An apology

It has been brought to my attention that I may have inadvertently upset some of the keepers at the zoo by including their names and photographs in my blog. I am terribly sorry if I have caused offence to anyone as this certainly wasn’t my intention.

This blog does not have a large audience; it is merely aimed at keeping my friends from around the world updated on what I get up to during my time volunteering and to tell them a bit about the zoo itself and the animals they have here.

I am however upset that no one felt they could speak to me directly about the content of my blog as if they had, they would know that I am more than happy to change or remove anything as appropriate if I know where the problems lie.

Two weeks for the price of one

Sorry for the lack of blog post last week, I blame lack of sleep, holiday plan chaos and generally just being busy. I’m going to attempt to cover the highlights of both weeks in this single post.

Last Sunday I was on the farmyard section. The first part of the morning was spent on cleaning out the chickens, chipmunks and rabbits:

While the rest of it was spent helping out over at The Studio, where we cleaned out the animals as well as mopping the floor and cleaning the windows, quarantine and finally we finished by cleaning out the skunks.

This is a picture of the inside of The Studio, it’s a VIP area of the zoo, closed to the general public but it’s quite nice in that it has pictures of the celebrities who have visited the park up on the wall.

The skunks were probably the main highlight of the day, although I have never had any issues with them before, the white skunk decided that he obviously didn’t like me and tried spraying me. Because of this, I quickly retreated and got to cuddle the other skunk, while one of the keepers quickly finished off the enclosure.

My afternoon was spent mostly with the rabbits. I had been asked to arrange the wooden logs and stones in the rabbit enclosures so that they looked nice and so that had things to hop onto and to get a few more bits and pieces for then. Below is a picture of one of the rabbits investigating one of the new pieces of wood I got from the woodland (this particular rabbit also got a brand new stone which she hopped on straight away - the rest, didn't seem particularly interested).

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Today, I was on Paddocks. The day started like any other paddocks day. The morning is always very hectic getting all the enclosures clean. After break, myself and one of the other volunteers went to clean out the wallabies, much to my delight, as it doesn’t take much to get me thinking about my impending trip to Australia! (Do you think this excitement will wear off, or am I going to be like this right from now until September?)

We then went up to the Woodland Walk to clear away some of the leaves inside the deer enclosure. I wish I had taken a ‘before’ picture, but this was ‘after’. With help from the keepers, we got quite a lot of it cleared away and it was looking very different by the time we left it to go to lunch.

The day just flew by! In the afternoon, we cleaned out Dippy’s room (Dippy is a wallaby who has been hand raised and can’t be put in with the others, therefore he has his own room next to the vet room), cleaned the outdoor area of the emus and fed the tapirs.

You may remember way back when I posted a picture of Thiago, the baby tapir. Well he is a bit bigger now and has lost his stripes. Here is a picture of him (front) and his mother having their evening feed.

This week’s facts, in order to be topical, are on our Australian residents at the zoo, the wallabies. I would do koala facts but perhaps I ought to wait until just before I actually go on my volunteer trip for those. ;-)

Facts of the Week

Wallabies

·         There are about 30 different wallaby species which are subgrouped by the habitat they live in: shrub wallabies, rock wallabies etc.

·         Although usually fairly small, they can measure up to 6ft from head to tail.

·         They have strong powerful back legs to help them move around; while there arms are used primarily for feeding and sometimes to help balance.

·         Their tails can measure the same length as their body and is used for balance.

Monkeying Around

On Sunday, I was a little worried about which section of the zoo I’d be put on. After my mess up with the cat medication, I had every belief that I would be punished by being relegated to the farmyard or perhaps be put back on birds. It’s not that I would have minded being on either of these sections, but I have enjoyed being on different things recently. So when I found myself on primates – believed to be the hardest section for volunteers to get themselves onto, I was delighted, although a little worried about what the day would hold.

Last time I was on primates, Steve, the head keeper was called away and I spend most of my time cleaning windows – A fact which I did not neglect to mention to Glen who was in charge of the section for the day. It wasn’t that I wanted to make a big deal out of it; I just wanted to let him know that I hadn’t really been on the section before.

I spent most of the day with Tori, one of the other keepers on the section who set herself on a mission to ensure that I got to do really fun things.

My first task of the day was to clean out the indoor spider monkey enclosure; I have to admit this was a really unpleasant task. A woman at work once told a story about her twins managing to remove their nappies overnight and then used the contents as finger paints; I was reminded of this story while cleaning this enclosure. After a lot of scrubbing, I finally got it clean, much to my relief, I then spent a bit of time hiding pieces of mushroom around the place for them to find later.

The squirrel monkeys didn’t want to stay still long enough for a photo, this is about as good as I got, but they were pretty cute as they tried to steal the mushrooms out of the bowl through the bars. I then went to help Tori finish cleaning out the lemurs.

After break, I was set up doing the feeds. It took a long time to chop up the numerous bowls of fruit and veg but I never really mind doing this, although it does get a bit tiring chopping up your 20th apple of the day…

The highlight of my day was feeding the animals. First, we went and fed the ring-tailed lemurs, some of whom are pictured here. Out of all the food I had prepared for them, it turns out that lemurs (or the ones at Paradise at least) love grapes and I absolutely loved the chance to hand feed them. One of them opted to sit in the food bowl and steal the grapes out of it, another sat on my shoulder. While a third tried to pull him off again by his tail! They really were quite comical to watch.

Later I got to feed another lemur, a black lemur this time, who also enjoyed the grapes and sat on my shoulder; he often disappeared outside to eat them though; presumably just in case I decided to take them back.

The final animal I got to feed was the one I was hoping I’d be able to all day and that was Mr Jingles. Mr Jingles is the resident two toed sloth who lives in the rainforest section of the zoo. Tori very kindly fed all the monkeys, giving me time to try and hand feed him. Unfortunately, as you can hopefully see from the picture (the nature of his enclosure means it’s really difficult to get good photos) he was really comfortable and wasn’t going to help much by moving. Standing on tip-toes, I did manage to get him to eat a few things from my hand much to my delight. I should explain here that I absolutely adore sloths and I’ve been dying to feed him ever since I started volunteering at the zoo. An absolute delight.

To finish off the day, Tori and I cleaned out the indoor gibbon enclosure. They have 4 white-cheeked gibbons, which Tori absolutely adores. I can see why, they’re very entertaining to watch and full of character. I have a fair few gibbon photos now; this is probably my favourite of them all:

Facts of the Week

Ring-Tailed Lemurs (Lemur catta)

• Ring-tailed lemurs are native to Madagascar.
• They live in 'troops' of between 6 and 30 individuals, with one dominant female who will eat first.
• Ring-tailed lemurs are unique from other lemurs in that they prefer walking on the ground to swinging through trees.

Kush the snow leopard

I was going to spend this evening writing about my day at the zoo yesterday, but instead I once again have to share some very sad news.

I didn't post in my blog last week, I didn't work at the zoo since I had thought I might stay over night in Oxford. That didn't happen so I actually did end up at the zoo on Sunday afternoon with mum and dad. I asked after Kush, and Jenny said that she didn't look good but that she was having a scan on the Monday.

Yesterday I didn't ask after Kush and I didn't go down to her enclosure to see how she was - I think deep down I already knew the answer.

On the zoo's facebook page this morning, they announced the devastating news that Kush was put to sleep on Monday after she was found to have severe liver cancer. My thoughts are with Jenny and all the other cat keepers.

I leave this post with a picture of Kush (top), taken last Sunday and one of Aron her mate (bottom) who is doubtlessly feeling her absence too.