“I know you shouldn’t have favourites but I just loved Jos to bits.
When London Zoo’s rhinos, Rosie and Jos, were also moved to more spacious zoos, Lee took another memento.
Lee was awakened to the artistic potential of number twos in the 1990s when, as elephant keeper, she collected elephant dung for the artist Chris Ofili, drying it in the zoo’s boiler room. I picked up one of Geetha’s poos, held it and thought, ‘This is the last thing I have of Geetha.’” As the truck left and drove out into the dark, I remember feeling really bereft. If they’re sick, you stay overnight with them. “You’re with them from 7.30 in the morning until 6.30 at night. “When you work with these animals you fall in love with them. One evening in 2001, she loaded the elephants on to trucks to move them from London Zoo to ZSL’s sister zoo, Whipsnade, so they could enjoy more space. The exhibition, which opens at Fusebox in Kingston upon Thames, is the result of more than 20 years of collecting, which began for Lee when she had to say goodbye to her favourite elephant, Geetha. Sumatran tiger faeces, collected from London Zoo.
