“You may want to wear some bug spray.”
It was a simple, yet common warning issued by Alyssa Taylor. It is summertime in Galveston, and the 2024 graduate of Texas A&M University–Central Texas was looking out for those around her. A hurricane pushed through the area a few weeks prior and that was followed by another week of torrential rain. Needless to say, the mosquitos were prolific.
Yet while the warning came from the young biologist, it was a message she could not follow. Keeping the potentially harmful insect deterrents off her is, after all, part of the job. Working in a man-made rainforest limits the amount of chemicals to which one can be exposed without harming the animals and, in Taylor’s case, the insects.
“There are different things you can’t have around them,” Taylor said. “They can absorb it through their skin because of cutaneous respiration.”
Taylor graduated in May with a degree in biology and with the help of her professors and employees in the Career and Professional Development office, she applied for an internship with Moody Gardens in Galveston.
Moody Gardens is a resort that features a water park, golf course, hotel, theater, rainforest, aquarium, and museum where people can explore, learn, and play all in one location. For her part, Taylor said the rainforest is by far the most interesting attraction.
“The rainforest is a zoo,” said the self-proclaimed zookeeper. “If I tell somebody I’m a zookeeper, they know more about what it entails, but a rainforest biologist … they may think I’m going out to the Amazon.
“I’m just going to Galveston.”
Officially, Taylor is a rainforest biologist, a position for which Moody Gardens offered her full-time employment as a result of her work as an intern. Taylor primarily works with the invertebrates, a large collection of insects and creepy crawlies that feed and enrich the flora in the rainforest while also providing vital food and nutrients to the animals that live there.
“Biology is all about different systems interacting. From the smallest biochemistry, to the cells, to the tissue, to the organs, to the organisms, to the ecosystem …” she said. “It’s always cool to see how the smallest thing can affect the biggest thing.”
A genuine love of nature and biology comes naturally for Taylor. Growing up on a farm in Galveston County, she was always around animals.
“I really enjoyed spending time with them and making the connections with those animals,” she said, explaining that the camera roll on her phone used to be full of pictures of her dog, but now also includes the otters and other animals that occupy Moody Gardens. “That’s still in me today, liking to hang out with the animals and stuff.”
Taylor has always enjoyed science. Classes in high school led to an associate’s degree in natural science at her local community college. From there, she searched for ecology degrees in Texas and came across A&M–Central Texas. With her grandparents living in Evant and a brother in Copperas Cove, transferring to A&M–Central Texas made sense.
For Taylor, even though the transfer process was easy, the academics proved to be challenging. She took her time working through her degree and took advantage of the programs and resources offered to her through the Warrior Center for Student Success.
“They really helped me out. I talked to them about study guide tips and just little things to help,” she said. “The sense of community was very important to me. I wanted to know that there were other people that were also going through the motions along with me.”
Taylor began looking for a job once she entered her final semester at A&M–Central Texas, knowing the job search could be difficult. What she found was that there weren’t a lot of animal husbandry positions available in the Killeen area. She expanded her search to areas in East Texas and eventually back to the coast. Growing up near Galveston, she was familiar with Moody Gardens, but the idea of working there hadn’t quite registered on her. Her search landed on the internship, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now, as a millipede crawls around her hand and wrist, she replaces food in its cage and uses a mister to refresh the vegetation. All done with a smile on her face. It’s what she enjoys and it’s what she hopes to build her career around.
“I knew that I wanted to do something that involved animals and working with my hands because I enjoy those things a lot,” she said. “As for right now, I kind of want to get established in the world of zookeeping and know that I can do well at understanding an animal’s every need and be able to identify what they need based on their behavior or different protocols.
“Honestly, I just want to have fun every day.”
While what she does may not be the perfect job for a lot of people, Taylor said when she describes it, they generally respond by saying that it “sounds really cool.”
“And it is,” she said. “I agree, it does sound really cool.”