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.
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.
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