Another day working on cats

I had another week working on the cat section yesterday – With a working camera I’m pleased to say!

I thought I’d start my blog with this picture of Yazhi. I didn’t get to go into the enclosure with her today but I did say hello to her through the bars.

I’m going to start at the end of the day and tell you all what I complete idiot I was yesterday. I’d had a really great day and then I managed to ruin it in a complete moment of madness.

Kush, the female snow leopard is currently ill and so she’s on antibiotics. Martin, who was running the section for the day gave me some meat with the medication hidden inside to go and give to her. Somehow, and I still do not know how I possibly confused them, I managed to give it to Aaron by mistake instead.

What more or less happened was that Aaron was outside, so I unlocked the indoor enclosure to see if Kush was there and there was a snow leopard in there. Without really thinking about it, I just assumed it was Kush, but of course Aaron had somehow seen me and sneaked inside. There is no real excuse for it however, it’s really obvious which is which and I should have double checked with myself before giving the meds.

I feel really, really bad about it. I spoke to Jenny this morning on the phone and went over what had happened. She was quite nice about it all and told me that both Kush and Aaron are fine, but of course it could easily have been a lot worse.

Here’s an old picture of Aaron that I’m sure I’ve posted before:

Back to the beginning of the day now, my first task was to clean the white lions’ indoor enclosure (which is next to Yazhi’s). The indoor enclosures are quite easy to do. I thought I’d give you an illustrated guide on how to clean a cat enclosure:

Step 1 – Sort through the old straw crating two piles, one of dry straw, the other of wet straw. This sounds simple, but sometimes it’s actually quite difficult to tell what is damp and what isn’t.

Step 2 – Bag up the damp straw – This is then thrown away in the general waste – Unlike most of the waste from the animals, the rubbish from the cats cannot be put on the compost heap due to the high levels of ammonia.

Step 3 – Empty the old water from the trough over the floor of the enclosure and then squeegee it off to give it a clean.

Step 4 – Finally get some new straw to replace what you have removed, and arrange it to form a nice bed.

As you can see from the photo, the three white lions don’t have anything else in the enclosure with them but this depends on the cat. Many of the enclosures have split level platforms, and the jaguars have things to climb on as well to keep them occupied.

I also got to do a couple of ‘firsts’ – I got to watch Tom do the ‘Feed a Big Cat’ Experience which was something I hadn’t seen before. I was quite jealous to watch the chap feed Rocky and Narnia the two tigers.

I also got to do a couple of the feeds – This only involved throwing large chunks of meat over the fences to the cheetahs and white lions, but still, I was thrilled to be able to do it and now just clean out enclosures for one.

This is one of the beautiful white lions just before he was fed:

Facts of the Week

Snow Leopards

• Snow leopards are found in the mountain ranges of South and Central Asia
• There are estimated to be between 3,500 to 7,000 left in the wild.
• Their long, powerful hind legs enable them to jump up to 30 feet – approximately 6 times their own body length.
• Snow leopards sometimes wrap their thick furry tails around their face and body to keep warm while resting.

Cat Day!!!

As mentioned yesterday, I worked on the cat section at the zoo this week and I have to say I had a great time doing it.

The day started with a disaster – My camera battery was dead! It seems to last for ages and then suddenly dies without warning. So I had to rely on my trusty 5 mega pixel camera phone which has never taken a decent picture in its life! Please forgive me for the poor photo quality this week – I’m just as disappointed as you are.

First job was to clean the outside of the tiger enclosure, this involved picking up any piles of poo and any leftover food. Here is some of yesterday’s dinner – Although this doesn’t include the really gruesome parts of a horse’s head which I had to pick up.

Jenny then decided that they should clean the windows to the cafe which overlooks the enclosure. Fortunately I didn’t have to help; I just got to laugh at Jenny and Tom trying to reach.

 Note Tom standing very unsteadily on the edge of the raised section.

Once we had finished there I went to help Tom, firstly with a bit of sweeping in the snow leopards enclosure, and then with the small cats. 

The first of the ‘small’ cats is Sheena who is a clouded leopard. She arrived not long after I started at the zoo and wasn’t really comfortable around anyone, often jumping up at the glass and hissing. She’s fine now – Except it seems with Tom.

This is Sheena in the enclosure while Tom was gone. She’d checked me out (I was in the other half of her enclosure) and then walked away uninterested.

I can ensure you that as soon as Tom reappeared she was back, hissing and pacing along the fence. In fairness to Tom, we think its men in general she doesn’t like very much. She has come really far during her short time at the zoo and I’m sure soon she’ll be comfortable with most of the keepers.

The other small cats are Billy the ocelot (pictured here) and there is also a Northern Lynx (whose name escapes me). Between us, Tom and I cleaned the enclosure, fluffed up their beds and washed the windows.

After our break, I cleaned the floor of the white lions enclosure, dropping their water trough so that water went everywhere. I attempted to mop it up the best I could but it proved to be difficult. Normally we can just squeegee the water away to the nearest drain but the floors are all uneven so no sooner had I pushed the water out of the enclosure, it went straight back in again; you have to be quick to move the water away – The fact I had to jump over the dividing fence made this impossible. I did the best I could but to be honest that wasn’t really good enough.

Once I had finished there I went to join Tom clean out the inside of the tiger and jaguar enclosures and we also had a couple of outdoor enclosures to clean.

Here is a picture of the platform in the cheetah enclosure which I had to get up onto. It felt like a day in an adventure playground! Trouble was it was really slippery.

By far the best part of the day came at lunchtime. I opted to skip lunch (it was now 2pm by this time) in favour to watch Jenny who was in with Yazhi the puma cub who I pictured when she first arrived, and helped the maintenance guy fix up a temporary water trough in her enclosure.

I was delighted when Jenny said that Tom and I could go in and sit with her for a bit while she was with the vet!  (They’re trying to get her as used to keepers as possible).

To be honest, she didn’t seem that interested in us, she spent most of the time chasing a rugby ball around her enclosure but she would occasionally curl up by my feet for a couple of minutes rest before running off again.

Here are a couple of pictures – note the beautiful pieces of wood holding the water trough on (that was my handy work). The third picture is one that I have posted before when she first arrived.

You can probably tell how much I enjoyed my day by how much I’ve written. It was fantastic to go in with the puma cub and stroke her – Of course we weren’t able to cuddle up with her like Jenny can but it was a real treat.

I’ll end now on Mandy’s request to have a facts of the week section.

FACTS OF THE WEEK

Pumas (also called cougars or mountain lions)

• Pumas can be found across North and South America
• They hold the Guinness book of records, record for the animal with the most names (Having 40 in English alone - cougar, panther, mountain lion and catamount to name just a few)
• Once fully grown they weight about 90 kilos and their body length is about 6ft long.
• They attack by stalking and ambushing their prey, biting the back of their necks.

A really bad day for my camera battery to die.

I was on the cats today and had a great time. Unfortunately, as the title of this post states, my camera battery died on me and I didn't have use  of my camera all day.

I have tried to take photos on my phone so hopefully I'll have something to share with you.

Full details of my day later. :-)

Of emus and camels

Today had one of my rare visits to the paddocks section of the zoo. Some volunteers seem to be put on this a lot, Steven will do 3 or 4 weeks running, I however, hardly ever seem to go on it. In fact, I've probably only done it half a dozen times.

I'm not sure whether I like this section or not, I actually enjoyed it far more today than on previous occasions. I think it might simply because it is very hard, physical work and therefore I always end up exhausted and ready for my breaks.

The morning was spent doing the usual cleaning out of the enclosures with head keeper James and Carrie. We were later joined by Meggie who is one of the volunteers doing their Duke Of Edinburgh award (This is an award done through schools, for which they have to do so many hours volunteer work - at the zoo they tend to work 8 'til 1).

After our break Meggie and I went to clean out the emu pool. This was a challenge, especially as we established that Meggie is frightened of emus and they kept wandering round wondering what we were getting up to. This is not the best photo in the world - It's very blurry but this is two of the emus drinking the water we'd removed out of the pool.

 In the afternoon i got to feed the wallabies - I took a picture of them eating but unfortunately it too was blurry so here is a picture I took back in the summer.

 I also got to go on the woodland walk with Carrie today and got to listen to a few facts about the animals there. I was interested to hear about tawny owls. Apparently, they are the most common owl in Britain and are the only species to make the "Ter wit to wo" noise which we all (in the UK at least) associate with owls. However, it is actually part of their mating call and the females go "Ter wit" and the males answer with "to wo".

As well as owls, there are also deer and some red foxes on the woodland walk. There are two types of deer, red deer, found here in the UK and hog deer (pictures here), found in Southeast Asia. The red foxes at the zoo (one of which is also pictured) have all be rescued. Two of the Basil and Jacob were found at the side of the road at about 4 weeks old shortly after I'd arrived at the park and Rupert, who is about 4 years old was hit by a car and nursed back to health.

Overall it was a good day, I spent a lot of time playing with Houdini, the baby camel and tickled the meerkats whenever I went past their enclosure - They run up to me now, I'm not sure if it's because they recognise me or if they run up to anyone wearing a green top.

I really have a back ache now though...

Sad news at the park

As mentioned in a previous blog post, Hara, the 18 month old snow leopard cub, born at the Park left to go to the Kittenberger Zoological Gardens in Hungary yesterday where she will be paired with a male who is joining her from Poland.

Here is the article from the local paper.

Hopefully it’ll all go well. Although it's for a great reason, it's really sad to see her go, and I'm sorry that I didn't get to see her and take some final pictures at the weekend.

I also just read some incredibly sad news, which because of my absence from the zoo over Christmas I wasn’t aware of until I went on the zoo’s website moments ago.

Apparently Thabo, the park’s beautiful male white lion passed away on 20^th December. Truly a major loss.

New Arrivals at the Farm!

This morning I stumbled bleary eyed with my travel mug filled with tea over to my car. Spent 5 minutes de-icing the car windows with my hands shivering (Karin & Andrew I’m very jealous of your summer right now) and then disaster struck. My car battery went dead.

No zoo for me today :-(

And so, instead of going today, I thought I’d write you the blog post that has been outstanding all week (I’ve been meaning to do it really I have but my blogging website is one of those (seemingly random) websites which kills our internet connection. Hence I have to carefully prepare everything so that I can get in and out in the space of a few minutes (before it notices I’m on there).

So last Sunday was my first week back after Christmas (and the previous bad weather) and got placed on the farmyard section. This has got more interesting the last few times; as well as looking after the farm, the section is also responsible for the Studio and all the private areas and the last few times I’ve been asked to carry out tasks there as well.

I start with some bad news, the last time I was in (back at the beginning of December); Doris the badger-faced sheep had just died. I don’t know the cause but I’m guessing it was purely old age – I think she had been around forever. She was a lovely sheep, always after food and you had to try and clean out her enclosure with her in it, which she sometimes mad incredibly difficult.

I feel I should place a picture of her here but I’ve looked through my catalogue of photos and for some reason I just don’t seem to have one. Though there could perhaps be one on my other camera. If there is, I’ll add a photo later.

Edit: I found a photo on my other camera. Here's a picture of Doris with Rodney the rooster who used to share her enclosure.

There were a couple of new arrivals in the farm, two, quite frankly, adorable little ponies. Here they are:

Ok, so I have a major soft spot for anything equine and these were no exception. I was talking to Josh who runs the section, apparently one (Pegasus, with his head over the fence) has other shows to do and so will be leaving the zoo again very soon, however he’s hoping that they’ll be able to keep the other one for a longer period of time.

I’m not sure that Nancy will enjoy a continued presence however, since I’ve already made her share the carrot that I managed to hoard for her.

As I mentioned, I’ve now been given the opportunity to care for the animals which are kept out of the public eye, these are some of the ones used for the shows.

In the Studio itself there are 4 cages, 2 belonging to little tiny hedgehog type creatures, one so a snake, and the other to a pair of bearded dragons.

Outside, there are two enclosures for meerkats, including a couple of babies, and then in another small building there are currently two enclosures for skunks. There is a picture of two of the skunks – It’s not the best picture since my basic camera struggles indoors and it’s not easy to take a clear picture of albino skunks with the flash.

The white one decided to get out of the enclosure and walk around the room for a bit. Which I was told they do, but of course I was worried because having never done it before, I wasn’t sure how to get them in again, but eventually she just wandered back in on her own and I (as usual) was worried for nothing.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable day and I loved being back at the zoo. I’m kind of sad that I’m not at the zoo today, although to be fair Neal did give me a battery and jump leads so I could go and then get myself back again, but I’m going to spend the day working on my Earthwatch presentation instead.