My Day as a Zookeeper
Butterfly!
I had to wait like five minutes until the butterfly finally landed, and it was perfect cause it landed on the cactus. I took that one for Clare, and it's actually probably my favorite of the pics that I took
Scottsbluff
Me, Dad and Mom in front of Scotts Bluff. The bluff is named after Hiram Scott, the poor man who was left by his fellor explorers at the base of the bluff to die because he was sick. Poor Scott.
Cousins!
Me and Myria in fron of the Riverside Zoo sign. I had so much fun working with her at the zoo!!!
Cousins2!
Peter and me!! I loved playing Settlers of Catan with him! It was nice just to hang out.
Settlers of Catan
I played this game five different times while we were there! It's a new addiction. Tons of fun. Gotta get my own copy.
Monkey Business!
Mom, me and Myria in the sign. Dad made us do it!! heh.
Oaf!
my favorites were petting the bison and going in with the tamarins. The bison was HUMONGOUS; it was just a huge giant cow. It came right up to the fence and just looked at me like, "Hi, who are you? are you feeding me now? what are you doing just standing there, come let me out!" and I reached out, and touched its horn and then felt it's head, and it's eyes were just huge staring at me. and at first it was scary, cause there *was* a fence between us, but it was just a regular chair fence like the one around my playground at work, and if it REALLY wanted to get out, it coulda just put a bit of pressure on it, but it was just content in its little place, just staring at me while I talked to him. His name is Oaf.
Myria opened the gate for them, and he rushed out to get food, but the other bison, Doc, the younger and little bit smaller one, wouldn't go out the gate. instead he was running back and forth, sorta rushing me but not close to me, and it was kinda scary, really weird. and Myria was like, "What the fuck? You never do that, Doc, what's your problem?" and I thought maybe he didn't like me, so I backed away where he couldn't see me and he went into the yard. but later we found out that he was actually showing off for me! Vicky said that he does that when he's excited, and that he actually must have taken a fancy to me or something and was just trying to get my attnetion. So that was really funny.
Meerkats!
meerkat sniffing my shoe...he was about to pretty much attack it like he did a few minutes before, and I was going to take a picture of it, but Myria walked back into the exhibit and he ran off Meerkats are seriously skittish creatures!!! Every tiny little sound they would jump back in their holes and peek out like, "what the hell is out there??!"
Barbie or Kelly
This is either Barbie or Kelly. Either way it's a mean porcupine who kept trying to poke me with her quills!! These ladies shed their quills once in a while, and I was able to pick one off the ground and take with me. It's one of the black and white ones, and it's about a foot long and about half the thickness of a regular pencil, and is sharp as hell. The porcupine exhibit it is funny cause the meerkats have access to their house, and they come in and steal their fruit and then scamper off, and the porcs are all, "daaaamn where'd my fruit go"
Naked Mole Rats!
Myria kept opening the back of their housing for me so I could take a picture...but it's a bunch of different boxes connected with tunnels, and every time we opened a new box they'd scamper through the tunnel to get away from the light. That's the best picture we could take cause they're little snots.
Little Italy and Darcy
These little Tamaran monkeys are just a little bit bigger than a Derek hand, and they have the attention span of Howie! So they're like, "Oo, what do you have? What are you doing? SUNGLASSES! LET ME SEE THROUGH THEM! Oh, PEANUTS, give me that! Ooo, RAISINS! no, don't give them to HIM, I want it! Oh, look, camera! She brought a camera to play with! Oh lets run outside and then back in five times in two seconds!!"
Darcy
This picture is a really good one of Darcy. he was JUST looking into my camera like, "Ooo, you brought me a toy" and then Little Italy jumped behind my head, and that distracted Darcy and he looked up right as I clicked.
Darcy and Amilio
This is Darcy and Amilio. Amilio is a lion headed tamaran, and he was kicked out of his troop when he became of breeding age. He was beat up pretty bad when they kicked him out, so after the keepers nursed him back to health they put him in with Darcy and Little Italy, and they welcomed him with open arms as their long-lost brother. Also living with them is Felix the porcupine...he's a regular old American Porcupine, but the tamarans seem to think he's their long-lost cousin. They sleep with him and steal his peanuts.
Long Lost Brothers
See, they love each other. Darcy is grooming Amilio!
Little Italy
Little Italy seriously wants my snowcone! She's so funny. This picture kinda shows how small they really are.
Baaaaby Lion Headed Tamaran
he/she was born a couple weeks ago, it was a twin but the brother died. its mom apparently has a new sets of twins like every three months! They're the ones who kicked Amilio out of their troop...and now that Amilio is with Darcy and Little Italy, he's REALLY nice, he's starting to be social and will come up to the keepers for raisin's once in a while
Phoebe
This is my kitty, Nabi's mom! They have the same face, minus the freckle on the nose, and Nabi is grey, not black.
We worked with other animals too, like the zebras, Brookfield and Mary. But we couldn't go in with them. And I didn't get any pictures.
And I went in the Chimp place. not in the cages with them, but really close.
One of them is really old. Her name is Pani, and at the beginning of the summer she hurt her leg, and was limping. They treated her, and it shoulda healed, but then a few weeks later she just stopped walking. Just stopped using her back legs. So they x-rayed her, and took the x-rays to a human surgeon, and he said there wasn't any reason she shouldn't be able to use her legs, she just stopped on her own for reasons no one knows. But now, because she hasn't used them for so long, the muscle is just gone and now she can't physically use them.
She can't go out on exhibit cause she can't get out there, so her life for the past two months has been in their indoors enclosure, just by herself all day. They leave music on for her, but she's still just super excited whenever anyone comes to visit, so we spent like a half hour in there with her.
She was right up against the cage door, and her fingers were on it, so I touched her fingers, and just stroked them while I talked to her, and then when I stopped touching her fingers she waved them at me til my hand came close and she touched mine til I started touching hers again - it was really cool. I fed her a banana, and gave her a drink from the hose (even though she had her own drinking fountain in her place, she liked the hose better), and I fed her a sweet potato too, and she would talk back and do funny things with her hands.
Then Vicky let the rest of the chimps back into their night enclosure (where Pani was). She opened their outside door and yelled, "COME ON GUYS, TIME TO COME IN!"'
And they all came in SCREEECHING, "OOOOHHHH OOOH AAHAAHOOOHSCREEEECH," All excited to be coming in for the night and getting their fruits and onions...WHOLE onions that they ate like apples!
And Scooter tried to shoot water at me, cause he does that to people who watch the exhibit, but not to keepers, and that was really funny. And one of the other chimps, I think it was Milly, was doing sign language, but no one knows what she says except "eat". Aaaaand, it was REALLY REALLY REALLY LOUD!
oh, I didn't tell you the sad part.
They have to euthanize Pani in a couple weeks, cause her life is just so bad right now, living in a dark enclosure for two months. Everyone's really sad about it there, cause she's such a sweet Chimp, but they know it's for the best.
They'll have to treat it like a regular vet visit so she doesn't freak out and so the other chimps don't freak out, and then afterward they have to show the rest of the chimp troop the body so that they know she died and won't start acting out against keepers thinking that the keepers just took her away somewhere. The politics of it is really interesting, but it's super sad.
It was still a really cool memory, not many people can say that they have touched a chimp.
So. That was pretty much it. The most exciting part of the trip for me was going to the zoo with Myria. I loved being with her all day, and seeing the animals was amazing. There was much shovelling of poop, but it didn't smell nearly as bad as changing poopy diapers at the daycare, and it was worth it to see the animals. I took a ton of pictures of The Monument (the bluff) too, but I'll probably only show those in person cause they're just a lot of rock over and over. Maybe I'll find my favorites and post them at a later time.
I'm glad to be home!