Animal Crackers for Breakfast

Free Admission Day!

2006-05-19T16:25:00.000-05:00

The zoo really did it - free admission for everyone! Whoa! It was so cool! I had seen the commercials on TV, but I knew it would be a different Saturday when I pulled into the zoo parking lot and there was a traffic director directing the keepers to pull their cars into the service area (where the breakroom and all those buildings are) so 7 more parking spots would be available.

So, we started working. We had all the animals exhibits cleaned and all the animals fed by 10:00 because that's when the Enrichment Schedule started! The Enrichment Schedule listed a different animal every 15 minutes from 10:00 - 3:30. The schedule let the visitors know which animals would have their enrichment activity at what time, because zoo animals are way more exciting when they're being enriched!

It started with the Lions at 10:00. The lioness, Samba, got a whole deer thigh and hip with the hair and everything! She loved it! She attacked it and threw it up in the air, caught it with her mouth and ran around her exhibit shaking her head back and forth and ripping the meat off! It was crazy! Next were the Colobus Monkeys (don't worry we're not going to go through the whole schedule). They got Mulberry broughs - their favorite - tied all over their concrete trees. So the trees in their exhibit looked real! They also got pistacios, their other favorite! Loren stood outside their cage and talked about them while she tossed pistacios into their cage, they were crazy too!

The zoo was so packed! There were tons of people, some guy was playing live music in the gazebo, and Steak Express was cooking burgers and sausages. It was cool. Everyone was excited, there were lines to see the animals and all the animals were wired!

The Elephants were funny. The elephant keepers kept talking about these popsicles they had made for them. Popsicles for elephants? Won't they eat the popsicle stick too? I found out later that they weren't talking about regular popsicles. They had taken big plastic storage tubs and frozen 4-5 layers of different drinks in them! They took the two "popsicles" into the exhibit, turned them up-side down and dumped them in the dirt. They also put out some little trees that we'd cut down, 4 frozen cantaloupe, 6 frozen watermelon and a couple bales of hay! They floated a couple of the melons in the elephant's pond and hid some of the watermelon under the hay or the little trees. The elephants came out and went at it! The old elephant wanted to eat her whole tree, then eat her frozen watermelon. The younger elephant wanted to find all the frozen watermelon first! She went around the yard looking for watermelon. When she found one, she'd wrap her trunk around the bottom of it, lift it up and drop the whole thing in her mouth! These were big watermelon! Then she'd crush the watermelon in her mouth and chunks of it would shoot out! She fished all the melons out of the pond and cleared the exhibit of watermelon (except the one that the other elephant was guarding). Then she started on the popsicles. They were too big for her trunk, or didn't have a good place to grip, so she stomped on it to break it up! It was great!

Ok, one more - the spider monkeys. Yeah, these girls and guys are funny! Kate put a little kiddie pool in their exhibit and put some grapes in the bottom. Then she filled the pool with tons of shredded paper! She smeared big peanut butter "S's" on the glass and hid other treats around the exhibit. The monkeys went in there and had a ball! They licked all the peanut butter off the windows and attacked the kiddie pool! They were throwing shredded paper everywhere! Yeah!

I left at noon, but I heard that all that excitement really exhausted the animals. Punk the giraffe LOVES crackers. By 2:00 she was so sick of crackers that she just sat down in her exhibit and wouldn't stand up anymore. :-) They counted the visitors and there were over 6,000!!!

Crazy day at the zoo!

Do you know how to use a hose?

2006-04-23T20:35:00.000-05:00

First I helped set up the spider monkey exhibit. While Kate was putting up some of the supplies, I was talking to the monkeys in the holding area. I had my face kinda close to their cage. All of sudden, one of those little monkeys shot his hand through the cage, hit me on the head, and pulled some of my hair! So, don't talk to the monkeys.

Then I was sent to work with the Bird Guys, Travis and Ryan. Travis asked me if I knew how to use a hose. ? I'd told him I'd had some experience in the giraffe barn and in my childhood. It was funny for a keeper to ask me if I know how to use something. I'm more likely to get questions about whether or not I like a certain animal (then if I like them I get to clean up their poop). So, Travis and I went to the entrance and I got a BIG hose and started the 20-minute-job rinsing job. The peacocks hang around the entrance and make a big mess with their poop and white urine splashes. So, I washed that off. Then I helped Travis sweep up some mulch that had fallen out of one of the bird exhibits.

Now, it's Attwater Prairie Chicken time. APC's are an endangered species and this zoo is one of the six facilities that is working on captive breeding. I don't know the whole story, but there's lots of APC eggs and some regular chickens are busy sitting on them. There's one chicken at the zoo named Nugget, and he's hilarious! So, every Saturday Travis and Ryan collect all the eggs in a bowl of sand and bring them back to the lab to weigh them and do some egg candling. This is like science class, but in real life. Each egg has it's own number and Fresh Weight. The FW is the amount it weighed on it's first day. Each week they take a Current Weight and then do some math to figure out what percentage of weight it has lost over the week. I guess eggs lose weight as they turn from slime to feathers. Most of the fertile eggs lose about 16% of their weight each week. Then I got to watch some egg candling. Now the keepers won't warn you that they're going to turn off all the lights... so don't get scared. After the lights are off, they turn on a little flashlight and hold the egg up to the light and let the light shine through the egg like it shines through your hand when you put a flashlight on it. It's cool. They do this to see if it's fertile or not. Fertile eggs have veins and dark masses, but infertile eggs are clear.

We marked all the weight changes and candling observations in the APC egg notebook. Then they asked me if I was familiar with Excel. Hello, how many hours a day do I spend on Excel? Lots. So I helped them set up an electronic APC notebook. It was pretty cool. I think they have about 100 eggs, and I only got through 30 of them. I wonder how many will hatch. There's already lots of infertile eggs. It's made me look at eggs differently anyways.

I guess the monkey was the only funny animal, but I liked learning about the egg project. I'll probably help with the birds again next week.

Today I touched...

2006-04-15T16:44:00.000-05:00

A jaguar!!

I worked with Loren since Denise doesn't have to work on Saturdays anymore. I think Loren is a little more laid back. We visited other people and took breaks!! We visited the jaguar cage because they were working on the waterfall in the exhibit. It'd be broken for a long time, and Doug had finally got it to work again. So, we were standing around, admiring the waterfall, doubting the cloudy water, and standing on layers of mud, grass seeds, and dry hay. The jaguars were in their holding cages in the back of the exhibit. Loren took me back there and introduced me. There's a black friendly jaguar named Copan and dangerous spotted jaguar named Wailer. They're brothers, but they're different colors. Everyone has to stand at least 3 feet away from Wailer's cage or else he can get you with his paws. Copan likes to roll around on the floor and rub his body against the cage. One time when he was leaning against the cage I got to stick my finger in really quick and touch his back! Whoa! That was it, but it was cool.

I also got to pet a pronghorn. I wasn't real sure what a pronghorn was until I met Claire today, and did some research on pronghorns on the internet. Pronghorns are native to the American Great Plains. They are kind of like small antelope. Apparently they're the fastest animal around; they can run at speeds up to 60 miles an hour! Cheetahs can sprint at speeds of 70 mph, but not for a very long time, and there aren't any cheetahs at the zoo. Claire is a very friendly pronghorn. She doesn't really like to eat crackers that are offered to her, but she likes attention. I got to scratch her head and walk around the exhibit with her. She shares her exhibit with Bif the Turkey Vulture and Smiley the Crane. Smiley has a crooked beak. :-)

Oh, I heard a funny story about Tanzi the elephant. So there was this lady and her daughter who were visiting the elephant exhibit. The mom was throwing crackers to the elephants and the girl wanted to throw something too. She had a sippy-cup so she tossed it in there! Tanzi, (a very smart elephant) picked up the cup with her trunk, squeezed it just enough for the top to pop off, DRANK THE JUICE, then tossed it to a zoo keeper!! Crazy. The elephants are way cool, but very stinky.

There's a pregnant Colobus monkey. These are black monkey with some long white hair around their face. The pregnant monkey, her name is something like Lydia, hasn't had a natural birth before. Last time she was pregnant, she had to have a c-section, and she didn't accept the baby. After a month of hand-raising the baby monkey, it died. Sad story. So, everyone's hoping for a natural birth.

There's still ostrich eggs in the exhibit! You should go see them!

Man! I really like working at the zoo!

An April Day

2006-04-09T19:48:00.000-05:00

Hmmm... I don't have a plan for today's post. The main thing I remember from the zoo yesterday is coming home really tired. I think it's because I've been staying up late ever since daylight savings time started.

Let's see, I got to tell the keepers that I met the students who broke into the zoo for Valentine's Day! Did I write about that on here? Two students boated across Nelson Lake and broke into the zoo at night. Then they had a picnic on the bridge over the giraffe exhibit. Then the guy climbed over the fence and got into the exhibit with Asha and Punk! And they took pictures of everything, and put it on their blogs, and the zoo manager found the blog on a google search! So, they're in big trouble. Don't break into the zoo!

We loaded up the truck with food and went to the zebra barn. There were four pigeons trapped in there so we called the Bird Boys. Diane (the bird-catching ninja) has Saturdays off now so Ryan and Travis work the bird areas. Ryan came by and Denise and I helped him catch all the birds. One was very sneaky! Ryan kept catching it, but it kept escaping! Finally, Ryan pinned the bird down with the net handle and grabbed it with his hand! It was crazy. Ryan and Denise talked for a while about who they would feed these pigeons to, and they decided it was Albert the Alligator's turn. Ryan didn't want to pop their heads off, so he drove away with the birds. Maybe Travis or Albert killed them.

Rosa, the lemur that was in the clinic, died on Friday. Denise was really sad about it. She said they did a nutopsy (an autopsy, but for an animal) and her kidneys were really bad, and her heart was also bad. That's sad, Rosa was a sweet lemur.

Jack the mean, but beautiful zebra is getting shipped out at the end of this month. He doesn't get along with the other zebras. So, if you want to see his striking coat and his beautiful black and white stripes, you need to go to the zoo soon! Some zebras stripes aren't clear, or they're a little brown, but Jacks are super! He's a meany and I'm scared of him, so I guess it's OK that he's moving.

My favorite part was cutting some fresh spring boughs off the trees in the back and feeding them to the giraffes. We took them up on the bridge and held them over the fence while the giraffes used their tongues to strip the leaves off the branches and almost yank our arms off! They pull really hard!

It's great to go work outside with wild animals/their poop. :-)

Taking Care of Hooves and Lemurs

2006-03-26T16:26:00.000-06:00

It was nice to be back at the zoo after being gone for three weekends. The back area is familiar to me, it was a sunny day, and I knew where Denise would be - the giraffe barn.

We raked, swept, and shoveled the scattered poop and alfalfa, then let Asha back in the barn. Loren was helping Denise today, so there were three of us back there. Asha came in and I saw the bucket of Hoof Conditioner sitting on the floor by the door to the giraffe area. So, Asha was in the barn and Denise was trying to lure her close to the human-sized door so Loren could use a broomstick with a tiny, stiff brush on the end to get the mud off Asha's hooves. I hadn't really looked at hooves before. They're more like toes than I thought they'd be. Kind of a toe and hoof combination. Giraffes have one split in each hoof, so it's like they have 8 toes. Lots of mud gets stuck between there and it looks like it makes it harder to walk and the other parts of their hooves look dried out. If anyone knows anything about hooves, please comment.

So anyways, Denise was waving lettuce around, Loren was trying to be sneaky with the brush, and Asha was trying to eat the lettuce without moving her feet close to Loren. I was just watching and replenishing the torn lettuce supply. Asha was winning. Then Loren went for the hose and started spraying the mud off. That worked. So then Loren switched to the long stick with the hoof-polish-brush on the end. Asha had already gone through one head of lettuce. Denise was talking to her, and brushing the lettuce on her nose or on her tongue trying to get her to walk closer to the door. But Asha's neck can stretch really far... We ended up (hahaha, LOREN ended up) getting the front parts of the front hooves painted. And they looked dark and shiny instead of dirty and clumpy. Asha got to eat three heads of lettuce!!

Then we went and cleaned up the zebra/ostrich barn and exhibit. Denise lost her whistle sometime, so we walked around the exhibit looking for it. I wonder what the zoo visitors thought. The baby zebra, Kebibe (Ka-bee-bee), was being funny. He was running next to the truck, and then running a lap around the exhibit every now and then. When he runs, he gallops a few steps, then kicks both his back legs out and to the side, gallops, kicks!, gallops, kicks!... It looks really fun! I didn't recognize all the noises, but Denise said, "He's always running and farting, running and farting." :-) hahaha.

Have I told you about Rosa yet? She's a lemur that is having kidney problems right now, so she's been in the clinic for a month. It's important that they keep weight on her so they're trying to find things that she likes to eat. They try things like fruit, baby food, puddings, yogurt, pie filling, muffins and Ensure. Lemurs like sweet foods.

Usually Rosa sits on a bench in her cage while we take her food in. This time, after we closed the door to her cage, she ran up the chain link wall, and climbed up to about my shoulder level. Denise told me, she wants you to pet her. !! Cool! So I got to scratch her head and stroke her little hands and feet, I pet her arms and scratched behind her ears some more. It was really cool!

It was a fun zoo day. There's one more story, but it'll have to wait until later.

Stories about Giraffes

2006-03-05T19:27:00.000-06:00

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.

Conquest

2006-02-25T23:34:00.000-06:00

Today I went to the zoo and Denise wasn't there. So, I was at the mercy of the elephant keepers. We tossed some alfalfa in the giraffe basket, then went to "get the elephants out." That translates to: Clean the yard, move the elephants into the yard, then clean the ELEPHANT BARN! Yes, the same elephant barn that made me very nauseous the last time I was in it.

It rained all day yesterday, so the yard was pretty muddy. We slid around and scooped up some poop out there. There wasn't much since the elephants were put in the barn once it started raining. Then we slid the full barrels through the mud, back to the truck. The keepers did some quick training with the elephants, took a blood sample from Tanya, and put them out in the yard. Now it was time. Kate told me that I didn't have to help, but I figured I might as well try again.

So I grabbed a giant shovel and slid my barrel through the pee to a corner full of poop. Already it didn't seem as bad. Maybe some rain got mixed in with the pee so it wasn't as strong. I also thought I'd better stick with small loads instead of scooping up a whole shovel-full. It wasn't bad. I didn't get sick. The poop was as big and solid as ever and my shoes and jeans definitely got pretty smelly. But I did it! I helped them scoop all the poop, then I squeeged all the pee. :-) Yeah!

Then all three of us piled into the truck and took the 6 barrels of poop to the dumpster. We talked about guessing the poop's weight. We figured that each barrel must weigh 100 pounds, so that's at least 500 pounds of poop a day! Maybe 600! Whoa.

Lots of other cool stuff was going on at the zoo today. I worked with the zebras and ostriches as usual. I got to feed Rosa, the lemur, 40 c.c.s of Ensure. It was kinda like bottle-feeding. Rosa has kidney problems so she gets to eat things like banana muffin bars, oatmeal, pumpkin pie filling, and baby food. Maddy, the bear, had to be taken to the vet to be X-rayed, so the vet came to the zoo with his tranquilizer gun to sedate her. I wasn't around to watch the whole process. It takes a long time for a vet to come, set up, and sedate. Then it takes a longer time for the bear to sit around and loose consciousness (20 minutes!). I didn't stay for the weighing, the moving, and the waiting in the vet office. But it was still interesting. And I saw a bunch of ostrich eggs! They're giant! I didn't even realize they were eggs, I thought they were small melons!

I like going to the zoo. I get to see lots of crazy stuff, and work with things besides papers, clothes, and dishes. I wonder if elephant keepers would get the same thrill from processing applications as I do from tackling the barn... probably not. :-) So, be a zoo keeper.

The Day the Pigeons Died

2006-02-06T17:29:00.000-06:00

There's no way I'm going to report everything that happens at the zoo every week, so I'll just pick a story or two. This week it's just one story, and it's crazy. Ask Robin about the song.

On Saturday I got to the zoo a few minutes late and nobody was in the breakroom or the food room. James was working with the jaguars and he told me that Denise and the rest of the keepers were at the zebra barn. So I walked down there just as the truck with everyone in it was driving towards me. I stuck my thumb out like a hitch hiker and jumped on the back with the other Lauren. She explained that they'd been locking the pigeons in the barn. Everyone had to help because they had to close all four doors at the same time. Those birds drive Denise nuts; they pick on the zebras, scatter their hay and build nests in the rafters. I'm trying to help you think of the pigeons as the bad guys.

I asked Lauren what was going to happen to the pigeons, and she drew her finger across her throat! Ah! So, I started wondering out loud if we were going to cut them up, poison them, inject them, or take them somewhere.... Lauren said it would probably be something like banging their heads against the wall (and she was laughing a little). My eyes were probably really big.

We rode the truck back the food room and picked up the food for the day. First we snuck some hay into the zebra barn. We were careful not to let any pigeons fly out. Then we were on our way to the giraffes when we saw the bird keepers driving up in their little golf-cart-carry-all-mobile. Have I introduced you to the bird keepers before? There's a guy named Travis, he's about my age and turkeys are his specialty. Then there's Diane. She hasn't ever really talked to me. I think she's 40. She wears a khaki hat and glasses and seems small. Travis and Diane hopped off their Carry All and grabbed their nets. I had my doubts.

So the four of us (2 bird keepers plus Denise and me) snuck into the barn and turned off all the lights. I don't know why the lights had to be off, but it made it scarier. We were hunting pigeons. Denise and I were supposed to scare the birds into the corners where Diane and Travis were waiting.

With a net in her hand, Diane turned into a sneaky hunter with ninja-like agility and speed. It was amazing! She was catching two birds, one after the other, in the same net, in the same second! After she caught a few birds, she brought them back to the door (by the light) to inspect them. This is when I learned that we were catching the pigeons to feed to the various birds of prey in the zoo. Apparently pigeon meat is excellent for their digestive system. ?

So, Diane, holding the birds wings back with one hand, felt their feathery tummy with her thumb to see if their pelvic bone had a big hole in it. You see, if it has a big hole in it, that means that it's a female and they've had eggs before. If there's no hole in the bone, it's a male. The plan was to keep the females for breeding, and kill the males for meat! Yikes! So, after Diane finished commenting on the pretty patterns on their wings, she put the females in a box and took the males outside. She turned her back to me held the bird between her elbow and her body and POPPED HIS HEAD OFF with her other hand!! OK, the head didn't come all the way off, but it sure wasn't attached to the body any more. Then Diane threw the writhing dead pigeon body into a waiting box where it flailed around and squirted blood everywhere. I didn't watch that part, I just saw the box afterwards and figured out what had happened. !!

Denise and I were excellent bird-scarers. I really liked jumping up and down, waving my arms and yelling "Not this way! Not this way!" when the birds flew my direction. Diane and Travis caught eight pigeons. Four males died, three females lived and one male lived because Denise really liked his coloring. Sure. So, the four dead birds go in the freezer to get rid of any "cooties in the crock" wherever the crock is. And the four live birds go into the pigeon holding area to have babies that will be used for food later. Wow. And that's part of the circle of life at the zoo.

I don't know what the moral is. I guess to be a smart pigeon and hang out on the roof instead of inside the barn. But it was definitely a new experience for me, and a really crazy story!

Fingers, Lurch, and B.A.

2006-01-30T19:17:00.000-06:00

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

2006-01-14T17:38:00.000-06:00

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

2006-01-11T20:24:00.000-06:00

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

2006-01-09T20:24:00.000-06:00

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

2006-01-09T19:45:00.000-06:00

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.