First Day!

I survived my first day interning! Today, like all days will, started off by cleaning the exhibit glass from all the handprints, etc, of visitors. I then got a tour of the the Herpetarium from the zookeeper side. I learned how to use a venom extractor, where the snake bite alarms are, and general safety rules since there are venomous animals there (I do not get to work with anything venomous though). It was fun to see animals that are not even on exhibit. There were some super cute baby turtles in the back that I need to become friends with. After my mini orientation, I then became official and was given a name badge, employee ID, and zoo shirt!

I scared a Radiated Tortoise this morning when I had to come into its exhibit to remove the salad trays. To get into the exhibits you have to take a large step down, which must have started him because he hissed/grunted at me...sorry tortoise! While I was working on this, another zookeeper was doing the same in the Komodo Dragon exhibit and then gave me a Komodo Dragon tooth that they had found!

Like I mentioned before, normally I would not be working with hellbenders, but I have been given a special opportunity to work with them until the hellbender interns arrive. Hellbenders actually have a unique spot pattern associated to them. So in order to weigh and measure a tank of baby hellbenders, they had to be identified by their spots. Which is much easier said than done!

I spent lunch with three hellbender zookeepers and we were joined by two carnivore keepers (who work with the bears), and a penguin/puffin keeper. It was fun hearing zookeeper talk from other areas.

After lunch I got to help clean the giant tortoise exhibit!! The tortoises get salad on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but the days in between are salad clean up days. So we had to sweep up all the wilted lettuce leaves, hose down the floor, bleach it, hose it down again, and give them some hay. All while the tortoises are in there. So needless to say, at times it was hard to sweep up all the lettuce when a giant tortoise was laying on it! The gate to the exhibit was slightly open at one point and one of the tortoises, Larry, tried making a get-away. So I had to go stand in front of him to stop him from getting too far! A few times a tortoise would come up behind me and try to get some of the lettuce, so I gave them a little neck rub and carried on. Once when I was hosing down the floor two tortoises started following me (which was really cute). The tortoises are still in their inside exhibit, so it was funny to see how many people stop to look in when a zookeeper is inside. It felt like I was almost on display while I was trying to clean!

Afterwards, the veterinarian came over to the hellbender exhibit. One hellbender needed its sutures redone that had ripped out. Another one had a gash on its leg from something that also had to be stitched up. For both of these, I got to help hold the hellbender down during the stitches. The vet also looked at a few other hellbenders who have had some health issues recently.

To wrap up the day, I helped do a census of all the hellbender that the zoo has. Each tank is marked with which river they are from, hatch date, and number of each tank. So all the numbers had to be added up with each classification of hellbender. We didn't get the final count, but tomorrow we will add up all the different group numbers.

All in all, it was a good first day! It was long and I definitely have a lot to learn this summer. It will also be a great networking opportunity as I can already tell!

I'm official!