Today I got to meet another one of the house interns and some new hellbender interns. This morning there were so many people in the break room it was quite crowded! The other intern and I started going around the building to collect salad trays. We also fished salad scraps out of the aquatic turtle tanks in the atrium of the building. After that I got to climb into a Jamaican Boa exhibit in order to clean the glass from the inside. While I was cleaning the glass another keeper was watching the snake just to make sure it didn't get upset that I was in there with it. I then changed some water bowls and newspaper linings in a section of the building. After the morning break, the other intern and I went to clean the giant tortoise exhibit. It was so nice having help this time! We had the outside door open to the enclosure while working in order to get some cooler air, but that excited one of the tortoises. The whole time we were working one tortoise was pushing against the gate trying to open it. If it hadn't been locked she would have opened it herself! Every time we needed to get out or into the enclosure we had to really watch the tortoise who was at the gate. At one point we had to move her aside in order to get out. They are ready for some fresh air, but the temperature at night needs to be warmer and more stable in order for them to be outside for the summer. Once again some of the tortoises came over to say hi and get a neck rub!
After lunch, I finished taking out salad trays from the rest of the building. That didn't take too long so I then went to help the other intern with the crickets. Maybe by the end of this summer I won't be as freaked out by them...maybe. What is worse than crickets though is cockroaches. In the corner of the wall near the ceiling there was the largest cockroach I had ever seen in my life. It was there for a while but one time when I glanced up it was gone. Needless to say I was a little uneasy after that. Today we had gotten a cricket shipment with all different sizes of crickets from pinheads to adults. If needed we had to clean out the tanks and then we put the new crickets in the tank. We then cleaned out a few large bins that were used to hold the salad from yesterday.
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| Raja |
On break the other intern and I went over to River's Edge to see the new baby elephant!!!! Her name is Priya and she was born on April 26! She is sooooo cute! She has thick fuzzy hair on her head that made her even more cute! She was staying close to mom but was exploring too. Her older sister was out in the yard as well and some of the other women elephants were nearby. In another enclosure Raja, the father, was outside. Since we were dressed in the normal zookeeper uniform we kept getting asked different questions about the elephant. I was lucky to have some background knowledge of the herd in order to answer a few but for some we had to admit that we were herpetarium people and didn't know the answer. It was definitely a fun break!
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| Baby Priya and mother Ellie |
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| Older sister Maliha on left |
After that we grabbed some dust pans and went to the Gila Monster exhibit that is under renovation to help remove sand. There are a whole bunch of holes and pits that sand and rocks had gotten into (and not to mention a lot of sand was in the exhibit to begin with) so it took some time to get it all out. We wore face masks since it got dusty with the sand but they were so tight and thick is was a little hard to breathe through them. While in the exhibit people kept stopping to look at what we were doing. Basically it felt like we were on display. At one time a kid knocked on the glass and waved to me. I kept thinking that we must look like the weirdest Gila Monsters ever! Once we got most of the sand out I helped finish up the dishes right before we closed.
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| Gila Monster |
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| Jamaican Boa |
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