Fingers, Lurch, and B.A.

This Saturday I went to the zoo again (I think my family and friends are a little confused about why I go - see first post). I was a little late, but everyone was still in the breakroom. I told Denise that I wanted to work with her again. OK, we went to get the food and load up the truck. In the food room Travis was shaking worms off of newspaper and everyone was passing around buckets or trays of strange foods. We grabbed the buckets with labels like "Giraffe A.M." Denise asked me to get three heads of romaine lettuce from the giant walk-in refrigerator. I grabbed three; two were big and one was tiny. I stuck the two nice ones in the giraffes' bucket and the little one in the ostriches bucket. Denise saw the tiny head of lettuce, took it back to the fridge, and got a nice big one for the ostrich. I thought she didn't like ole' Ozzy either, but I guess she does. She's a good zoo keeper.

Then I found out that we were scheduled to feed the spider monkeys! Cool! There's six monkeys. Fingers, Lurch, and B.A. are the boys. I don't remember the girls' names. All the monkeys get a chewable multi-vitamin (you just hold it up to the bars and they climb up and nibble it out of your fingers!) They loved the vitamins! They were all moving around trying to get each other's vitamins! Then the peanut butter came out!! Denise explained that the oil in peanut butter is good for their skin. She scooped up a glob with her finger and they monkeys took turns eating it off her finger! Then she smeared a bunch on the bars and they loved it!

Meanwhile we went to clean up their cage. I think monkeys don't have a very sophisticated digestive system. Their poop was pretty ploppy. It was chunky and looked like the mud on the floor. It wasn't even round, just a muddy puddle with a green tint. Yum. So I went around sweeping it up into a little dustpan. Then we got to hide their food around their exhibit! That was fun. Then we cleaned their windows and released them into the exhibit. They were all excited to go out and play :-) They ran out of their cage with their backs hunched and their long arms dangling on the floor. Just like monkeys! I liked it.

That was just the first exhibit! I'll tell you more about the lost lemur, taking blood from Tanya the Elephant, zebras, giraffes, ostriches and zoo keepers later.

Burds

This morning I reported to the breakroom, pulled out the volunteer sign-in notebook and signed in right underneath my entry from last week. Some keepers came in who I hadn't met before so I introduced myself. "Oh, you're the one who couldn't handle the elephant barn!" Yep, that's me. Cool. Everyone came in and they had another conversation about animals, then the mammal keepers left to start their husbandry. They didn't even ask me if I would be working with them today! Fine, I was planning on working with the birds anyways. So I asked the bird people if I could work with them. So, I was Travis's helper for the day. He asked me if I was afraid of birds. I said "not yet..."

We started out in the food room. He asked me if I was afraid of bugs. Come on! What is this, if I can't handle working in a room filled with elephant pee and droppings, now I'm supposed to be afraid of everything?! No, I'm not afraid of bugs! Well, my job was to separate the meal worms from the crumpled newspaper. It was easy, I just had to unfold the newspaper and shake it, and all the little yellow worms fell into the bucket (except the dozen or so that landed on the counter, the floor, or me). While I was busy concentrating on that, Travis was cutting chicks in half and picking out nice mice and gerbils. The birds also eat long skinny fish. Once the plates were prepared, I sprinkled worms on them like cheese, and we loaded up the wheelbarrow.

We walked over to the flamingo / waterfowl area and Travis scared away the wild ducks then dumped the food in the water or in their feeding bowls. The flamingos don't eat shrimp, they eat pellets of Flamingo Diet. The six peacocks were hanging around, showing off their tails. I met a goose that was nesting and lots of different kinds of ducks. Then we wheeled some food over to Pod C. This is an indoor (warm) area where there's a room where birds fly around freely. There's a fake stream in there and some real and fake trees. The visitors can walk through the room on a bridge. Travis turned on the overhead sprinklers to rinse off the room. Meanwhile, I got to meet Pancho. He's a big green parrot who sleeps in a cage in the back room, but spends the day in the big room with the other birds. He's very friendly - He can whistle and say Hello. Pancho had pooped on a step in his cage so Travis got two paper towels and cleaned it up. That's all the poop I saw all day. Then Travis turned off the sprinklers and put Pancho in the big room.

So, Travis wheeled the food around to some more birds. I met some hornbills and some yellow birds. We went into the education room to feed Bob the dove. Travis told me that he used to hunt doves a lot, but since he's met Bob, he's not as interested. I also met Einstein the owl. He was really cool. Travis put four dead mice in his jacket pocket and went into Einstein's cage. Einstein flew onto his arm and ate the mice head-first as Travis fed him. I met a buzzard named Homer, another hornbill named Lucille, a bunch of chickens and a spastic roadrunner. Lucille was funny, she like buttons and zippers.

Well, I'd met all the birds and it was 10:30. We went and looked at some of the other animals. The monkeys have a baby that's kinda cute for a monkey. The jaguars were up and moving around. Travis said that they're only awake for 4 hours a day. Our backs were leaning on the glass of their cage and they came up behind us, stood up, and started pawing on the glass, about the level of our shoulders. Cool! I asked Travis if that's a trick that they learned (like a massage or something) but he said "No, they're just trying to kill us." Oh. right.

We went to the concession stand and Travis bought (guess what) some animal crackers! Then we went back to the big bird room to drain and refill the stream. While I was standing there, hanging out with Pancho, some visitors came walking through on the bridge. They didn't ask me anything, but Pancho said hello to them anyways. It was kinda awkward just standing there, in the exhibit. Travis was under the bridge working on the stream so it looked like I was just hanging out in the exhibit by myself.

I went ahead and left early. I wasn't filthy or exhausted. I had touched some worms and some crickets and some birds, but that's it. So, if you want to walk around the zoo and meet the birds, volunteer with the bird keepers.

I spelled birds wrong in the title because all the bird food buckets are labeled "BURDS."

Meeting the Animals

Ok, this is really about meeting the animals' poop. The other day on the tour, Will kept talking about "husbandry" as one of the zoo keepers jobs. Silly me, I thought husbandry had something to do with breeding. Husband, anyone? Nope, it's about cleaning up poop. Webster says husbandry is the control and management of domestic animals, but it really means the control and management of poop.

So, this is basically how the conversation went when I walked into the zoo keeper breakroom at 8:00 on Saturday morning...
"Oh, look, A volunteer to help us clean up!"
"So Lauren, what's your favorite animal?"
"I guess I'd say giraffe."
"Yeah, She's going to help us with the mammals!"
Now, I'm going to tell you the secret zoo keeper language. You add the word "poop" to the end of every sentence. Go ahead, reread the conversation in the secret language. That's what the zoo keepers were thinking. yikes!

So, I was assigned to help Denise. She's in charge of the giraffes, zebras, ostriches, and other various small animals poop. But first we have to feed the animals. It's an important part of the cycle. If the animals were outside, we cleaned their holding pen, set up their food, locked them in the holding pen, then cleaned the exhibit. If the animals were inside (the giraffes have a very nice heated barn that they sleep in!) then we fed them, locked them in, cleaned the exhibit, let them out, locked them out, then cleaned their holding pen. And that took the four hours. Whew.

But the zoo keepers do all that every day! By the time we were through with each area, it was cleaner than the floor in my house! These people are serious about taking good care of these animals. When I wanted to skip a few little balls of giraffe poop, Denise went back and got them. Giraffe poop looks just like deer poop except scattered, not in little piles. I wish it were in piles. Not only did we pick up poop, we raked, hosed down, and disinfected! These are big animals that live in big areas. It was crazy.

About half-way through the poop cleaning cycle, we got back in the truck and drove over to Kate's mammals - the elephant/lion compound. Zoo keepers are nice, they help each other. The elephants were inside so we helped Kate clean up the outside exhibit. Each of the three of us had a big garbage can (big blue one with handles) and a really big shovel (bigger than any shovel I'd ever used). We shoveled up elephant poop all over the exhibit. Man, it was heavy! But, surprisingly, it didn't smell very bad. I guess they only eat hay and fruit, so it's like a hay smoothie. :-) It was a little gross, but mostly just heavy. There really is an art to shoveling that stuff. I mean, the keepers obviously had more practice than me. So, we each filled up our trash can. It was too heavy for me to drag back to the truck, they helped.

Then we went into the elephant holding area for a little training session with the elephants. This was fun (as long as you stand behind the yellow line so they can't grab you with their trunk). The keepers gave commands like "kneel down," "crawl," "turn around," "pick up your trunk," and the elephants did all that! They could even get on their knees and crawl backwards! Yeah! I was having fun.

Then the elephants went out into the exhibit and the keepers brought in three more trash cans. What? Now that the elephants were gone, I noticed the massive piles of poop in the corners and the expanse of pee that soaked and surrounded them. yikes. Outside the pee had just soaked into the ground, but not on this concrete floor. I could just imagine the pee soaking up the legs of my jeans. What if I slipped and fell!? Deep breath, I'm not a wimp. The keepers jumped right in there. I went for the pile with the most shallow pool of pee. But it was awful. The ammonia smell was bad. I got a shovel-full in my bucket, and another one. When I dug my giant shovel in a third time I uncovered a giant, solid piece of poop about the size of my 10-gallon fish aquarium (more or less a gallon). I tried to pick it up, but I gagged and felt hot and dizzy (the smell of the pee was so bad! and I was standing in it, shoveling giant poop!). So I told the keepers that I was going to wait outside before I threw-up. yikes.

So I sat on the back of the truck and listened while the two keepers stayed in there and talked about their families and the holidays while they scooped elephant poop. Every now and then they would drag out a full garbage can that left a trail of pee. yuck. whew. Kate ended up with SIX garbage cans full of elephant poop! SIX A DAY! So, I hope you're happy that our zoo has elephants.

"Tour" of the zoo

Getting started as a volunteer at the zoo was easy. I found an email address on the zoo's website and Voila! I was hooked up. Will emailed me back in a few minutes, and I called him to set up a time for the zoo tour. I love tours. I think my dream job would be giving tours of the Texas State Capital Building. I really enjoy a good tour, lots of info, and some super facts. Well, I work 8-5 and so does Will, so I told him that I'd skip my lunch hour. I was so excited! On Thursday Curtis and I went to the zoo for my introduction to volunteering. I was going to get to meet all the animals and all their keepers.

Not quite. I went to the zoo and met Will. We went through some back door and were behind the fish exhibit. It was a funny shaped room with big aquariums, filters, and other unknown pipes. There weren't many fish. I saw lots of snails in the nearest tank. That was it. I don't know how to get into the fish exhibit as a normal visitor, and I don't think I saw all the fish.

Then we went outside for a second until we came to the next hidden door. I think Will said this was the reptile area. There were zoo keepers in here! Whatever picture you have in your head of what a zoo keeper looks like, get it out. This guy was big, wearing black, had lots of earrings (those earrings that make you have big round holes in your ears). He offered to let me hold some of the hissing roaches that he was working with. Yikes. The other keeper in there was a small blond lady working on the plumbing.

We left and I knew where we were! We were by the flamingos! Yes! On to the mammals! But we went through another bamboo-ish door while Will explained to me that he's not a keeper, so he's not allowed around the mammals. Super. In this back area behind the bamboo wall there were lots of building. There was a holding area for "extra birds," a greenhouse area, a keepers breakroom, a clinic, and the food room. There was also a pile of old Christmas trees.

The breakroom has lockers, lumpy couches, a cluttered table and a little aquarium with turtles in it. The clinic was really clean. In the back they had a bird with a hurt foot and two prairie dogs waiting to be spayed/neutered. There was also a little screech owl in there waiting to be shipped to St. Louis. Will really likes screech owls.

Will gave me some papers to fill out and showed me the hidden door to the parking lot.

OK, I'll be here at 8:00 on Saturday.

My Favorite New Year's Resolution

Hello Blog audience. Welcome to my place for stories. These will be stories about my new year's resolution to volunteer every week at the zoo. I'm really excited about volunteering and about sharing the stories. I needed a little adventure.

I didn't really know that I was interested in zoos until about a year ago. Since then I've visited six zoos, aquariums, or aviaries in Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Brazil, and Argentina (and a few more on Google). I've caught myself clicking the links to see what zoo positions are available and I've also downloaded a few zoo desktop pictures for my computer at work. It was getting a little out of hand when I started attaching animal pictures to work-related emails.

I also didn't really know that I needed somewhere to go. I like my home, my work, and my church, but they're all in this little corner of town. Even my grocery store and laundromat are just three minutes away. Something's wrong with that. I'm busy enough and happy, but it's all in the same place with mostly the same people.

Then, in a moment of epiphany sometime between Christmas and New Years I knew I had to volunteer at the zoo. It was a chance to travel all over the world, see new things, meet new people, be a helper, work with animals, and best of all - have good stories to tell.