March 19, 2026

When you think of the Museum’s Animal Care Team, you’re likely picturing the dedicated specialists who can be found doing enrichment in The Farmyard, caring for our behind-the-scenes program animal ambassadors, or answering your questions in Explore the Wild. But there’s one critical member of the team you may not have ever encountered — the Museum’s registered veterinary technician, Laurel.

Laurel’s role as a vet tech requires her to cover a wide array of responsibilities. Day-to-day, she’s keeping record of individual animal welfare, coordinating regular (and occasionally emergency) vet visits and exams, maintaining all veterinary equipment, administering treatments, and communicating constantly with both our on-site keepers and off-site contracted veterinarians. Laurel is also the primary quarantine keeper, meaning she works closely with incoming animals as they get ready to move to guest-accessible habitats.

Before veterinarian visits, Laurel preps our spaces and animals for procedures. During procedures, Laurel is in charge of triage, which means she’s establishing patient stability, taking vitals, and getting patient health history. She intubates patients and monitors them while they’re under anesthesia, collects and processes lab samples, places catheters, runs the ultrasound, and performs dental cleanings.

After procedures, Laurel is responsible for clean-up and initiating treatments to the animals based on the veterinarian’s recommendation and prescription.

But it’s not all business. Laurel’s “office” is in one of our two veterinary care rooms, which means there’s a little space on the floor for our program ferrets to run around and play.

With 13 years of experience as a registered veterinary technician, it’s no surprise that Laurel is an integral part of the Animal Care Team. She’s spent 11 of those years working in zoos and with exotic animals, two years working with dogs and cats, and has emergency room experience as well.

In roughly four years here at the Museum, Laurel has helped maintain the health and wellbeing of all our critters (outside the Magic Wings Butterfly House and Insectarium) from the tiniest turtles to the biggest black bears.

“It’s easy to be passionate about your work as a vet tech,” Laurel said. “Helping animals and giving them their best lives possible is a very rewarding type of work and makes you want to do your best and give your all everyday.”