Shattered

So, this week at the zoo was totally different than ever before, so that's a nice change of pace.  Especially since I have to miss next Saturday because of section leader tryouts, so luckily I'll have a good taste in my mouth for a while.

TUESDAY


There was some kind of giraffe keeper conference thing in Arizona, so a bunch of giraffe people were coming to Tucson that afternoon.  So everything had to get done fast because all the keepers had to join them on the tour at 2.  So I did tortoise, bird and dry feed stuff.  And three school groups came in during the morning, so it was a very busy morning.

SATURDAY


No hoofstock, but carnivore area this time.  I was a little bit surprised, but hey, I'm down for seeing new stuff.  Getting all the food prepped is kind of ridiculous because there's way more to do, and there's a lot of birds, so there's a lot more bowls and stuff, so it's slightly out of control, and I would definitely have a hard time remembering all the different things that we had to take out there.

The first stop was the bird run, where we fed everything but the parrots.  The bird run is a little short, so I have to kind of hunch over just to walk in it at all, which is sort of annoying.  And there's a lot of birds, which isn't really that great.  The cockatoos can talk, so I had a really long conversation with them by just saying "Hi" and "How are you?".  So bird run, not very exciting.

Next we went over to the muntjac.  It's kind of like a deer the size of Kingston, just to give you an idea about how small this thing is.  It was really funny though, it likes it when people scratch its neck for it because it can't reach it with its short little legs.  There's some turtles in there too, but we just have to count them.  Then we went over to tiger, which was really cool.  Got right up next to it and I got some whisker and nose from it through the chain link fence.  He was funny though, he has a cool noise when he's happy, and he's happy when he's eating his big plate of meat.  While he was eating, we went in and cleaned, I cleaned the windows, and then sprayed cologne and some other scent everywhere, and rearranged his toys so he would have some new and exciting stuff to do.

Next up was Warty pigs and Sun Bear.  The sun bear is really funny.  She comes up to the fence and hangs on while you feed her.  She doesn't like to go outside because she's old and is blind in her right eye, so that's kind of sad.  The warty pigs are kind of weird.  They have this huge complex social system, and there's only three of them haha.  We fed all these guys and cleaned up their exhibit.  There was a dead bird in the warty pig pool, so that was kind of interesting.  After letting everyone out, we went over to elephants.

Elephants was just as cool this time as it was the first time, except I didn't touch its foot this time because it wasn't Cassie in charge of elephants.  They're so big! It's really ridiculous to stand there next to them.  After the two elephants were out we went back to the bird run to change out the water and feed the rest and hose down the floors.  Once again, bird run is not my favorite part.

When we were done with the bird run for the day, we went back to warty pig/sun bear to clean up the back area, feed the sun bear its lunch, and do some warty pig training.  But before training we went back to elephant where we put palm and bamboo on the fence for them and then watched them go around and pluck it all of after we were done putting it up.

The last thing of the day was to give the tiger a bone and clean out its back area, so we brought him inside, put the bone out on exhibit, and let him back out.  That was interesting because it was in a giant trash can, so he tackled the trash can, go the bone, ran across his little stream and went to town on his bone.  Then we cleaned out the back area, which took like 30 seconds because it was already pretty clean, and that was it for the day.

Only kitchen next week, but then the week after I go four times in a week, so that should be fun.

How many times can I break til I shatter?