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.