Thursday, July 18, 2013

Day 33: Double Tortoise Neck Rub

This morning I started cleaning the giant tortoise exhibit. Once I had collected all the old salad, one of the smaller male tortoises came over to where Othello was, so I then had a tortoise at each hand for a neck rub (it was pretty cute). I also got to talk to a visitor for a little bit who was asking questions and telling me about an animal story he had heard about recently. I helped to pick up the remaining salad trays and then processed the cricket shipment/cleaned the cricket tubs. After the morning break, I cleaned the black worms, cleaned the Alligator Snapping Turtle tanks, and changed water bowls in the same room. Before lunch I also misted the galliwasp enclosures.

In the afternoon, the other intern and I worked on cleaning the outside of enclosures in the two bunkers in the house and swept. Inspections are coming up, so everything is getting a deep cleaning! After a short break, we then worked on moving bundles of newspapers from our storage room to the different areas of the building. That also took a long time! We got close to finishing, but eventually we had to stop for the day in order to pick up trash and help close the building.

A fun part of the day: I got to touch a Caiman Lizard! It was his turn for a photo shoot for a new information board, so one of the keepers had him out. They are really beautiful animals: red head and a green body with some blue shades in it. They have slight ridges on their back and it was pointed out by a zookeeper that they have small dots on their upper lip. These dots are sensory cells that help when the animal is digging to sense if there are things/food sources around them.

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