This morning I had a nice surprise when one of the zookeepers brought in a whole stack of Turtle Survival Alliance yearly publications for me to borrow! I am definitely looking forward to reading them! I started off cleaning the giant tortoise exhibit and actually was able to give two of the smaller male tortoises some attention in addition to my regular tortoise friend. The visitors this morning were asking a lot of questions which was fun as well. Back inside, I helped pick up a few more salad trays, cleaned the black worms, and changed out water for some animals downstairs. After the morning break, I cleaned the baby Alligator Snapping Turtle tanks and then got to watch the Caiman Lizards get fed! They were given snails still in the shell. I definitely would not want to get bitten by one of these because they crush the shell of the snail with no struggle at all! It was really fun being able to watch them get fed and learn more about them in the process! I then worked on dishes until lunch.
After lunch I finished the dishes and then worked on a partial water change on two feeder fish tanks. While working in that room, I got to watch one of our Komodo Dragons get fed. The Komodo quickly ate its food and then was licking the bowl at the end. When I was finishing the fish tank water change, our manager phoned me over the intercom system and told me to meet him in the kitchen in five minutes. I finished what I was working on and once I got to the kitchen I was asked by my manager if I wanted to go with him to bring an anole to the hospital. Of course I wanted to go! The anole had some swelling in its legs so when we got to the hospital the vet got an x-ray. It was hard to tell, but there might have been a problem with one of the wrists, but the size x-rays did not come out clear enough to tell. My manager got the anole to lay on its back on a bag of rice and the anole just stayed there curled up just looking around after the x-ray, it was so cute! One of the vets was trying to get a picture of it all curled up. After a blood sample, some liquids, and an anti-inflamitory shot we were sent back with a medicine regimen and prescribed rest for the anole. It was fun to go and see a medical visit again! Once back in the house, I helped a zookeeper get some things together for a new enclosure and then went on break. After break I worked with the zookeeper on the turtle rearrangement project again. We did some PVC pipe rerouting, drained a large water tub, and moved a turtle into its new water tub before it was time to leave.
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| Caiman Lizard |
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| Komodo Dragon |
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