Friends new and old

Hi Everyone, sorry my post is a little late this week; I've been a bit busy these past few days.

I once again had a great day at the zoo on Sunday. I was working on the farmyard section once again, but for the first time I actually felt quite comfortable with what I was doing when Josh did his usual disappearing act and left the rest of us to it.

The day started as normal, with us cleaning out the indoor enclosures. I'm getting a bit quicker at doing this now and managed to do two of them by yself... Basically the chore is this...

• Use a fork to pile up the still clean straw while removing the soiled/damp stuff.
• Sweep up any bits that are left.
• Hose down the floor (though this time Josh had us using buckets of water in an attempt to protect his newly painted floor).
• Remove any excess water and remaining dirt using a long handled squeege

Once done, I drew the short straw of taking the dirty straw over to the muck heap.

The time between break and lunch was spent cleaning out the rabbits with Maya one of the other volunteers. Though to be honest, she cleaned out the hutches while I spent my time chasing rabbits... Josh had asked me to check the rabbits over for any obvious cuts or lumps etc and only two of them actually wanted to stay still for me... I finally managed to pin down all but one and gave them a stroke all over.

The afternoon was spent doing the usual sweeping tasks and then we set about disinfecting the outdoor goat (and pig) enclosure which was a lot of hard work!

To finish the post this week I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce you to some new and old faces. Firstly, I wonder if you remember the sweet, little lamb that arrived at just one week old on my first week at the zoo (nearly 3 months ago). Well, he’s not so small any more...

Secondly, I wanted to introduce you to Thiago. Thiago is a Brazilian tapir who was born at Paradise Park on 4^th April 2010. This picture is quite old now but I think he’s probably about a month old here:

The second animal I wanted to introduce you to is one of the alpaca. I love alpaca, they have such sweet faces. They have five or six at the park and they’re one of the only animals who seem to enjoy being out in the rain. For some reason they all seem to have alcohol related names like Brandy and Whisky...

 Finally I end on a sad note, the park lost Crystal the beautiful hare that I posted a picture of a few weeks ago after a brief illness and so I just wanted to end this week’s blog entry by reposting that picture of her:

 This is going to be my last post for a little while I'm afraid as I'm not going to be at the zoo... This Sunday I am supposed to be going to the Taste of London festival and the following weekend is Glastonbury. After that, I'm off on holiday to Kenya for my Earthwatch expedition. I can't wait!!

Pigs

I was working on the farmyard again this week and once again I was entertained by Nancy following me around the edge of the enclosure and making me feel really guilty when I ignored her or had to leave to go and do something else. When I went to put spme hay in her enclosure she snuffled against my legs and climbed up me. I'm used to it with dogs but I never thought I'd have a pig do it to me!

The pigs are easily my favourite animals on the farm section and I was actually quite surprised to find out how intelligent they are.

This is T playing with his ball and pushing it aound his enclosure. I believe he's just over a year old and Josh has trained him since birth (he is actually the son of Nancy). He takes part in the 'Animal olympics' show and is trained to do things like sit and jump over hurdles based on different hand signals. Apparently he knows exactly which keepers he can get away with showing off with and has once before run off and gone back to his enclosure.

In other farmyard news,  the baby rabbits are doing well and are a lot more active now, running about their enclosure and interacting with the people around (although they're still a bit nervous about being touched). The lamb is huge - I had meant to take a photo to show you but I forgot.

The other animal I wanted to share with you today is my favourite resident of 'Bunny Town'.

This is Crystal who is a hare. You can't see it very well here but she is a beautiful reddish brown colour and has these fantastically huge feet and big ears!

I like working on the farmyard, but I'm hoping for something different next week... Otherwise I might run out of things to write about!!

Injuries and baby rabbits

It was a very wet day today and once again I was working on the farm yard section of the zoo.

The day started off much the same as the week before, cleaning out one of the enclosures, and then the chicken coops (which was new to me) and chinchilla cages.I was however brutally attacked by Rodney the rooster, who it transpired was hinting that it was time for breakfast! The culprit and my injury (a single peck to the knee) can be seen below:

After our morning break Deborah and I headed down to 'Bunny Town' to clean out the rabbit hutches; a task which isn't usually on my favourites list simply because it takes so long. Today was made much better however due to the baby rabbits who were finally visable.

These gorgeous bundles of fluff are 4 weeks old:

The afternoon was spent feeding the pigs and goats (I discovered that the pig without a name from last week is called Nancy) and doing some general sweeping around the farm section of the zoo.

One final picture to finish off. Please forgive the reflection of the glass but hopefully you'll be able to see it clearly (I hope to try and clean it up a bit). This is one of the lemar enclosures which is situated next to the farm where they currently have two babies. Here is one of them:

 That's it for today. Lets hope for sunshine next week!