The Journal

Issue date: 11/8/07 Section: Lifestyle

Media Credit: Photo Courtesy of Nancy Mesey Crossroads cashier Nancy Mesey poses with her flock, Ruby (bottom left), Goldie (top) and Little Jerry.

For the last four years, Nancy Mesey has operated the checkout counter at
Crossroads, the food court of the University Center. Every day, hundreds of Webster University students pass her as she goes about her job.

"I like working here," Mesey said. "I feel like all the students are my own personal kids."

Her boss, Brad Woodroffe, has a good opinion of her.

"When I first met her, my main impression was that she was very energetic and outgoing," Woodroffe said.

Christian Hendricks, a freshman Music Composition major, has been at WU since the start of last semester, and he already recognizes Nancy.

"It seems like she is a very hard-working person," Hendricks said.

Mesey came here after working with the same company, Sodexho, at a different building, the General American building next to St. Anthony's Hospital.

In some ways, Mesey's home life has prepared her for having so many kids. In fact, she is currently taking care of nine animals, including three chickens, two iguanas, a British Great Dane and three cats.

Mesey has been an animal lover for as long as she can remember. She can still remember where she got the first of her pets.

"My first chicken was Little Jerry," Mesey said. "My daughter found it at work, and after three days the boss said that whoever had the biggest amount of land could take it home."

Jerry wasn't the only pet that seems to have wandered into Mesey's life. Mesey was doing road construction when she met the first of her scaly friends.

"I actually found my first iguana in 1990. I found him on the road one night by the airport. He looked like a stick with legs. When I got closer, I realized that it was actually a four-foot iguana. His body actually seemed like it belonged to a bigger one, so I can only assume that something had happened to his tail at some point," she said. "After I took him home, we used to drive around with him in the front seat. My children had to sit in
the back."

After hearing of her affinity for animals, other people have been more than happy to help contribute to her family.

"Later, a guy at work gave me a second one that he had named George. George was getting too big for him to keep, and since I already had one, he decided that I could give George a nice home," she said. "The real shock for me was when I realized that George was actually a Georgia, or a Georgina."

Mesey's love of animals sometimes causes people to draw assumptions about her a home life.

"When people hear that I love animals so much, and how many I have, they think I live way out in the boonies. The truth is that I actually live only 15 minutes away from my job," Mesey said.

Although she loves animals and keeps an eclectic mix, things don't always turn out as well as she would like.

"I used to have an opossum and a raccoon, but they kept going after the chickens, so I had to let them go," she said.

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