Orientation Day

On January 10, 2010, I officially became a zoo intern here in Tucson.  The first day was not very exciting in itself, but I am the most excited I have ever been for a semester.

When I got there, two other girls were there, Sarah and Jessica.  They were just standing there, and looking kind of confused.  Later on I found out that the zookeepers had been walking by laughing at them because we weren't allowed to go inside until all 5 of us were there.  So we stood there for about another 15 minutes waiting for the other two, Catherine and Adrienne.  Apparently Adrienne's been working at the zoo for a while in the education department, so she already knows all the keepers and where everything is, so that's sort of an unfair advantage.

When we did finally go in, we went over policies and safety and those kinds of things, and then got a quick tour of the back area, like the keeper's lounge, kitchen, vet area and other things like that.  Then we were assigned our first team activity.  A scavenger hunt around the zoo.  It was fun because I ended up with Sarah (who I had ecology with this past semester) and Catherine, and they're both really nice.  The other two are already kind of friends and they seem like they're going to exclude us 3, but that's alright.

So the hunt took as all around the zoo, and showed us the special gates to get to the perimeter road that we'll have to use a lot probably.  The zoo's not very big, and it's separated by geographical regions, so getting lost will probably not be too big of an issue the first couple of days there.

After we finished up the scavenger hunt, we were done for the day, but while we were walking on the perimeter road we got to see a tiger up close, along with a vulture, heron and a zebra.  We got our sweet volunteer shirts, and were officially done.  Those last encounters definitely got me even more excited than I already was.  After this semester is over, hopefully I know exactly what I want to be doing, and that being working in a zoo full time.

I will follow you into the dark