In her junior year of high school Mara Rodriguez walked into the John Muir High School counseling office and learned that a baby pigeon had fallen from its nest outside. Rodriguez took the bird home and cared for it.

“I saw that thing, and something in me, I feel like it’s the nurturing side of me, it took over,” Rodriguez said.

Twenty-six years ago, Rodriguez joined Moorpark College’s America’s Teaching Zoo staff after graduating from the Exotic Animals Training and Management program in May of 1992. She said that it is the gift for nurturing which makes her suited to teach new students, and answer the same questions, year after year in the EATM program.

“[It takes] the right personality type,” Rodriguez said.

Both of Rodriguez’s parents were teachers. She said they both worked very hard, educated themselves to move up the ladder in academia, but most importantly they were both very patient and excellent communicators.

“They set the bar high, but with no pressure,” Rodriguez said. “They taught me a lot about how to be a good professional.”

Rodriguez visited America’s Teaching Zoo with her parents, in high school.

“I heard all about this place and I knew I wanted to go to school here,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said that when she walked up to the fence around the zoo, and rang the bell at the entrance, the staff told her she could not get a tour or go inside the zoo. She applied to the school anyway.

Rodriguez applied to the program hoping to attend immediately after her high school graduation in 1989, but was turned down. Looking back, Rodriguez said this was the best thing that could have happened. Instead she attended the University of California in Santa Barbara for one year and studied zoology. She then joined a gospel choir and got a job working at the front desk in her dorm.

“[I] literally had a four-year college experience in one year… I had all those great experiences,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez applied again to the program and began classes in 1990. She graduated from the program in May of 1992 and joined the America’s Teaching Zoo staff that June as a summer camp counselor. Rodriguez said that if she had been accepted to the EATM program the first time she applied, she would not have had the opportunity to start working at the zoo the summer after graduation, and her life might be completely different than it is today.

“When they say everything happens for a reason, it totally does.” Mara said. “You might not see it for years, you might not see it for 25 years.”

Rodriguez’s exact title at the zoo is Instructional Lab Technician and Zoo Operations Staff, and works with the EATM students to help them learn how to train and care for the animals who live at the zoo.

“She makes it easy to work with her,” said Danielle Glatt, 22, first-year EATM student. “She kind of feeds off of everybody’s energy.”

Michlyn Hines, operations supervisor at the zoo, said that Rodriguez is able to read both human and animal behavior really well, which helps her to train both students and animals.

Although the zoo does not have a public relations manager, Rodriguez has stepped in and filled that role.

“She does a great job communicating the needs of the zoo but also putting an inspiring, confident face to the teaching zoo itself and the EATM program,” Hines said.

The New York Times bestselling book “Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched,” published in 2006, was written about the EATM program. Rodriguez, a key character in the book, said that the author often refers to Rodriguez’s tan skin, which she attributes to the long hours spent in the elements.

“Kicked, Bitten and Scratched” is about the Simi Valley fire that approached the Moorpark College campus perimeter, October, 25, 2003. The book recounts how Rodriguez evacuated the animals, working with only eight helpers: first-year students who had not yet had any hands-on animal training. Rodriguez was the only staff member at the zoo when the evacuation order came from the police, and the second-year students were on a field trip.

“Just when you think you’re bored, there’s a fire,” Rodriguez said. “I thought I was going to come back to a charred college… It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through. I was crying thinking I’ve just said goodbye to the zoo.”

In a quarter-century of working at America’s Teaching Zoo, she has worked with hundreds of EATM students. Rodriguez said that sometimes a new student reminds her of a former student so much that she calls her current student the name of her former student.

“Because to me I’m remembering the name of their doppelgänger from 13 years ago,” Rodriguez said. “I will have that happen to me all the time. My students leave impressions on me. I don’t forget any of them.”