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