Trust us, when we saw this WTOP story, the first thing we imagined was being given the chance to be the ones to help Butterstick down from trees and feed him his daily ration of whatever the heck it is he’s eating these days (he hasn’t really gotten to effectively chewing bamboo, after all).

But no, much to our chagrin we find that National Zoo isn’t looking for help with those lovable pandas — but they do need volunteers to watch over the golden lion tamarins and to serve as interpreters at the Bird House. According to WTOP:

Monitors for the golden lion tamarins help record information about the monkeys’ movements and behavior when they roam freely over the summer in the zoo’s Beaver Valley. Working in pairs they also inform visitors of the tamarins’ endangered status and the Zoo’s decades-long effort to study and conserve the species…Bird House interpreters explain the natural history and status of the 80 species housed at the zoo, and they give visitors hands-on experiences with bird feathers, eggs, beaks, and a host of other objects in the Bird Resource Center.

Volunteers would only work a few hours a month, but would require training. More details are available in the WTOP article.

We’re probably going to sit this offer out. If they ever have openings for the tigers and lions, though, we’re totally in. Throwing those things huge chunks of meat would be sweet.