RENO — Sierra Safari Zoo volunteer Dee Pettipas declares herself an expert in fertilizer.

“I can tell you who did it, what their diet is and probably whether it’s healthy or not and maybe even how old it is,” Pettipas said.

The 15-year veteran volunteer spends two days a week at Sierra Safari, her home away from home. Calling her an animal lover would be an understatement.

“If I’m anywhere and see an animal, it’s alive and breathing, I have to touch it,” she said. “I will ask permission if it belongs to someone else, but if it doesn’t object and if the owner doesn’t object, I gotta touch it.”

Volunteers are the lifeblood of the zoo, which operates only on what it takes in from attendance and outside donations. All that the job requires is a passion for the zoo’s residents and not minding rolling up one’s sleeves for a little bit of filth.

“You have to be willing to do a lot of nasty stuff to be here and I’m willing to do it,” Pettipas said.

Rachel Malone knows what this means. She moved to Reno from Texas three years ago and still goes home during the summers, but when she’s here, she’s playing with Merlin the camel.

“If there was anything I would be more than willing to take home, even though I have, like, no yard, it’s the camel,” she said. “I want Merlin. He’s so ugly, he’s cute.”

Malone stumbled upon Sierra Safari in her search for a local zoo to visit. Once she pulled up to the parking lot on North Virginia Street and saw a sign that said volunteers were needed, she was hooked.

“A man named Larry … said, ‘Just show up tomorrow morning at 8:30 and we’ll have something for you to do,’ Malone recalled. “ ‘You’ll be an expert pooper scooper.’ ”

According to Sierra Safari’s Web site, www.sierrasafarizoo.org, those who are interested in helping take care of the animals and their facilities are asked to commit a minimum of four hours per week to clean the grounds, feed or play with the animals. Old clothes that can get dirty are also a must.

Both Malone and Pettipas can testify that every animal has its own personality. Pettipas said lion cubs hug back and Malone said she likes that they play like puppies, wrestling and tackling each other. But monkeys are different, she added.

“Monkeys are cute from a distance,” Malone said. “They get very agitated. They’re very person-specific.”

Clearly, Pettipas has fallen in love with Sierra Safari’s inhabitants.

“I’d want to take them home,” she said. “I only have three cats and two Chihuahuas of my own.”

She said she befriended Hobbs, the zoo’s popular liger who died two years ago, when he was young and she first arrived as a volunteer.

“We played games together when there was a crowd,” she said. “He would look at me and I would turn away and he would stalk me. The crowd would say, ‘He’s coming, he’s coming,’ and he’d jump up and put his paws on the fence and the fence would throw me out. If it was wet and muddy, the visitors were splattered from top to bottom. It was fun.”

But what brings her the most pleasure are the baby animals born at the zoo.

“I get to raise babies and I just love every freaking minute, even when it’s an every-two-hour feeding,” she said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. You couldn’t pay me to go somewhere else. I have to be here.”