Hi! We’re the Gordons

I’ve worked in animal education since I was in 3rd grade.

Me and my mom at a Creature Quest show, Pioneer Village

My parents ran Creature Quest, a CAZA-accredited zoo that brought educational exotic animal shows to kids’ birthday parties, summer camps, and schools. I helped care for the 300+ animals in our facility and led presentations that let people get up close with animals they’d usually only see behind glass.

Between 2012 and 2020, my parents were the #1 provider of animal edutainment programming in the GTA. If my math checks out, they were doing 600 to 800 shows per year.

600–800shows per year, 2012–2020

Hard to do live animal shows without an audience.

My parents held on for a couple of years, burning through their savings to keep the animals fed and warm. By 2022, they had no choice but to give all the animals to friends in the industry across North America.

That spring, I was 25, helping them wrap things up. I opened their email and found about a dozen people asking about hatching eggs that year. Chick hatching was a small seasonal program they offered. Since there was clearly demand, I asked if I could take that part of the business, and they gladly handed it over.

and was homeschooled until 8th grade. We often joke that I know a lot of animal facts, but she’s the one who actually knows how to raise animals.

She grew up eating eggs from chickens her family raised, milk from a cow she milked herself, and vegetables she and her four older brothers helped grow. They only went to the grocery store for what they couldn’t grow themselves: coffee, bananas, chocolate, salt.

I’d just met Ingrid that February and asked her to help me put together our first 10 hatching kits and drive them around the GTA.