As anyone who's ever worked in a professional kitchen knows, cooking for more than a handful of people can be a grueling, anxiety-inducing, thankless task. Unless you're out here racking up Michelin stars, the hours are notoriously long, the pay isn't great, and the customers can be painstakingly particular about how their meals are prepared.

While all of this might be true, a new video from CNN's Great Big Story follows a woman named Stacy Kyles, and her job as a chef at the Oakland Zoo might be even more difficult.

Preparing roughly 1,000 meals for rare and exotic animals each day—all of whom have their own special dietary restrictions—Kyles wakes up at dawn everyday to go to the grocery store before setting to work in the kitchen. Though her official title is commissary supervisor, Kyles is better known as the "zoo chef," and her duties include cooking for every species on the grounds, from four-ton elephants to two centimeter-long ants.

"On busy days a chef may feel like she works in a zoo. For Stacy Kyles, that's exactly the point," a description for the video reads. "It's an enormous, complex task that happens seven days a week. And Kyles can't imagine doing anything else."

[via Great Big Story/YouTube]