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!