Lisa Daly and her husband, Anthony Slamin, were strolling through the National Zoo in April 2014 when they noticed a curious material inside an animal enclosure: fire hose. It was in frayed condition. So the couple, both of whom volunteered for the Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service in Rockville for several years, contacted the zoo and were put in touch with Amanda Bania, the great-ape keeper at the time. Did she want some more of that hose? Bania said, “It’s like gold!’ We’ll take as much as you have!” Daly recalls.
Soon, the pair rounded up out-of-service fire hose from local stations and dropped it off at the zoo. Bania was thrilled and suggested that the couple make donating hose more widespread. The result: Hose2Habitat, a nonprofit they founded that helps connect those who care for wild animals living outside their natural habitats with fire stations and other establishments that offer materials that can improve those animals’ welfare. Besides being widely available, used fire hose can be twisted and braided into forms that mimic ones that animals encounter—and need to encounter in order to stay stimulated—in the wild. It can be transformed into a mock piece of four-legged prey in need of catching and slaying just as easily as it can become the crevices of a jungle tree. Animals need to work for their food as part of their well-being, say zoological experts.
The next thing they knew, Daly and Slamin were fielding calls from all over the country. In turn, they got in touch with fire stations around the U.S. to gather even more resources. Daly, who is in her 40s, and Slamin, who is in his 60s, are quick to clarify that they didn’t come up with the idea of fire hose as an animal enrichment tool. “I like to talk about Hose2Habitat as being more of an idea pollinator,” Slamin says. In the course of running it, the couple brainstorms new things to make out of the material they have and offers workshops that teach caregivers, handlers and institutions how materials like fire hose can benefit wild animals unaccustomed to living in the wild. They’ve worked with a dizzying variety of species ranging from elephants, wolves, grizzly bears and rhinos to bats, anteaters, snakes and penguins (which are, per Daly, “hilarious to enrich”). Their work, they estimate, has resulted in the transfer of hundreds of tons of materials for animal enrichment purposes. An added bonus: By diverting the old hose to animals, the couple keeps that material out of the waste stream.
The impact that the couple has had on the zoo and sanctuary community is “more immense” than they probably even know, Bania says. “They are a truly amazing organization.” Board member Mandy Siegel Fahy, who works on the animal behavior team for the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, credits the group for “sharing ideas and inspiration.”
Daly and Slamin both work—Daly as a nonpartisan senior counsel at the U.S. House of Representatives and Slamin as an analyst for the federal government.
Last year, Daly and Slamin took two trips to the Amazon and other parts of Peru, hauling 600 feet of forestry hose in their luggage on one of the voyages, they say. They would work with animals “in situ,” or in a managed habitat in their original homeland, the goal being release into the wild. Many have been fed in ways that are not organic to life in the jungle (like eating from bowls) and lack the skills necessary for hunting. On the pair’s most recent trip, a goal was to “work on additional strategies to prepare the animals for planned release into the Amazon,” said Daly in an email. On their first day, the couple found themselves walking through jungle, watching the monkeys’ expert caretakers pluck fruit from trees. Then, using the forestry hose they’d brought, they wove a contraption that teetered, resembling the swaying branches of a tree. That creation served as a prototype that inspired 12 replicas built by the team caring for the monkeys, all of which the animals put to use.
Sometimes, Daly and Slamin’s work has a more immediate impact. In 2016, the couple—armed with fire hose—boarded a cruise out of Baltimore, and during a stop in the Bahamas they built a structure for a primate whose longtime mate had died. “The animal was depressed, and so we were thinking of ways to make her have to think about getting her favorite treats,” Daly says. The idea was to divert the primate’s attention from her grief. Pulling out a photo of a tall structure of knitted hose with food tucked into its nooks and crannies, Daly recalls how much it helped the animal. She and Slamin love seeing their services in action. Daly says, “It’s like an antidepressant for me.”