Smile Like You Mean It

Crazy week, mostly full of studying, and some more studying, but there was zoo time, so I did have some fun this week

Tuesday was a kitchen day, however, I made bird diets instead of tortoise diets, and we did giraffe feed again, when I saw the baby zebra on exhibit for the first time.  But giraffe feed was different this week because Stacey decided that we should clean up the ledge of the exhibit and fill the hay feeders, so we went to the giraffe barn and she gave me the quick tour (it's really really cool), and then when into the exhibit with the giraffes and filled up the feeders.  I wish they liked being petted, because it would be the greatest thing ever to stand there and pet them, but you can only get a quick little tap on the lower jaw before they pull away.  But that was way cool, and one almost knocked me into the exhibit with his neck.

That was pretty much everything on Tuesday, so exciting.  So today, Susie was late because her dog broke into her kitchen while she was in Flagstaff this week (yes, she went to Flagstaff), and so I was on my own to start getting the food and cart ready, but I didn't know if the rhinos were still getting special meds, so I didn't know how to make their food, so I got stuck early.  But luckily she wasn't too late, and we were still relatively fine timewise.

We went and pulled the male zebra off exhibit since he was on overnight and fed him in the back.  Then she dropped me off to clean up the exhibit while she went to go feed everyone else.  I took a wheelbarrow instead of a bucket, but the wheelbarrow broke, so that was interesting.  I couldn't get it back together for a while, so we didn't really make up much time since I didn't get much done while she was feeding.

After that we cleaned out the rhino exhibit, and then let the rhinos and gazelle out.  I love petting the rhinos every time we do this.  Then we went over to let the zebras and ostriches out, but we didn't know until after we put them out that the ostriches weren't supposed to be out with the baby, so we had to chase the ostriches back into the barn and rearrange everything in back so we could clean their area up a little bit.  And poor Konan was back there by himself in this little area all day.  I feel bad for that guy.  So we cleaned a little bit of ostrich and then went to clean out gazelle and rhino.  When we finished cleaning gazelle Susie let me hand feed one of the corey busters some fish, so that was kind of neat.

Then we put out the tortoises, fed them and took a short break before going to clean out the zebra barns.  In the middle of cleaning the zebra barns, we had a birthday party for Sue the supervisor, so I got to eat cupcakes and hang out with the keepers.  That was fun, they seem really fun and really cool, and most of them are probably in their early to mid 20s, so I feel like I can actually be friends with them, which makes this internship even more fun.

When the party was over we finished off the zebra barns and then it was time to go back to the real world.  The zoo is definitely the best part of my week every week, and I really need to find somewhere to apprentice and then become full time, because getting paid to do this would be a dream come true.

Dreams aren't what they used to be, some things sat by so carelessly