Stories about Giraffes
I didn't go to the zoo this weekend because my friends Stephen and Rachael Patterson got married!!! AH! Great wedding! Even though I wasn't there this weekend, I have some stories up my sleeve. Tonight we're learnin' about the giraffes...
It starts in the food room. The Night Keepers (NKs) prepare all the food during their shift each night, so we just have to load it onto the truck. We get two buckets of giraffe pellets and two heads of romaine lettuce for the giraffes. Then we drive over to the giraffe barn and back up to the people-sized door. Let me explain how the barn is set up. Imagine a tall, square building. Inside, there are 4 chambers made out of floor to ceiling chain link fence. The largest chamber takes up about a third of the building and is at the front where the giraffes come into the barn from the exhibit. That's the common area for the giraffes. When the giraffes come into the common area, they can hang out in there, or go to one of the smaller chambers; those giraffe-size doors are on the left and right sides of the back wall of the common chamber. There is a people-size hallway that goes from the back door of the building, between the two individual chambers, and end at a door to the common area. So, when I walk into the back/people door, there is an individual chamber to my left, and individual chamber to my right, and I can walk down the hallway, into the common chamber, and out into the exhibit.
Usually when we go into the barn, the giraffes are hanging out in the common chamber. The idea is to get them fed and get them into the exhibit. Their feeding buckets and water fountains are in the individual chambers. So we call them and lure them with lettuce to a chamber. Then we get to feed them pieces of lettuce! I tear off a whole leaf and hold it high in the air while the giraffe wraps her long black tongue around the leaf/my hand and uses her giant lips to find pull the leaf into her mouth. That all happens really fast, and I have to hurry to yank another leaf off and get it high in the air. She can eat them as fast as I can pull them off and shove them up there. Sometime I get a big giraffe burp in my face and I always get giraffe slobber on my hand. :-) Then when I get down to the core of the lettuce head, I hold that up there and try to hold on while she chomps and pulls on it. In the wild, they have to pull their food off trees, so we're supposed to give them some resistance. Yikes! The zoo keeper likes to grab their upper lip when they're finished and shake it (like you would grab a baby's cheek and shake it) and say, "Good girl!"
They're both girls. Their names are Asha (ah-sha) and Punk. I think the zoo officials officially renamed Punk Taylor, but Punk suits her better. She doesn't like to go into the individual chamber and she makes a mess with her pellets! She dunks her mouth in her fountain every time she eats some pellets and makes everything mushy. I can tell them apart because Asha looks older and her spots are lighter.
Oh, I forgot about the pellets. Before we lure them into the individual chambers, we dump a bucket of pellets in their dish. They have rubber dishes that are clipped high up on the chain-link fence. I have to climb a ladder to dump the food in there.
Alright, so they eat the lettuce, then they start on their pellets. That's when Denise and I take our rakes and a trash can out into the exhibit. Giraffe poop is not stinky, but it's all over the place. They poop out tiny hard balls of poop while they walk around. So we try to rake up these dark marbles that roll all over the place. When it's dry outside it's easier, but when it's muddy, it's almost impossible to find them all! So we try to rake everything into piles, then we get the shovel and shovel them into the trash can. It's best to start far from the door that way by the time the trash can gets heavy, you're close to the door!
When the exhibit is clean and the giraffes are done eating, we send them outside. Then we get two flakes of hay and some flakes of alfalfa, and take them up the bride over the exhibit. There's a basket that hangs off the side of the bridge and we drop them down there. I have missed yet!
Then we have to go back into the empty exhibit and clean up all the poop balls that they've stomped into the rocky floor. The floor is like those sidewalks that are made out of pebbles. We use a high-powered water hose to blast the poop out and send it down the drain. This rinsing job is pretty tricky. You have to think about keeping the water off your feet and keeping it pointed at the drain no matter where the poop is. So I end up walking in circles for a long time and getting soaked from the knees down. My first time was pretty bad. I think I'm getting better. Sometimes Denise rinses and I wash the rubber dishes and the drinking fountains. The first time I rinsed the barn, she just told me to rinse the barn. I did it, it was messy, and I learned some things. I think I tend to over-instruct.
So, now you can go do the giraffe thing! The best part is the lettuce.
It starts in the food room. The Night Keepers (NKs) prepare all the food during their shift each night, so we just have to load it onto the truck. We get two buckets of giraffe pellets and two heads of romaine lettuce for the giraffes. Then we drive over to the giraffe barn and back up to the people-sized door. Let me explain how the barn is set up. Imagine a tall, square building. Inside, there are 4 chambers made out of floor to ceiling chain link fence. The largest chamber takes up about a third of the building and is at the front where the giraffes come into the barn from the exhibit. That's the common area for the giraffes. When the giraffes come into the common area, they can hang out in there, or go to one of the smaller chambers; those giraffe-size doors are on the left and right sides of the back wall of the common chamber. There is a people-size hallway that goes from the back door of the building, between the two individual chambers, and end at a door to the common area. So, when I walk into the back/people door, there is an individual chamber to my left, and individual chamber to my right, and I can walk down the hallway, into the common chamber, and out into the exhibit.
Usually when we go into the barn, the giraffes are hanging out in the common chamber. The idea is to get them fed and get them into the exhibit. Their feeding buckets and water fountains are in the individual chambers. So we call them and lure them with lettuce to a chamber. Then we get to feed them pieces of lettuce! I tear off a whole leaf and hold it high in the air while the giraffe wraps her long black tongue around the leaf/my hand and uses her giant lips to find pull the leaf into her mouth. That all happens really fast, and I have to hurry to yank another leaf off and get it high in the air. She can eat them as fast as I can pull them off and shove them up there. Sometime I get a big giraffe burp in my face and I always get giraffe slobber on my hand. :-) Then when I get down to the core of the lettuce head, I hold that up there and try to hold on while she chomps and pulls on it. In the wild, they have to pull their food off trees, so we're supposed to give them some resistance. Yikes! The zoo keeper likes to grab their upper lip when they're finished and shake it (like you would grab a baby's cheek and shake it) and say, "Good girl!"
They're both girls. Their names are Asha (ah-sha) and Punk. I think the zoo officials officially renamed Punk Taylor, but Punk suits her better. She doesn't like to go into the individual chamber and she makes a mess with her pellets! She dunks her mouth in her fountain every time she eats some pellets and makes everything mushy. I can tell them apart because Asha looks older and her spots are lighter.
Oh, I forgot about the pellets. Before we lure them into the individual chambers, we dump a bucket of pellets in their dish. They have rubber dishes that are clipped high up on the chain-link fence. I have to climb a ladder to dump the food in there.
Alright, so they eat the lettuce, then they start on their pellets. That's when Denise and I take our rakes and a trash can out into the exhibit. Giraffe poop is not stinky, but it's all over the place. They poop out tiny hard balls of poop while they walk around. So we try to rake up these dark marbles that roll all over the place. When it's dry outside it's easier, but when it's muddy, it's almost impossible to find them all! So we try to rake everything into piles, then we get the shovel and shovel them into the trash can. It's best to start far from the door that way by the time the trash can gets heavy, you're close to the door!
When the exhibit is clean and the giraffes are done eating, we send them outside. Then we get two flakes of hay and some flakes of alfalfa, and take them up the bride over the exhibit. There's a basket that hangs off the side of the bridge and we drop them down there. I have missed yet!
Then we have to go back into the empty exhibit and clean up all the poop balls that they've stomped into the rocky floor. The floor is like those sidewalks that are made out of pebbles. We use a high-powered water hose to blast the poop out and send it down the drain. This rinsing job is pretty tricky. You have to think about keeping the water off your feet and keeping it pointed at the drain no matter where the poop is. So I end up walking in circles for a long time and getting soaked from the knees down. My first time was pretty bad. I think I'm getting better. Sometimes Denise rinses and I wash the rubber dishes and the drinking fountains. The first time I rinsed the barn, she just told me to rinse the barn. I did it, it was messy, and I learned some things. I think I tend to over-instruct.
So, now you can go do the giraffe thing! The best part is the lettuce.
posted by Lauren at
7:27 PM
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