Tues- Tuesday was pretty uneventful. I was on top road with John and Joe. Normally I wouldn't have been with Joe at all but he's pretty much done with his training, so I was helping out. I started cleaning up Bongo which included cleaning the yard, giving them hay and fresh water, and then letting them out so that I could do their stalls.
After that I helped out in Grant's and some of the other animals. That mostly included cleaning the stalls, the yard, fresh water and hay, and then scrubbing and disinfecting all the food/water/hay tubs.
After lunch we had our class for the day. Today it was on AZA accreditation, which is the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. We are an accredited facility so we have to abid by their rules and regulations on keeping the zoo in proper order. They come every once in a while to do inspections, so our class was on what they are looking for, what the jobs of AZA members are, what the jobs mean, and what happens if we don't follow the rules.
Class was over early and we had a little bit of time before we were expected to be back so we decided to take a trip and go see the butterfly garden and the budgies. The butterfly garden was pretty boring, many of the butterflies had not hatched yet and those that had were up near the top of the building trying to get out, so there really wasn't much to see. The budgies were a bit more interesting. Budgies are our Australian parakeets which you can feed for two dollars. We skipped the money and decided to just watch. It was just as much fun to watch them zoom around and zip past our faces.
After class and field trips it was delivery and getting things ready for the afternoon cleanup. I was able to work on my intern project a little bit by clearing out an area from weeds and bamboo.
Wednesday- This day was the beginning of some very long hot days. It was easily the hottest of the week. To begin I was on top road again with Joe and Andrea. This was Joe's last day of being trained so I helped out as much as I could. I once again started out in Bongo and by 8:45 I was already drenched in sweat. A sure sign of a long day.
After all of the normal morning chores, and a huge water bottle, and soaking my hair under the water of a fire hydrant, it was finally time for lunch. Thankfully we put an air conditioner in the trailer so that we could enjoy our break time in a nice cold area. Unfortunately the break time didn't last very long and we were off to our next big job: a knotweed delivery!
There was a conservation society that was getting rid of a lot of knotweeds in an area of Newburyport to replace it with native plants. They decided to donate it to us so that we could feed it out to all of the animals and that it wouldn't go to waste. It took quite some time because it was a whole truck load full and needed to be taken out and then wrapped in bundles to be frozen for later use. By the end of it we were soaked in sweat again and extremely thirsty, and we still had to still bring it all to the freezer. Thankfully that was a nice and cool place.
After that we finished up with the afternoon chores and called it a day until tomorrow....
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