When Mike Furman started working as a part-time zookeeper at Northampton’s Look Park, he couldn’t have imagined the friendship he would find in Buddy, a friendly young goat.
Buddy was just 5 months old and had recently lost his sister to an illness when he was brought to Look Park’s Christenson Wildlife Center.
“He and I just clicked,” Furman said.
Five years later, the two are inseparable. Since Buddy will start following Furman around as soon as he shows up to work, Furman said, “He’s the guy I talk to when I’m lonely in the morning.”
“He’s a comic strip on his own,” he said of Buddy’s silly yet protective personality. Furman recalled that once his wife came to visit and Buddy persistently stood between the two to “guard” Furman.
“It’s like having a giant dog,” Furman said as he combed the hair covering Buddy’s 230-pound body with a hairbrush.
Every day he takes Buddy out on a walk by leash and, over the years, Buddy has learned commands to come to be brushed, to push open doors and to follow Furman around the zoo.
“I made him into a bit of a star,” Furman says, explaining that Buddy is a main character on the Instagram account he maintains to show off all the zoo’s animals.
“I’ve got more pictures of him on my phone than of my wife,” says Furman, who has personally designated himself as the leader of his goats’ herd. “Goats do bond with humans” and “[they] have a herd mentality.”
In addition to Buddy, the zoo has three regular size Nigerian goats, six miniature Nigerian goats and three deer. He said the zoo also houses birds, including peacocks, roosters, a turkey vulture, and a red-tailed hawk.
Although the Christenson Zoo, named after the park’s security officer for over 50 years, was renamed the Christenson Wildlife Center earlier this year, Furman admitted that it’s still a zoo to him.
Furman said his favorite part of his job is “meeting the animals every morning” and being greeted with excitement from them all. “I don’t even consider this a job,” he said, explaining that animal care is often too fun to be counted as work.
In addition to feeding the animals, Furman said his job includes maintaining their individual shelters, social needs, hygiene and health. “They’re all spoiled,” Furman laughed.
When he isn’t taking care of animals, Furman is busy working on maintenance around the park and decorating the zoo, which includes renovating play structures for animals to “keep them amused,” he said.
“I don’t think people realize how important this is,” he said of his work and its strong community impact. “People come here for relief,” he explained, especially as a pick-me-up during the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is my happy place and I want it to be other people’s happy place too,” he said.
Before working at Look Park, Furman was a graphics teacher at Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School, the same school that he attended when he was a teenager. After 24 years of teaching there, he began to feel burnt out and needed a change of pace. “I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said.
Furman retired at 52 and, shortly after that, started working part-time as Look Park’s zookeeper over five years ago. Since Buddy arrived at the zoo roughly five years ago, Furman has had the joy of watching his goat companion grow up beside him.
“It’s been gratifying to work here, I don’t even have the words,” he said.
Although Furman mostly works Monday through Friday, he said he makes an effort to come in on weekends to spend time with Buddy whenever possible.
He said that it’s important to him to engage with the community, which shows through his friendly conversations with regulars at the park. He said some families even visit just to see Buddy.
Furman also said that in the past students from the agricultural department at Smith Vocational have made field trips to the zoo to help take care of the animals for a day as a learning experience.
Although he loves dogs, and will often stop his truck while driving through the park to greet dogs and their owners, he and his wife don’t currently have one of their own. “I’ve got all my dogs at the zoo,” he joked.
The relationship between Furman and Buddy is one unlike any other at the park. To parkgoers and to Furman, their bond is a reminder that companionship can be found everywhere, even in places one might not expect.
“He’s not just an animal,” Furman says. “He’s a friend.”