Ambrus Anna

Be a zookeeper for a day, in Edinburgh

A day as a zookeeper at Edinburgh zoo brings vicious meerkats, a sad wallaby and some very picky penguins

Emma Kennedy in Edinburgh zoo: "I'm attempting to hand feed rock penguins and their disdain at every single slightly wonky fish is palpable. I can't stop laughing"

It's freezing. The first snap of winter is biting at Edinburgh's heels and I'm standing, wrapped to within an inch of my life, waiting for instructions. I'm at Edinburgh zoo and I'm going to be a keeper for the day. I've made two requests: penguins and meerkats. Other than that, I'm ready for anything.

I'm met by Erica Dutton. She's engaging, enthusiastic and looks as if she could leap over mountains.

"You'll be walking a lot today," she tells me. "And it's all uphill."

She's not wrong. Edinburgh zoo is set on a very steep incline. No wonder all the keepers look like marathon runners. Erica wanted to be a radiographer when she was 13. Her mum was a nurse and used to bring home a fascinating array of syringes, but work experience at a safari park when she was 16 made her mind up. I'm impressed that her ambitions were so noble from a tender age. She raises an eyebrow. "It's good to know what you want to do," she says.

My first task is to muck out the banteng, a species of wild cattle from south-east Asia. He's called Tino.

"You'll probably think he's just a massive cow," Erica tells me.

She's not wrong. He's the biggest ungulate I've ever seen.

"There are only 5,000 left in the wild," adds Erica, as I chuck an enormous excretion into a skip. "They're hunted for horn and meat."

"What do they taste like?" I ask.

Erica stares at me in slight horror. "I don't know," she says, quietly.

Next we're off to the wallaby enclosure. As we climb into a feeding pen, one wallaby is waiting for us.

"That's Edward," says Erica. "He's bullied by the others. They beat him up. We've had to handfeed him, so he's tamer than the others."

I look down at Edward and he looks up at me. He's tatty to look at and has a few post-fight scabs. I offer him a carrot. He takes it. How I'm not weeping is anyone's guess.

"One of the wallabies has a joey," Erica whispers as we creep in. They're skittish creatures and will bounce off at the slightest thing. "I haven't seen it yet. If we're very quiet we might get lucky."

We creep over to a tree and wait. Just as the relevant wallaby is in sight, and we think we can see the smallest protrusion from her pouch, my phone rings. Off they scatter. It's my dad.

"It's cold in Edinburgh," he's rung to tell me. Yes. I know.

Onwards, to enrich the daily routine of the chimps. We've stuffed fruit and hay into old pairs of trousers and shirts. Chimps are highly dangerous – "they can rip your face off" – so we stand on a balcony and throw the bounty down.

"Whatever you do," Erica tells me, as I lob a pair of trousers sideways, "don't laugh at them. They hate it. They'll throw things."

"Chimps have no sense of humour?" I ask, agog.

"None whatsoever," she answers, with a rueful shake of her head.

All of this is brilliant, of course, but the best is yet to come. I'm going to feed the meerkats.

"Let me say from the off," I tell Erica as I stuff eggshells with mealworms, "that I loved meerkats before they were famous. I'm no small-mammal flibbertigibbet."

She's impressed. "Do you think you can throw live crickets with your bare hands?" she asks, handing me a large swarming tub. Yes. Yes I can.

I'm not allowed to touch the meerkats as they're quite vicious. A general rule of zookeeping is that direct contact between you and the animal is at the animal's request only. I'm longing for a meerkat to climb up my leg and come and live in my jumper. This doesn't happen. But one does leave two muddy paw prints on my boot. It will have to do.

"Now then," says Erica, as I climb in with the penguins, bucket of fish in hand. "The penguins are fussy. If a fish even has a slight bend in it, they'll spit it back at you."

She's not lying. I've never met a bigger bunch of divas. I'm sitting surrounded by rock penguins trying to handfeed them, and their disdain at every slightly wonky fish is palpable. I can't stop laughing.

I've had an amazing day and as Erica and I are walking back to the keepers' room a small girl approaches. Her dad hands us a plastic tub. It's got a locust in it. "She found this. So we caught it."

"It's safe now," pipes up the little girl, beaming.

Erica thanks her and we walk off. "I didn't have the heart to tell her it'll be fed to something. That was it's only shot at freedom. Oh well."