The sun....it BURNS!

Week two has come to a close. This week I was stationed on Routine 3 and the aviary. I was once again working with Sandy, my fellow Illinoisian, who instructed me to give stickers to only the cute and nice children; needless to say, I left work with a pocket full of stickers...monsters I tell you! Making me re-wash windows like a mad woman! Routine 3 involved the education and discovery center animals: the chinchilla, turtles, salamanders, fruit bats, skunk, aquarium, more turtles, screech owl, and an animal I never even knew existed, the springhaas: a large rabbit like looking animal with a long tail; I would describe it as a rabbit kangaroo-ish animal. Because Sandy is one of the primary keepers for the Tur, we also went out on the mountain and took care of them.

This week involved very little scrubbage compared to last week, and I was only sent to do dish duty once or twice.

Each year the zoo takes in a number of turtle hatchlings, raises them for 6 months, and then releases them back into the wild. One of my responsibilities this week was to weigh each of them and record the data. There are 24 of them all together that can be identified by nail polish spots placed on their backs. It was a slow task identifying them by looking through sheets of paper to find which picture matched each turtle I had at hand, but I felt very professional with my charts and data so it was definitely worth it.

Saturday was the first day the outdoor aviary was open to the public. It's a place where people can enter a giant cage filled with budgies, cockatiels, and rosella, and feed them if they wish. It was my job to try and sell seed sticks while keeping an eye on everyone and the area. To be honest it was one of my most boring, yet busiest days. I had an hour in the morning to feed and clean before everyone came, and when it was closing time I had a bagillion things to take care of! 11 hours in the sun resulted in what I like to call tomato face syndrome. I did get to meet Jay, the zoo president while standing there though, and we got to chat about the zoo's future plans which I thought was very cool.

My mom and Friend Bob also came to visit me that day! They were my saviors and brought me water before I shriveled up and died in the sun :)

Week One: Success!

Let me break down how things are going to work for the next 13 weeks of my life.

Each animal is assigned a "Routine" number. Each number is assigned two to three keepers, the primary keeper, and the secondary keepers. When I go in I'm assigned to one of these routines and work along side which ever keeper is working the routine that day.

This week I worked with Angie and Sandy, the secondary keepers of Routine 5. This routine consists of the penguins, meerkats, pelicans, kangaroos, walaroos, emu, tur, swans, and egrets. My shifts were from 7 to 3:30, which meant leaving my house by 5:30 so I could get there on time! In the mornings I would collect the food out of the fridge that the night keepers had already prepared, and prepare the sinks for the rest of the day. The first day Angie went over all the cleaning and feeding procedures, and we worked together to scrub, hose, shovel, and scrub some more!

The first stop is the penguin and meerkat exhibit; they share the same holding area building so it's easy to multi-task in there. The first thing we do is go out on exhibit while the animals are still inside. In the penguin area we hose all the rocks off really well, and scrub them with water and disinfectant. We then go out to the meerkat side and test the hot wire, shovel any scat, and pick up any debris that could have fallen in there over night. We then go back in and let the animals out onto exhibit. When they're outside we clean their indoor holding areas. While Angie did the penguins, I worked on the meerkats. There was more hosing and scrubbing, and some squeegee-ing too. Once this is done we go out and feed the penguins. The first two days I only took note of how many fish each penguin ate, but on Saturday Sandy let me feed a couple of them, which was really super awesome. The penguin named Brown, is my favorite, she ate the most haha. Penguins Yellow and White laid an egg, which is very out of season for them and quite a surprise for us! They however, are terrible parents, so we had to switch out the egg for a dud while the actual egg was put in an incubator.

We went from exhibit to exhibit all day,feeding, shoveling and scrubbing, hosing and scrubbing, scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing!!!! Not only were there exhibits to be scrubbed, but there were also dishes....

This is the super awesome amazing fantastic faucet. I named it Sam after Sam from Lord of the Rings. Sam is always there for Frodo, helping him along in his journey, and I feel my Sam is a great help in the land of dish washing. Seriously, it is a talented sprayer; I've never rinsed, scrubbed, and rinsed again so many dishes in such little time. Sam is my hero.

After day one I was entrusted to clean the aviary, kangaroo, meerkat, tur, and egret exhibit on my own so we could get all the work done faster.

The indoor aviary is really neat...and DIRTY! Those birds are terribly messy, I clean it and then the next thing you know there's seed all over the floor again. It's really hot in the room; it's always a relief when the birds fly around and give you a nice breeze as you're sweeping and SCRUBBING away :) Once it gets warmer out, the birds will be transported to the outdoor aviary. This should be sometime soon, considering it was almost 90 degrees today (Holy Bajesus!).

I continue my scrubbing adventures next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. This time my shifts arn't quite as early, but I feel like I'll be just as exhausted by the end of the day as I was these first three. It's been an adventure that's for sure, and I've enjoyed every second of it....even if it involves more scrubbing than I ever thought possible :D

So, let's get started!

It's almost time! For the next three months I'll be interning at the Racine Zoological Gardens located in Racine Wisconsin. This will be a whole new experience for me and I'm very excited, a weeee bit nervous, but mostly excited! Coming from a backround of very, Very, VERY little experince and having owned no pets (well, except my fish Dale, may his soul rest in peace), this is all going to be very new. But it will be awesome!

Well, I have orientation this coming up Sunday and once this whole thing kicks off I'll keep ya'll posted :)

Until then.