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).