“I used to get a call saying ‘come and help us catch this llama’.

“One day I was feeding the leopards and I remember a couple of old ladies came up and started telling the other keeper how beautiful the cats were. He told them the reason they were so nice was because I used to brush their teeth and comb their hair every morning.

“I was like ‘you can’t tell them that’, but I don’t think he even told them he was joking and they must have walked off believing it.”