A few weeks off

So I confess I have been slacking a little on my blog (yet again!).

I haven't actually been to the zoo for the past couple of weeks. Last week, I was suffering from the mother of all hangovers after the hockey girls christmas do and was in no state to go anywhere. Yes... I felt incredibly guilty.

This Sunday I didn't go because of the snow we currently have in the area. The main problem being that the zoo is down a country road in the middle of some woods, and I decided after much agonising that I wouldn't attempt to get there.

To provide a little bit of news however, Paradise Park was in the local newspaper this week. Their snow leopard cub, Hara, is moving to pastures new as part of a breeding programme:

Rare Snow Leopard to leave Broxbourne's Paradise Wildlife Park

I also thought I'd post a copy of the map of the zoo so you can see what is there. If there's anythign you'd particularly like me to talk about, or show you some pictures of, please let me know and I'll see what I can do!

I won't be at the zoo over Christmas, so I'll wish you all the best and return with more zoo news in the New Year! :-)

Winter arrives but keeping warm with meerkats

Sorry for the lack of posting again.

I had a week off from the zoo last week, but this week I was back, braving the freezing cold (literately) working on my favourite, the small mammal section of the zoo.

As I said, it was reallty very cold, and cleaning out the enclosures sweeping up frozen food and poo wasn't particularly easy, and attempting to get the frost off the windows (so the public could see in) was pointless, it simply froze back up again. Pools and water troughs were frozen as well... As well as most of the water taps around the zoo...
Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera out of my bag first thing so the best of the picture moments had gone and the ones I did take (like the ice floating in the wolves pool, didn't really come out)
Despite this, Connor (the head section keeper) and I did a good job at getting the morning rounds done quite quickly. In the first section, I cleaned out the meerkat enclosure and the corsac foxes, while Connor did the coatis and racoons. We both took care of the second meerkat enclosure and then, over the otherside of the zoo, I got to clean out my favourites, the red pandas and Connor did the otters. We finished just after 10am.
At 10:45, Connor had a 'Meet the Red Pandas' experience so I went along to watch the red pandas being feed - Incredibly jealous that I didn't get to do it, but it's great to watch them eat; they're so gentle and wrap their paws around the bamboo to eat the leaves.

 

I spent the rest of the morning preparing feeds and after lunch I helped clear some rubble from round the back of the coati & racoon enclosures.
There's an old brick building tucked behind there that has recently been opened up, presumably for a storage area. It actually used to be the lion and puma houses back in the old days. Of course they have much bigger and much more open enclosures now. Here's a couple of pictures I took of the area, but I'm not sure how well you'll be able to see the size of the structure.

My real treat however, came in the afternoon when Connor suggested we go and sit with the meerkats for a while. We've always got 'Meet the Meerkat' experiences going on at the zoo (we had 3 on Sunday) and I've never got to sit in with them before. It was fantastic, having meerkats climb all over me and cuddle up against me, two of them, Captain and Twig were particularly friendly and laid back against me and let me tickle their tummies. I was really quite sad when we had to go.

I think this was Twig...

So, this is the end of my post. I hope I am forgiven for the delay in posting again. I do try and do it each week but don't always have the time... and the next Sunday comes by really fast.
We have snow now... I'm hoping that doesn't stop me going this weekend!

I'll leave you with another of my zoo favourites who didn't seem to appreciate the weather all that much.