Saturday, June 16, 2012

Peacock Parade

Tuesday- This day was a pretty uneventful. I was on bottom road with John again. Things went as planned. Ciara  (our female camel) seemed to be having a good day. I'm not sure if I told all you folks before or not, but she has some joint problems (or at least what we speculate to be joint problems...we're not really sure) so sometimes she's stiff and doesn't want to stand for long periods of time.

The Kori Bustards are doing well also. We've been doing introductions of our male and female in order to eventually (hopefully) have them on exhibit together. They've been doing well with the introductions with only minor aggression towards each other. Mostly him towards her, but it's to be expected since they only just met each other about a week ago.

Jazzy, the male Kori

After lunch we (being the interns) went off to our class for the day, which was pest control/management. We learned what animals/insects are considered pests and how the zoo manages them. Often times they are caught in some sort of trap, whether it be a mouse/rat trap, have-a-heart traps, or some sort of insect catcher. We also learned how to actually set the mouse/rat traps by setting one right then and there. They're much easier to set than the ones we have to set in Wildlife Techniques class for larger animals.

When the class was over we needed to go move the peacocks to their new temporary home! They've been inside for the winter because there were rumors of a coyote loose and we didn't want to loose any of them. They've been staying with us, but today they were going off to Childrens Zoo for some temporary holding until they could be released on zoo grounds! It's all very exciting since we believe that they would really love to be out and about eating bugs.
Wednesday- I was on bottom again but this time with Nicole. It was a very wet and rainy day, so not much fun. I was soaked within about 30 minutes. That's the down side to having an outside job, you need to be prepared for all sorts of weather.

Right after lunch we were able to watch the hornbills do some training. Right now we are working on getting them to do target, which is where you say target and they press their face (or bill in this case) to a certain area, and getting them to recognize colors. That is proving to be the hardest thing it seems.


Matata with a grass clump

Later on during the day the interns and I went off to work on the tiger exhibit. The day before facilities layed down some cement to cover some rat holes and it was still drying so the tigers couldn't go onto the exhibit anyways. We decided to take advantage of this and clean the pool and do some minor weeding. The cleaning of the pool was the biggest part of the project. Courtney and I were sent to do the weeding portion, while Joe was sent to clean the pool. Which I would have almost rathered because I feel like he got a tiny bit less wet, but by the time that we all were done we were all soaked for the most part.

Thursday- I was on bottom again with John today. Yesterday when I had been on bottom with Nicole I set some rat traps in the wildebeest barn. Today I found that I caught a rat! I was very impressed, the class paid off!

After that excitement we went off to work on the cat exhibits. I cleaned the windows to the lions pen and made them all nice and squeaky clean. When that was all done I helped some of the people on top road to clean bongo. This was mostly the same as cleaning the zebra stalls. A little less cleaning but mostly the same.
Then we went off to get the delivery and then on the way back they dropped off Katie and I to clean the peacock barn. We stripped everything and scrubbed everything down. It was very gratifying to just get everything super clean. Or at least as super clean as it could possibly get.

Friday- Bottom again today, this time with both John and Courtney. We got everything done rather quickly now that the peacocks are gone and their were three of us. We did a deep cleaning of the cat enclosure since we had the man power and the time, and then we did some quick weeding outside near the tiger pen.


Anala

Chris taking a nap

After lunch we had a class about PRIDE, which was all about customer service. A lot of it was information that I had heard before from working in the customer service field for so many years, but it was still a good refresher to hear it again.

So that was my week. Nothing too exciting, but it definitely kept me busy. Next week I'll hopefully be starting to work on my project, which I can inform you all about when it starts!