Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Just a Note

The zoo will be featured on Chronicle at 7:30 pm this Friday (June, 29th, 2012) if any of you are interested in watching it. I'm not sure what will be shown, I know that I was not filmed, so you won't see me, but many aspects of my department are supposed to be on there.

Just figured I'd give you all a heads up since I don't usually get the chance to write until Saturday.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Some like it Hot....

....But I don't.....

Sorry about the delay in the second half of the post. I was away for the weekend and was trying to not spend all my time writing.

Thursday- Hot again today. It was supposed to be even hotter than yesterday, almost 103. Thankfully there's a bit of a breeze so it's less brutal.

To begin the day I was on top road with Joe. He's finally earned his wings and is able to be on his own!  So just me and him today. I started out in Bongo again by cleaning everything as quickly as I could. I wanted to try and finish morning chores as soon as possible so that I could be out of the hottest part of the day. By the time I was done with Bongos, Joe had finished all the birds so we focused on getting the zebras out onto exhibit. Strangely enough we were really early, so we couldn't even put them out yet. We decided to see what else we could get done, and went back to Junior. He wasn't very motivated to get out this morning so we couldn't clean his stall. After checking on him we realized that he still hadn't moved. So we putzed around for a bit until we could let the zebras and ostriches out and clean the rest of the yards.

After lunch we learned that there might be a USDA inspection today so we went out to make sure everything was in tip top shape. My job was to go and clean the grant's building, and make sure that everything looked the best it possibly could. After scrubbing things down for about 30 minutes, we were informed that it was a false alarm and that we could stop. I decided to keep cleaning because it needed to be done anyways, and soon was done and went back to the nice air conditioning. Then we went out and did the delivery, and then relaxed in the AC until it was time to close up.

Friday- Friday was a field trip day! We were off to the Stone Zoo, our other extension, to get a tour of the zoo from the interns there and see what they did. It was interesting to see what animals the other interns take care of and how they run that zoo as compared to our zoo and our department.

After the tour we went and got lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and then went back to the zoo for a class on animal training. It was interesting to hear a class on it from another person and it was a good refresher from what I had already heard. Once the class was over we went off to go see the bird show, only to find out that it had been canceled for the day. Joe was able to get us a one on one meet and greet with some of the birds though since he used to work for the company that put the show on, which was really cool.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

It was Hot, Hot, Hot

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....