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'!