Week 19: The Holidays?

Apparently, Christmas happened this week. Despite receiving some fantastic gifts and chatting with family via our web-cam, I just didn't feel it. I don't know if it was the lack of family actually being present, or if it was the fact that I reported to the zoo at 8AM on Christmas morning to hose down some animal poo, or some combination there-of. I'm not complaining. This is really what I signed up for, knowing full well that holidays will likely never be the same for me since the animals will always need caring for! Really, what better Christmas present is there than to feed a super cute ocelot a fish on Christmas? So, all is well at America's Teaching Zoo at present, and nothing major to report in on that front. I'll leave you with a shot of our councilor/advisor taking a festive shot with Clarence, our beloved Galapagos tortoise!

Week 18: Semester 1 = over

As of Thursday this week, our first semester is over! So far it seems we've all survived. Only one of our classmates is dropping out and it is due to financial issues, which is understandable. Grades are slowly being posted, and I'm only missing one right now, so besides that, it's all A's! Not that anything was too insanely hard, but yeah, I'm kind of a brainiac. So for a few weeks now, I only have area and day watch, so I can relax at home a bit! Care taking for the last time was nice this week. Everyone did all right, except poor Sweet Pea, the barn owl. She's decrepitly old and her weight is not doing so well. Not much to be done about it!

This weekend is our big christmas/holiday event called "presents for primates". It was sort of over taken by an arctic conservation event though, and now it's much better I think. People did a lot of work advertising the fact that we got a whole bunch of snow for kids to play in, and some of the animals got it too. There were so many people there it was a mad house! The primates had a good time opening up their presents too! I will now leave you with a ton of great pics and even an awesome video of Taj playing with her ball!

Week 17: Muertes

Finals are mostly over now, just one more left for me next week. Mostly everyone survived the tests I think. It's a different story if you ask them, but I'm pretty sure most of them are fine. Most of this week's energy was devoted to Sage and his situation. They thought he was looking better and were letting him be in a normal sized enclosure so he could move around more and release some anxiety. It also allowed him to see his brother, Spirit, during the day. Sadly, buy Thursday he was showing some signs of worsening and on Friday morning, he was entirely without the use of his back end again. He was rushed into a special facility for a CT scan on the affected vertebrae. Once they saw the image, it was determined he had an in-operable tumor wrapped 3/4 of the way around his spine. Sage never woke up from the scan. He was put to sleep around noon on Friday. It was a sudden and shocking loss for the zoo and I'm still having a tough time with it. This morning he was taken to a vetrinary teaching hospital for his necropsy. This was such an unusual and fast-acting case that they will be able to learn from it and have access to better tests to determine what exactly happened with the pathology of this cancer, and more importantly, can find out if it is congenital (having a genetic basis). The good thing is that we do still have Spirit. If I had to look at a sad empty cage in carns, I don't know how I'd feel. The staff has stated that as the large carns die off, they will not be replaced. I think that's a crap idea, but I don't have much control over that, and at least they are still here for me to work with. I will leave you with a picture I acquired of the boys. Sage is the one with his head down. RIP

Week 16: Study for Your Life

This week was pretty insanely uneventful. The over-arching issue is with one of our cougars, Sage. He is one of our brothers who peacefully co-exist (a rarity with solitary cats). He has come up with a major spinal problem, making it difficult for him to use his back legs/tail. We immediately separated him and put him on heavy sterioids. After consulting with neurologists on the x-rays we took, they wanted to do surgery. As he was about to go to surgery, Sage was found up and walking on all four legs, so the IV drugs were working. We are holding off on the surgery for now so we can hopefully find out what the exact problem is (maybe do a CT scan?) and maybe resolve it in a cheaper way than using the very expensive specialists to do a very expensive/dangerous spinal surgery. My thoughts are with him!

Other than that, all we're doing as first years is studying our butts off for finals. Namely, the slide final in diversity. We are trying to re-learn all 300 something slides for a 150 question test. This test is 40% of our grade in the lab, so failing it is not an option at all for anyone. I'll be fine. Don't study quite as much as everyone else does, but that's my style. I don't stress. I'm also trying to work on finishing up my volunteer hours so I get more points for the animal assignments that are coming up. Just about 4 hours left for me! I leave you now with a few pictures I took this week of Taj, Walter, and Dunny (in that order).

Week 15: Giving Thanks

Oh yea, I laid on that cheese, and I might just lay it on a little thicker if you stick around for the rest of this post...This week, being thanksgiving, was light on class work. There was no diversity lab which means no tests/quizzes in that class. The others were just as easy as always.
The downside to doing what I'm doing I think has maybe just started to sink in with the people I know and love most. Since I work the Wed.-Sat. side of the week for area, that meant I worked on and through the entire holiday. I wasn't thrilled, but it's just part of working with animals. Sadly, I was in Parrots this week, with two people who aren't my favorites, so that part was crappy. Having to come back to school at night to do PM work that only consisted of walking the emu and a little sweeping was fairly lame, but again, part of that responsibility that I have accepted and try to not complain about. This lack of holidays will likely follow me after I've left. As long as the lives of animals depend on my working, this will be a possibility. Starting a job at where ever I end up will likely put me low on the totem pole of when I can take off for vacations, so it's something everyone in my life (including me) needs to accepting of. I didn't say happy about, just accepting.
On the up side of it all, hubby pulled off an amazing feast with one of the best turkeys I've ever had! And my pumpkin cheesecake was pretty amazing as well. We're still enjoying all of it and I'm looking at the leftover recipes for the turkey! The nice thing was that I had nothing to do this weekend after my morning work on Saturday so we still had some nice holiday down time at home!
OK, get out the crackers. Sitting around, having thanksgiving, talking to all my family on all sides, really got me thinking things of cheesiness that I hadn't thought about in a long time. I am so very thankful for my wonderful family, the ones I am stuck with and the ones I've deliberately brought into my life. I am thankful for a wonderful, patient, and very loving husband who is really putting up with quite a lot right now and taking it rather well. I am thankful to be part of this program that I know will start my assuredly amazing career with animals.
Oh yeah, I'm gonna kick my self to walk around this week and get some pic of something for you guys next week!

Week 14: In Memoriam

This was a fairly mellow week. I don't have to take care of any animals right now, so it was just back to the normal class routine. I am still interacting with the vervets, and will likely do so on a daily basis since their trainers want us to be present for their visual access hours. Currently, they are separated into the two girls and Benji by himself. They are trying to re-introduce them and be able to house them together, so the start of that process is to just let them see each other for an hour a day through protective mesh/wires. Still not entirely sure why we need to be there so desperately; it's not something we'll be doing by ourselves, so it seems like a waste of my time, but whatever.

I've done all the areas in the zoo once now, so I'll just have repeats. I was in show again this week, and it was a lot of work as always. I think I've really got the hang of things and I'll just be getting more and more comfortable as time goes on.

We're gearing up for another holiday fundraiser weekend at the zoo: Feast for the Beast. It's the thanksgiving themed one, if you couldn't guess. After helping a bit today, it's a total bust and we'll be lucky to make $20 on it. Student council tries hard, but they really fall incredibly flat on their faces when it comes to advertising. I'm working on our own thanksgiving. It'll be just the two of us as I'm not fond enough of any others to go try a feasting with them. The other half is that hubby dearest doesn't really want to hang out with any of my new acquaintances either, but that's his choice. We'll likely be choking down turkey for a few months. Good thing I'm armed with a fairly good arsenal of recipes for that.

Now, to the point of my title. On Thursday, we had to put down our beloved ring tail cat, Matt. He was very old and dealing with several health problems. They expected him to go over the summer, but he managed to hang on until now. I wish I had some pictures of him to leave you with, but I don't, so I'll put some generic ones up since this is an unusual animal I'm sure you're not too familiar with. On Friday night, I watched his necropsy (i.e. autopsy for animals). It was very interesting to see. I liked him, but wasn't incredibly attached, so I could handle it easily. We made little cards with his paw prints on them to use as memorials for the staff and trainers. Matt, you will be missed!

Week 13: Projects Week

This week all the second years left on their first project, so we were left to take care of the animals again. My mornings were fairly lax considering all I had to feed in the AM was the vervets. However, I felt like I was running willy-nilly in the PM trying to get all my birds taken care of in addition to my monkeys. I definitely least enjoyed having to deal with Puppy, our turkey vulture. He was just a vicious meanie who ended up taking a chunk out of my fellow care taker during a feeding/cleaning. He's fine. I was always trying to find a way to make it easier and not have to worry about getting eaten, but I guess there really isn't a good way to go about it. I had other issues with two of the other people assigned to the vervets flaking out on the other two of us all week. They really showed a lack of caring and commitment. They also really slacked on coming up with good B.E. for the monkeys, who are required to get some every day. Hopefully they will change their attitude before the next time we are needed, which is in December. Oh yeah, and sorry I don't have any pictures like I promised you this week. Sorry. I'll try and do better in the future...
After another week of reptiles, I'm again still entirely positive that I don't like them at all and would love it if I never had to do reptiles ever again. And on another side note, California is again on fire and we are again on alert as they are fairly near-by. I'm sure we'll be fine though, no need to be worried! My semester is quickly coming to a close and I'm starting to feel the crunch of all the projects I have due, not to mention all the finals that are coming up and I haven't even sort of started studying for. [insert classic Liz stress noise here]

Week 12: Overwhelming

I started this week looking forward to learning about how to care take for the birds of prey, but it was quickly over-shadowed by something I was not looking forward to. As a part of this program, and as a part of the animal world/business in general, it's a simple fact that some animals eat other animals. Heck, we do it. So, it should come at not too much of a surprise to anyone to find that some facilities kill these animals to be fed out. There are several sources you can procure pre-killed and frozen foods from like we do with our mice/rats and chicks. However, since some facilities will require you to do the killing yourself, the school here has decided that is something we should be prepared to deal with. They teach us a humane and approved way to euthanize food animals by hand, specifically pigeons. Any other animal we get live here is euthanized with gas. Just in case any of you are just down right disgusted with the idea of any of this, let me just give you a frame of reference we look through. We are getting these pigeons donated to us from a breeder. They are all perfectly fine and healthy. So now I hear you ask, "But why kill something that is fine?". The answer to that is that these are pigeons the breeder does not want for some reason of their own. If left to their own devices, they will just kill the pigeons en mass and discard the bodies into the trash. Therefore, these are pigeons destined for doom anyways. We take this opportunity to take these birds with no health problems/disease and kill them humanely, with little stress. We then utilize their bodies/wings/legs (pretty much everything) for our animals. Several primates enjoy getting a wing to groom continuously. The carnivores enjoy them for other, far more obvious, reasons. Believe you me, every last animal given one of these parts, truly, whole-heartedly, enjoys the heck out of these things. The humane technique we are taught is a cervical dislocation. Cervical refers to the vertebra in the neck region; dislocation refers to severing that articulation of the spinal cord. This creates a painless (that we know of) and instant death. To ensure that this dislocation is effectively done and we aren't left with ones that suffer for a few seconds when someone couldn't quite get it right, we are instructed to pull the head completely off of the body in one motion. Hopefully that little explanation puts any questioning minds at ease. At least rest assured of the fact that you don't have to do the killing yourself. I am not that lucky. On Monday afternoon, November third, in the year 2008, I took a life. In one swift motion, a tiny soul was snuffed out by my bare hands, which were then spattered with some blood. It is absolutely nothing I remotely enjoyed, and the only reason I got through it was by totally disconnecting myself emotionally and mentally from what was really happening. I never looked at what I did. Just got things situated, looked up, and pulled, then it was over. It was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be, and I'm a lot more emotionally OK with what happened than I thought I would be as well. That's not to say that I don't tear up and maybe shake a little bit when I really sit and consider my actions, but this is not something I anticipate doing much, if any, more of in my life. All the pigeons wore little numbered ankle bracelets, like so many birds are tagged with, and I have one that I will keep with me forever as some type of reminder/penance for what I did. The reminder part isn't necessarily all bad though; it is also a reminder of things myself and others are well capable of doing on multiple levels.
I promise, that's over, we'll just talk about happy or neutral things now! The rest of the week, I learned about reptiles! I am in the reptiles area this week and next week for projects, so their little scaly lives are in my hands. I'm not loving it, but it's not bad either. The one thing I can't get used to is the handling of all the bugs. We have crickets and Madagascar hissing cockroaches, and they both kinda creep me out. The cockroaches aren't too bad as long as I initiate the contact, but I just can't stand the crickets at all. I really would rather be out there working my butt off for animals that I understand and really do know how to take care of. In here, the tiniest little mistake could spell death for these guys. The birds of prey are pretty easy to take care of: they only need feeding once a day, in the PM, so the vervets are the ones that will actually keep me busy next week. I'll leave you with that. Hopefully that wasn't too much of a downer for you, next week will be cool with cool pictures!

Week 11: DAVIS!!!

Davis week was excellent! I had lots of fun feeding everything, namely Ebony since I did so many behaviors with her. I really like her and enjoyed working with her a lot (see pics)! It was a bit light on us academically this week with the monumental exception of the diversity test that Gary was nice enough to give us. It sent multiple people into spiraling-out-of-control panic attacks. There were definitely a few days that were far more stressful than I wanted them to be, but that's the way it goes sometimes. It was really nice to have my own key too; not having to wait around for some second year to unlock something, or having to carry around the giant block with a key attached to it. I think a lot of our class's dynamic showed through this week, and they weren't all positive. Over all, things went well for everyone, and nobody/thing died! We also got our assignments for projects week. The second years are coming back, staying for a week, then leaving again for a week. That time I'll be caring for Puppy (turkey vulture), Sweet Pea (Barn owl), and Nova (Great horned owl). So, I'll be learning how to take care of those guys next week. Also be prepared to tackle some unpleasant subjects...

Week 10: Pre-Davis Insanity

This week was all about getting ready for the second years to be gone. We made sure that we were set in our area (nutrition) and that we knew what we were doing with our animal assignments. I kind of slacked off on building my relationship with the vervets so we aren't great buddies, not that any one really is with them. I did a few in-depth sessions with Benji, but he won't let me bedroom him so we can clean his enclosure, so I'll have to rely on my other caretaker for that while I keep working on it. Ebony and I have a pretty good relationship, I got her to do all her behaviors for me the other day and she gets excited to see me now.
I did my first emcee on saturday! It was OK, nothing to write home about. It was pretty awesome to have Clarence (our glapagos tortoise) in the show; I didn't even know he came up for them. We also had the start of Boo at the Zoo, our Halloween themed event. It was definately under-advertised, so it was sort of a bust, but we'll wait and see how we did money-wise to fully judge it. I'll be really busy next week, feeding all my animal charges! I'll be sure to post lots of cool pictures!

Week 9: Not so on fire!

Apparently the fire season in California works year round, it just rotates through the latitudes. Ours is happening right now. On Monday, a couple large fires were burning, I'm sure you all heard about them on the news. I knew a few people that had to evacuate their homes and it was pretty scary. In fact, the Sesnon fire is still burning! (but contained) We did see a bit of smoke around here at the zoo and got prepared to at least get the birds out, but it never got to that point, thankfully. However, more are likely on the way.
On a lighter, happier note, we got our animal assignments for Davis week and I'm not too disappointed with mine! I've got the toucans (Rico and Iggy), the emu (Julietta), a white-cheeked turaco (Bwana), a raven (Ebony), and this is all in addition to the vervets (Benji, Annie, and Sydney). Next week we'll get our protocols for exactly what we really get to do with these guys, but in the meantime, a lot of people have been finding and working with their second years on getting to know these guys already. I know the toucans are just a matter of feeding and weighing daily, Bwana is just feeding, and I've been doing a lot with the vervets already.
My area this week was MMQ, short for maintenance, mews, and quarantine. Maintenance is just another area of the zoo, oddly named like show, with various species of animals housed there. Mews is where the birds of prey are (if you didn't know, a mew is what you call a house for a bird of prey in captivity). Quarantine is just that, quarantine. Luckily no animals were under quarantine in there (we keep a few in there that don't need to be bothered by the public or ourselves too much) so we didn't have to deal with any crazy protocols about separate tools. Our domestic dog lives in maintenance (yes, we have a dog at the zoo) so we get to take her out on walks daily. It was fun, but she's not very good on the leash, so it was more like she walked us. It's a pretty easy area over all with just a lot of hosing and raking.
On a side note, it's starting to get pretty cold at night here, and it stays that way into the mornings. I have discovered that Starbucks has an excellent new beverage called the "salted caramel signature hot chocolate". I highly recommend this drink! Or any of their signature hot chocolates really, they're rockin'!

Week 8: Back to my roots

This week we had another diversity test, he's starting to be really hard and crafty. I'm not worried I failed or anything, but we'll see. I've been seeing a lot of the vervets this week, creating some BE for them that they seemed to enjoy. On a progressive note, we got our assignments for Davis week and I'll be in nutrition. I actually like nutrition (I've got the knife skills, so I knock those diets out). Since there's obviously no animals in nutrition, I've been assigned on the side to parrots. Not too excited about that, but no complaint here as I got a special assignment with the vervets. Next week we'll know what specific animals we've been assigned and we'll start working with them. I did another manning session this week, this time with our red-tailed hawk, Arrow. He's pretty cool.

As for the title of this little entry, this week I was assigned to hoof stock area. That's my current skill base with animals, and I had a lot of fun getting back to that smell (you know what I'm talking about). Walking Nick (our mini-horse) was lots of fun; he's definitely got a lot of spunk and I ran with him for fun! It was constant work, but pretty easy to me, just lots of raking and shoveling poo. I can't quite believe how much those sheep can poop out in one day...
On a more fun note, I was a handler in a show this weekend with one of our sugar gliders, Darwin. So, this was my first appearance on stage, just letting that guy crawl all over me while the emcees talked about him. My husband thought that was pretty neat-o and came along to take some pics. That's all for this week, next week should prove an exciting post...

Week 7: Carns Carnival

Yea alliteration! There was some super crazy stuff this week, and some super awesome moments for myself too. The first thing that went down was a trainer on the siamangs was bit and had to go to the hospital. She and the animal are OK, however, she has not yet returned to school as she's dealing with some good infection. Now, before you go freaking out about this, let me tell you: this stuff happens. We are working with essentially wild animals, and you can't always read what they're about to do. This is an inherent risk all animal caretakers assume, especially when you are in a free-contact setting with the animal. It is most likely that at some point I, myself, will be sent to a hospital for stitches or even something more serious. I am OK with this, so don't go sending me every article you find about maimed/dead zookeepers/animal trainers. I know it happens, I got over it a long time ago, I suggest you do the same if you plan on staying around me. This is not to say that I or others are doing this in an unsafe manner, it's just what happens. It's the same thing for police officers or fire fighters. They run risks of getting shot, smoke inhalation, and all sorts of nasty, potentially lethal things happening to them on a daily basis! Mine just makes for a more interesting story! I'm stepping off my soap box now...
Now some good news! Davis week quickly approaches. This is a week where all the second years leave on a super cool field trip, so all us first years must care for the animals! The animals you get assigned to is largely dependant on what area you are in that week, however, a few other animals need a more special relationship (primates) and those were assigned early for those who were interested. I was lucky enough to get assigned to the vervet monkeys (look it up!). We have three: two girls and a boy. They are housed separately by gender. They are pretty dangerous, but there's no real contact with them so we're in no real danger. I'm really looking forward to getting to know these guys and maybe actually finding another primate I'd like to work with besides our ring-tailed lemurs. More details will be forthcoming as this story progresses...
This week, I was working the carns area. That's short for carnivores. This is where all our large, truly dangerous animals are (i.e. tiger, lion, wolf, hyena, mountain lions). I was looking forward to being here, and I was not let down! Most mornings Taj (tiger) chuffed at me, and for those who don't know, that's a happy sound. I really loved watching her play around in her pool and splash people! She really is a silly kitty sometimes! A silly kitty that would totally kill you if given the chance... I also witnesses Savuti (hyena) devour the bottom end of a femur in the span of thirty minutes. This was definately a rewarding week overall and I can't wait to be back in carns!

Week 6, Audio/Visual feast!

OK, well, I guess there's not much audio, but you'll love it! This week had a few pretty cool moments in it. We became back-up certified, so now we can go and assist second years when they take animals out. That definitely adds some good reason to stick around the zoo for longer now that we can do that. I'm doing pretty good grades-wise in my classes and the outlook is good that I'll end up with most of my first choice animals when we get to assignments. While we are now back-up certified, we can't back-up all animals yet. We have to put in more time to do carnivores and birds of prey. To complete our requirements for birds of prey, we have to have two hours of "manning" time. Manning is just what you call being out with a bird of prey. So, here's some pics of my session I had Tuesday with Alba, one of our barn owls. We went for a little stroll around the zoo. Don't worry, I was under the heavy supervision of a second year the whole time. My assigned area this week was nutrition. That's where we make all the animal's diets. Most diets are made by the trainers, but we still get to make quite a few. I'm sure you're asking yourself, "But what do they feed them?"; I'll be happy to answer that! We use all kinds of fresh produce for a lot of our animals, they seem to be particularly fond of yams. There is also a wide variety of pelleted diets we purchase from a company that makes food for zoo animals; so we have monkey chow, crocodile pellets, pig pellets, bird pellets, as well as some ordinary cat and dog kibbles. We also keep some crickets and meal worms around for insectivores. For the carnivores, they tend to want meat, so this we must oblige. We get large 5 lb. "logs" of ground meat that is a completely nutritious diet for them. I think it's mostly composed of horse meat. Interestingly enough, it's not just meat in it, it's got some good chunks of organs and tasty bits of that. I imagine when they make it it's something like putting a whole skinned horse into a wood chipper. (How's that for an overly graphic image?) On a lighter, definitely cuter, note: I took our leopard tortoise out on a walk for a bit this week, and trust me, he's a walking fool. Little Joe is seriously planning his escape, but first, he enjoyed some tasty grass, and here's a video of him doing that.

Week 5, What a Show...

Nothing much happened the first bit of the week, just general boring-ness with classes and all. Once area started for me on Wednesday, it got interesting. I was assigned to show/wildlife theatre area. Show is just an area of the zoo and I guess it was called that for lack of any other names. Actually, very few of the animals housed in there do shows, but whatever. This is a big area with lots and lots of work to do. There were four of us first years in there and we pretty much divided out into two people who could work quickly and effectively and two people who managed to take an hour to rake out a pig's enclosure. However, because of their slowness, I got to do a lot of cool things with animals! I held the chinchilla a few times while we cleaned out his cage, but the coolest thing by far is what I did Saturday. We have to clean out Hudson's (our beaver) pool everyday. Since on the weekends, we do this cleaning a bit later than normal, he's awake and hanging out. We have to keep him from falling into the empty pool and keep him from getting into the tools and chemicals we bring in there with us. So, while my partner scrubbed and cleaned the pool, I played beaver wrangler for a while. That was fun! Beavers are very strong and fairly heavy, so this wasn't really an easy task, but totally a cool one. I also had several close encounters with our blue crane who gets very excited around people and likes to be all in your business. This has been a pretty cool week overall; I wasn't initially too excited about show since I knew how much work it was, but now that I've done it, I really like it! Definately looking forward to doing this area again.

Week 4!

I really wish something cool would happen so I could get some better titles for these things. I guess the big to-do of the week was the diversity test, and it wasn't that hard. There were several people I think were ready to pull out their hair, but afterwards they discovered that it wasn't as hard as everyone made it out to be. My area assignment this week was for parrots (my least favorite animals at the zoo). It was alright in that it wasn't hard and we really didn't get dirty. It was incredibly nerve racking for me though to be in and out of those cages with the birds as I'm not too fond of them and I'm not sure what they will look like when they try to eat me. But, I survived and the parrots did too, so it worked out. I only got trapped once, and it was no big deal. Currently, I'm busy pulling together my assignment for another class where we make detailed maps of the zoo. Can you say busy work?
The only other thing happening right now is all the people who want to work with Shmoo II (our one-and-only sea lion) are scrambling around to all these mandatory sessions to learn how much crazy hard work it is to be with sea lions. I'd have to say it's about 97% of the class that wants to be either a trainer or caretaker, and I'm one of those very few who really doesn't care. Shmoo is very cool and entertaining, but I'll let the people who actually have hopes, dreams, and a shot at working with marine mammals professionally go nuts over her. I personally don't think marine mammals will ever work out for me since I'm not too fond of the water and swimming, so I'll just appreciate them from afar and still get cool insider access from my buddies that do do the training.

Week 3: The Real Work Begins

This was our first week of area! My roommate and I were happy to find we'd been assigned to the same area this week, primates. However, the third in our party was somewhat unfortunate. A socially awkward (really, you could say inept), constantly-questioning fool was constantly grating on our nerves and we did just about everything we could to take jobs that either didn't involve him at all, or physically moved us away from him. You see, with the monkeys, there is a proper etiquette to follow so they don't eventually perceive you as submissive and weak. This is very important to keep up as we have no idea which, if any, of these animals we'll be working with yet. He mostly made it a point (I'm sure subconsciously) to break every one of these rules, and I sincerely hope I'm there for the day one of the monkeys reaches through the bars and grabs him in a bad way. Our second years continue to be really nice, but it's become somewhat of a problem in that they are so nice, they're not doing a very great job of getting through to this guy and correcting his behavior (ironic, since this is what they do with animals...).
Our classes are starting to pick up a little bit, but still not much happening there. Getting closer to a few tests now, and having some projects with nearer due dates, but nothing serious to worry about yet. It was a pretty uneventful week overall, I'm sure after this week's assignment in parrots, I'll have at least one interesting story.

Week 2 (super original titles, eh?)

Just finished up my second week's worth of work. We're actually starting to do stuff now! We've learned all about how to work all of the areas so next week we are starting the actual labor part, and I'll be in primates! I'm not really that excited about it, but it is an easy area and I get to see a lot of Chance, our binturong (look it up!), and the lemurs. We had our first slides quiz in Diversity this week, it was easy, but this next one is going to be pretty hard, I must study for it much more... I'm off until Tuesday now, which is nice to get some time to spend relaxing at home and doing something with the hubby.
On a slight side note, look out for my professors appearing on the Animal Planet! Both Gary Wilson and Dr. Stringfield will be appearing on a new show they are promoting now called something like weird animal videos or something. Not sure when it starts, but they're on it!

First Week Run-down

So, nothing particularly spectacular happened this week, so I'll just give you a quick run-down of my classes and maybe explain to you some terms I'll likely use a lot (I'll put those in bold so it'll feel like pulling out vocab words from your favorite text book!). Feel free to ask some clarifying questions in comments! Also, I'm dropping a loving happy birthday to my hubby!
Wildlife Education: This class will basically prepare us for doing shows at the zoo. We will learn facts about the animals used in shows, learn how to handle some of the animals, and then actually start doing some show appearances. There's also a lab associated with this class which is basically a repeat of any basic college speech class, but with an animal twist.
Zoo Skills: This class transforms into a phrase: "day watch". Everyone signs up for two hours a week to rotate through various maintenance tasks in the zoo. This includes answering the phones, doing rounds (checking on all the animals), entering data from the daily sheets (sheets of paper kept in each area of the zoo to record temperatures and anything strange or abnormal going on with an animal), taking out the recycling, and a multitude of other things that vary based on the day and time that you have it.
Animal Diversity: This class is somewhat of a repeat of any zoology designated class I had in college. I attempted to skip it, but since I've heard nothing about that, I think it didn't work. We'll go through all of the groups of animals and their various characteristics. In the lab section of this course, we are memorizing approximately 300 species names of animals (about 20 a week) as well as a few other taxon groupings for those specific animals. We also watch videos. Not sure how interesting or boring those are since the one we were supposed to watch this week didn't happen due to too much pointless question asking.
Wildlife Conservation: This class seems pretty awesome. We are basically just going to cover the concepts of conservation while also discussing new techniques and hot topics. There will also be lots of cool guest speakers from the world of conservation.
Animal Care and Handling: Here we are learning how to do all the work around the zoo. Cleaning, feeding, and even a bit of handling are all covered. The lab section of this course is code named "area". This is the class that causes me to be at the zoo at 6:30am three days a week, and coming in on weekends. Right now, we're just walking around hearing about what we'll do, but soon, we will actually start working. This lab also happens in the afternoon. This is the time that animals are checked in on first thing when we get there and last thing when we leave, and so much more.
Animal Health and Safety: This class is taught by our on site vet. She's super awesome! She is basically in charge of the logistics of the California condor conservation project! In here we're going to learn about how to keep ourselves safe when working in this zoo environment, as well as how to keep the animals safe and healthy. We'll learn a lot about general exotic animal husbandry, and also cover a large section at the end over zoonotic diseases (diseases communicable between animals and people).
Avian and Reptile Care: This class is covering very basic husbandry and vet skills for birds and reptiles/amphibians. It will have lots of guest speakers from the LA zoo.
That's what my weeks are looking like pretty much! I also have to squeeze in twelve hours of volunteer time over the course of the semester, but that won't be hard. Hopefully that wasn't too much info to absorb, but feel free to ask me questions!

End of Orientation

Let's quickly recap my last few days:
Wed.: It was a pretty boring day as we were just talked at about how to be successful in the program and not let ourselves get kicked out or burn out. The big highlight was they discussed and demonstrated their technique for euthanizing pigeons (which I'll have to do eventually). Eight people got to go ahead and do it, but I wasn't ready and there were plenty of volunteers. Tearing the head off of a pigeon sounds barbaric, and it is somewhat, but it's also pretty painless for the bird. In a few weeks I'm sure I'll have done it and hopefully I'll be over it too since all of that bird is going to good use, not just being thrown away.
Thur.: A lot more being talked at. We signed up for our "day watch" shifts, which is really our zoo skills class. It's pretty weird how it feels like we should be getting paid as employees or something, yet in reality we are paying them to let us do all of this and it's all a big class... Anyways, we also got our nifty new uniforms that we'll be wearing nothing but for the next two years! Then we did a pretty fun scavenger hunt around the zoo to see how much we remembered from our tours, and my team won!
Fri.: Today was work day. Yes, it's just a fun as it sounds. We broke up into teams and worked on various tasks that needed to be completed around the zoo. I mostly hung out with Wendell the goat. He was pretty cool and seemed to want to take an active role in the filling in of uneven areas in his pen. It was extremely difficult to follow the rules of not interacting with the animals when I was in there with him and he seemed to be really wanting me to talk back and hang out with him. I also did some weeding, which is always a blast... At the end of it all, all the first years were told to gather for a picture, and it turned into a roof-top ambush of water by the second years. I didn't get too wet, however, my roommate was drenched and her phone has suffered for it.
That was orientation week, it was busy but cool. Next week, we get elbow deep in it all...

It Begins...

Orientation week started yesterday and it was pretty overwhelming. We pretty much got shown everything imaginable at the zoo and how it works all in the time frame of about 2 hours. Naturally, we remember nothing important. It'll all get picked up as we go along, and we're not worried about it either since we don't have any super important duties given to us right away. Most of yesterday was spent really sizing up our classmates. I've discerned two distinct groups: the younger, lack-of-a-real-college-experience, wants to party hardy crowd and then the more mature (either in age or just personality) laid back group. Roomie and I are definitely falling into the latter crowd as we are both over the "party till you drop" atmosphere. I only hope that between their squeaks and squawks they are a reliable group when it comes down to safety and awareness.
We also learned about the most excellent butterfly conservation project going on in the zoo. It is a totally outside project, but it was cool to learn that something that hugely important and successful is going on right there and that, if I wanted to, I could be a part of. (I don't want to, but I could.)
Today was the health day. We all traipsed through the health center to be checked out, tested, and vaccinated so they're sure we're all ready to go into this crazy zoo world. Other people were meeting up with their buddies to watch them do some area work, but my buddy and I got that out of the way yesterday, so I'll be chillin' at home for now. Tonight, we go ice skating!

Roomies!

I got my roommate in on Thursday, and she is awesome! She may not be a cook, but I can tell we're going to work out just fine. Jon ran away this weekend so we've been hanging out and getting to know each other. I introduced her to the excellent In and Out Burger last night and then we went to a party full of other EATM students. We went mostly to see what kind of people we'd be spending the next two years of our lives with, and we were not too dissapointed. Obviously, when you have a group as large as 52+ people, not everyone is going to be best friends, or even kind of friends. They were all in last-ditch party mode last night, too, so that might have had an influence on a few personalities. All in all, we're super psyched to start orientation tomorrow and get this show a rollin'!

Ready for Back to School!

My adventure is about to begin. A few months ago, my husband and myself moved out here in hopes that I would be starting school soon. He had gotten a good engineering job to support my educational endeavor and I attempted to find a good temporary job, but without a car, it just didn't work out like we'd hoped, so I've been playing housewife. It's not the most fun in the world (I'm imagining that it's better when there's kids to look after, but we won't be getting those for a while) but I'm not complaining since he works and commutes so far everyday. We did find out that I was accepted to school and that was a relief to know that it would only be two years we needed to spend out here.
Let me explain this nerve-racking acceptance process for the program. All applications must be submitted by November. After that, everyone that meets the base requirements laid out by the program on the website (and on the application if you're really thick) is invited to the information meetings in March where they try their best to scare as many people as possible out of the running. I already knew this was going to be a tough, time-consuming program; I've more than prepared myself for that. After those meetings, 52 names are randomly drawn out of a hat and we are notified that we made it in! At that point, you can still drop out if the money situation doesn't work out for you and the alternates they've drawn get their chances at getting in too. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait for that, I made it on the first draw, on my first try at applying. (I've heard of people that have tried up to four times to get in!) I'm a big believer in fate and destiny type stuff, so this was a clear sign it was meant to be.
Now it's August, I've just had a birthday and I'm ready to go! My husband and I decided it'd be good for us to put that second bedroom to good use and got a roommate (another EATM student). She's moving in this Thursday! I'm pretty excited; it's going to be weird as we haven't really talked much, and we've never even seen pictures of each other... I'll obviously post again to update on how she'll work out once she gets here.
Next Monday, orientation begins! Then class the next week. I am so excited to get this ball-a-rollin'!