Week 28: Animal Assignments! (Round 1) and Sadness

The super sweet goodness that is animal assignments finally happened this week! Much excitement, and disappointment, were had this week. For me, it was really all the former! Just to leave you not hanging in suspense much longer (I know some of you haven't heard yet) my assignments are: Kissu-mountain lion, Nuez-agouti, vervet monkeys (Annie, Sydney, and Benji), and Ghost-bald eagle! I think I got a pretty good run! Although only one of these animals were my first choice, I really love all of them and am really excited to start this turn over process (some of which I've already started!) This is also called round 1 since there is an extras list of animals that need more trainers, so there will/should be more added soon.
Turnovers are a multi-stepped process that generally start with writing a short paper on the species, including a breif personal history of the animal. Then you progress to doing about 2-3 hours of observations, no more than 30 minutes at a time, sometimes with more specific criteria about those (i.e. times of day, activities, public hours, etc.). Then the really fun stuff starts and you learn the diets, behaviors, and begin fully interacting with the animal! I already did a few things with Kissu, and I've been learning about cleaning Ghost's mew (a.k.a. enclosure).
Meanwhile, I am very close to finishing my 30 hours of observations on Spirit (mountain lion) for my behavior paper. There is now very suddenly tons of stuff to do at the zoo and trainers are pulling us left and right to go learn new things about our new animals. I often have to choose between animals since a lot of things happen at the same times of day. I think so far, I'm keeping it even and I've done something with all of my new assignments, and I've gotten two of my four papers written (I'm sure I'll work on the others tomorrow or Monday). I've also gotten observations started on all of my animals. I have to piece them out in the half-hour chunks, and be mindfull of finding the other times of day to do them. The good news is that I can do Kissu observations (and sometimes Ghost) while I sit and do Spirit! I love multi-tasking.
On a super sad note, we lost another this week. Tuesday morning, Hamilton, our other Yucatan mini pig, was put down. He was very old and had a bone infection that was too far gone to realistically fix. Hammy was awesome and will be deeply missed. *moment of silence*
Since you guys have seen pictures of Ghost and the vervets before, I'll just post a few pics of Kissu and Nuez, plus a bonus pic of Happy-American alligator!