well, phooey
today's zoo shift was cut short, due to sudden return of the migraine after lunch. i felt fine, if a little tired, most of the morning, but after sitting for an hour (of all things), i suddenly felt like crap. head hurting, a little feverish, and just totally out of it. i wasn't 100% sure it was just a migraine, as it's starting to feel a little cold-like, so the general consensus was that i should go home and not risk infecting everybody else (not to mention the monkeys).
so alas, my first week on a new line and i had to leave early. it was fun while i was there, though. i got to work w/ keeper D, and he's just a really nice guy, and a complete softy for the animals. it's nice to get to know some new animals, too. that line has a LOT of primates on it -- i made up food pans for 6 different primate enclosures, all but one of them with 2 animals in them. the last one has 5 (they're actually in 2 connected exhibits, so it's not as crowded as it sounds). mostly it's GLTs and GHLTs, but there's also that pair of Geoffrey's marmosets (who are the most adorable little girls, and much less scared of me without the mask & gloves).
there are also several rock cavies, a couple of chinchillas, several acouchies, a couple armadillos (i'm pretty sure they're both one of the 3-banded types, but i need to double-check that), a bunch of meercats, some kind of hook-billed bird (i'll have to check next time -- she looks kinda toucan-y, but isn't), and a couple of prevost's squirrels.
unfortunately there are a lot of animals on this line that volunteers aren't allowed contact with, like the meercats. in their case, it apparently has something to do with disease control -- there's some disease they can carry that humans can catch, but i didn't find out details. (i doubt anybody's in, y'know, IMMEDIATE DANGER ZOMG; just precautionary on their part.) also, one GHLT exhibit is quarantined at the moment b/c they had a TB scare, but that's apparently almost up, so hopefully in a couple weeks i'll get to meet them too.
two of the GHLTs are special-needs monkeys -- they're two sisters who were born with neurological problems that affected their, um, i want to say back legs and/or spines. (cr0wgrrl, if you're reading this, it's something along the lines of the problems pounce & spit had -- they just have trouble getting their back legs to work right.) but they get around okay; you just have to be careful when hosing down their respective exhibits to make sure you don't accidentally squirt 'em if they're hanging out in the lower part.
they're still in the middle of shifting a whole bunch of animals around. today they moved a pair of mother & daughter elephant shrews into the lemur exhibit, b/c the pair of males that were in there are being shipped out temporarily. they've apparently settled in pretty quickly -- one of the other volunteers said she saw one of them out foraging within half an hour of being let out in the exhibit, whereas apparently the boys hid for a couple days when they were moved in there.
so yeah, basically i got to feed a bunch of monkeys and clean a bunch of enclosures, then had to leave before the second round of feeding. oh, and i got to hand-feed the elephant shrew dad ("buddy") -- he's everybody's favorite, very friendly, and will snorfle and scrabble at your hand when you have waxworms to give him. very cute! and some of the GLTs on this line are less skittish than the ones that were on line 3 -- hugo and samba, particularly. hugo's a greedy little guy and will hog all the mealworms if you let him. heh. he was snatching 'em out of my hand.
so alas, my first week on a new line and i had to leave early. it was fun while i was there, though. i got to work w/ keeper D, and he's just a really nice guy, and a complete softy for the animals. it's nice to get to know some new animals, too. that line has a LOT of primates on it -- i made up food pans for 6 different primate enclosures, all but one of them with 2 animals in them. the last one has 5 (they're actually in 2 connected exhibits, so it's not as crowded as it sounds). mostly it's GLTs and GHLTs, but there's also that pair of Geoffrey's marmosets (who are the most adorable little girls, and much less scared of me without the mask & gloves).
there are also several rock cavies, a couple of chinchillas, several acouchies, a couple armadillos (i'm pretty sure they're both one of the 3-banded types, but i need to double-check that), a bunch of meercats, some kind of hook-billed bird (i'll have to check next time -- she looks kinda toucan-y, but isn't), and a couple of prevost's squirrels.
unfortunately there are a lot of animals on this line that volunteers aren't allowed contact with, like the meercats. in their case, it apparently has something to do with disease control -- there's some disease they can carry that humans can catch, but i didn't find out details. (i doubt anybody's in, y'know, IMMEDIATE DANGER ZOMG; just precautionary on their part.) also, one GHLT exhibit is quarantined at the moment b/c they had a TB scare, but that's apparently almost up, so hopefully in a couple weeks i'll get to meet them too.
two of the GHLTs are special-needs monkeys -- they're two sisters who were born with neurological problems that affected their, um, i want to say back legs and/or spines. (cr0wgrrl, if you're reading this, it's something along the lines of the problems pounce & spit had -- they just have trouble getting their back legs to work right.) but they get around okay; you just have to be careful when hosing down their respective exhibits to make sure you don't accidentally squirt 'em if they're hanging out in the lower part.
they're still in the middle of shifting a whole bunch of animals around. today they moved a pair of mother & daughter elephant shrews into the lemur exhibit, b/c the pair of males that were in there are being shipped out temporarily. they've apparently settled in pretty quickly -- one of the other volunteers said she saw one of them out foraging within half an hour of being let out in the exhibit, whereas apparently the boys hid for a couple days when they were moved in there.
so yeah, basically i got to feed a bunch of monkeys and clean a bunch of enclosures, then had to leave before the second round of feeding. oh, and i got to hand-feed the elephant shrew dad ("buddy") -- he's everybody's favorite, very friendly, and will snorfle and scrabble at your hand when you have waxworms to give him. very cute! and some of the GLTs on this line are less skittish than the ones that were on line 3 -- hugo and samba, particularly. hugo's a greedy little guy and will hog all the mealworms if you let him. heh. he was snatching 'em out of my hand.