Week 41: 065 Saw the Light

This week, being the first week of my fancy new summer schedule, I will give you a break-down of my summer classes:
Zoo Skills: At this point, it's everything. This grades me on feeding animals, keeping up with day watch schedules, morning and afternoon area (which I finished doing a straight week of on Wed.), and all that zoo jazz.
Zoo Days: This is us spending 3 days at LA zoo and 1 day at Santa Barbara zoo (done!) working with the keepers in various areas. My LA days are coming.
Wildlife Ed. 3: Here we are doing shows again, except they're different during the week. We have set groups we work with on our week day shows and we will have a script to use (we're working on that now). So, basically we'll put on the same show all summer long, just rotating positions/roles.
Animal Training: Ah! At last! Here we meet twice a week at night for just 5 or 6 weeks and Gary teaches us some basic training techniques.
Animal Training Lab: This is where we are actually graded on training our animals! We pick one or two to train over the summer and do weekly meetings/consultations with Gary to make sure we are on the right track and to test. I have chosen to train Kissu and Benji, both just some silly behaviors, which is the focus of the summer.
Primate Behavior Lab: OK, I know I said I wouldn't take this ever, but I did. We are going on a ton of field trips to various animal facilities to look at everything they do. In between all that, we are learning a bit about primate behavior and enrichment.
That's the schedule! Pretty sweet? I thought so.
So, now you're going, "OK, Liz, but what the heck does any of this have to do with your weird title?" Nothing. Nothing at all. My title is a nod to the death of our golden pheasant, 065, or more affectionately referred to at Phez. She was old, and the necropsy showed signs of gout, and obesity... She will be missed! Here's a picture of a golden pheasant (f), not Phez, but a likeness.
Below, a video of my rat, Crow (now slightly obese), running the maze!

Week 40: Semester 2 = Over

The second semester ended as of Wednesday! I passed with flying colors, looks like straight A's for me! Everyone is getting ready for next week and the summer semester to start. Sadly, we discovered one of our classmates is leaving the program due to some absence issues. We will have a new student re-joining the program then to fill her place. That will be kind of weird, but I'm sure we'll get over it. I had my semesterly meeting with Mara (staff) and things went well. She has a good grasp on who I am and how I operate and staff seems to generally really like me and the job that I'm doing. I just need to improve on being more enthusiastic outwardly, which I totally understand and I've definitely been working on it. We also had an awesome meeting this week to discuss our up coming projects! Cindy (staff) gave us a list of already set up, ready to go projects and then she wants us to start talking to her about any others we want that aren't on the list so she can work on setting those up. It was just really exciting to think that we really only have a year left here! On Friday, we met with one of our part-time staffers that works at the LA zoo full-time. She is in charge of our zoo days class and we met so she could explain how that class was going to work, as well as how LA zoo days work. We have 3 to do there this summer and I should know when and what areas I'm working soon. It's really super exciting to be thinking about all the cool stuff we are about to start doing as second years. I can't wait!

Week 39: Santa Barbara Rocks!

I went to my first zoo day on Tuesday at Santa Barbara zoo. It was amazing! I worked the bird string, but my cool experiences were not limited to avian types. My morning started out by getting oriented with the keepers and the zoo. We started by opening up some tortoise exhibits, and then we went to the giraffe exhibit (there are cranes, horn bills, and tortoises in there). I got to meet a giraffe face to face and I fed him some biscuits! I also saw the back end of the gorilla exhibit with their juvenile males. We cleaned and fed the animals there, then I moved on to another keeper and I was working more with birds of prey. They have an awesome tawny frogmouth (look it up!), named Stanley! I love these birds, and she let me perch him out and I put him back home later in the day. I did some un-exciting hosing here and general chores. I got to see their new California condor exhibit, that was neat to see four of approximately 300 existing birds. I then got to help out with their morning and afternoon penuin feeding. We even played with one in the back-end of the exhibit who was hand-raised and people friendly! I also got to feed the brown pelicans! In the afternoon, we candled a penguin egg (it's that time of year!) to see if it was fertile; it didn't look good, yet they were unconvinced. I got to help out with the Asian small-clawed otter feeding in a bit of free time I had (they're so cute!!). At the end of the day, it was a lot of quick feedings and pulling food. There were a lot of macaw pairs to be put back into their over-night holdings. We did that by perching them on the end of a long stick and then carrying them back with the stick held up like a flag pole! The really cool part of all of this is that when I was asked if I knew how to handle or do something, I did and they trusted me. These zoo days are going to really show us how much we've learned so far.
That was the true highlight of my week. Otherwise, finals started and are going well so far! Still having massive co-trainer issues, but hopefully people will learn to grow up and take some responsibility soon, or get kicked out. Either way... Pictures: ([reptile presentation a few weeks ago] Hila monster, gaboon viper, me and Kissu, CJ [AKA Calamity Jane]: coyote)

Week 38: Farewell, Second Years

We are taking great strides as a class, learning how to work together, and figuring out how to work it with just us there. The second years have been gone for weeks now on their projects, and their time here has come to a close. A good lot of them already have secured fabulous jobs/internships and are heading out right away. Friday's graduation ceremony was very nice, and a very fitting send-off for such an awesome group. I wish I was confident to say that we will be remembered as a whole class as fondly, but it won't happen. Our class is pretty disappointing. There are bright points, but a lot of lows, and they seem to be out weighing so far. The summer will really tell though.
This week we also learned about an aspect of our summer and second year: zoo days. Here we will spend days at the Santa Barbara and Los Angeles zoos, shadowing a keeper(s) and seeing what they do and how. I'll actually be going to Santa Barbara on Tuesday to check out the bird line.
Another part of our summers were also decided this week: I'll be getting my week of vacation over my birthday, so look out Chicago! I'm coming to party!
Crow ran the maze this week, and it went fabulously! I got a 95%! I'm bringing home the maze this weekend and I'll make him run it one last time to get some video of him so you can all see the good work I'm doing out here! Pictures: (Savuti- Spotted hyena, Kiara [Savannah]- African lion, Ceylon- Burmese python, Madagascar hissing cockroaches)

Week 37: My friend Chance

This week wasn't anything special. Schmoo came back today (Saturday) and is looking alright. They ended up keeping her a little while longer. The rat maze finals are next week, so people are training like mad to get that done. Crow has/is doing quite well and I'm not worried a bit. I'll try to take some video of it so you guys can see the fruits of my labor. On Thursday, I had a cool experience where I got to restrain Ghost to pull a broken blood feather from his stub. We'll be doing that again to replace his anklets as they are very stretched out. The rest of my animals are doing good. We might be gearing up to do a nail trim on Chance in a while. That's a whole ordeal where we have to knock him down to do it.
The other week, the names of our first year class were pulled, so we did some calling. I then put out an add for our extra room and I've gotten two bites. We'll see how this goes, but definitely good to have a roomie again. This week's pics will be some good ones of me and Chance, appearing for the first time in this blog!