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...