up things. It was all based on me and my timescales but equally I can still be a mom. Oh, it's so rewarding. Yeah, so the biggest thing was the family and not losing sight of who I was as a person.
Serial Culture: What animals did you look after at Knowsley?
Naomi: So I worked with everything from cockroaches to elephants.
I was a walker and keeper, my speciality at that time covered the elephants section, mammals and reptiles. In the same day, I could be working with elephants, giraffes, tapirs, meerkats, capybara. Red River hogs, moose. But my biggest speciality was the bug house. I was like, these animals are so cool, but can I go back to the cockroaches and the crocodile.
