Week 36: Helping Hands

Things are going pretty well at the zoo. This week I got to be zoo foreman for the first time. It was nice since instead of waking up and working hard, you wake up and walk around to make sure things look good and function well. Definitely a welcome break.
A few weird things happened this week and all parties will pull through thanks to the generous help of others. First, starting on Sunday, our sea lion, Schmoo II was not doing so well, and she is quite old. After a few days of her not eating, she started not moving either, so we panicked and got some people who were too generous to take her in at a little place called Sea World. They did a full work up and found she had an infection. They were also generous enough to keep her and treat her for the week. That's not so sad news, Schmoo is/will be fine! Next, not so good.
On Monday, the primate class took a field trip to a facility founded by some of our graduates called Zoo to You. It's a wonderful facility with tons of cool animals, including a few we used to house. I stayed back since I'm not in the class and helped take care of the animals at the zoo. We learned on Thursday that their temperature controlled building had burned down and was a total loss, along with 38 animals housed there. Very much a devastating thing to happen since some of our former animals were included in that total. This time, we are the helpers and most students have been excellent at offering their services to this wonderful facility to help them recover their loss and cope with the pain.
A really cool experience also happened this week in that Wednesday, a company called Brockett's came out with some of their poisonious reptiles to talk about them and the safe handling (or not) of them. They also talked a little bit about what they do for movies and some of the jobs they've been on out in the field consulting for Survivor and other shows.
Pictures!: (Michelle- white-faced capuchin, Boo- mountain coati, Wendell- African pygmy goat, Rorke- Abdim's stork)