KNOXVILLE — Carol Pruett, 63, has kept the Madagascar flat-tailed tortoises at Zoo Knoxville since 2002, when the zoo became the first in the country to hatch one, and this fall she started training the person who will take over from the person who will take over from her. The first replacement, Tyler Combs, 26, arrived in March. The second is a 16-year-old volunteer named Priya Nair, who comes in on Saturdays.
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums announced Sept. 30 that the zoo had won its Edward H. Bean Population Sustainability Award for the program, which is more than 50 years old and holds the largest breeding group outside Madagascar. This season it produced ten hatchlings, about double the previous record.
Pruett said the tortoises are doing fine. “Tyler’s a good worker. He asked me last week did they do anything, and I said they’re doing it right now. Anyway. I’ve got babies out there that’ll still be at this when I’m gone, and he’s going to be sixty by then, so no, I’m not leaving it with one person. They come in, they like it fine, and then about four years along they find a house over in Maryville.”
Nair, she said, does not look at her phone while she’s in the room, which was the whole interview. Pruett puts her at around forty years on the job if she doesn’t go away to school, and if she does, Pruett said, she’ll get started on a third.
Combs learned of the arrangement on Monday. He said Priya is good with the heat lamps and that he had not known he had a replacement.