Day 34: Alligator Feeding Time

Friday, July 19

This morning the other intern and I worked on preparing and delivering salads. After the morning break, all of us keepers helped to move a large crate for an alligator outside. It was definitely a group effort to move the large box to its new storage place. After finishing up salads, I helped to clean up the kitchen and cleaned the black worms before lunch.

After finishing dishes, I worked on preparing a new off exhibit enclosure for a Fiji Banded Iguana. I first had to clean the exhibit and clean rocks to fill the base of the exhibit with. I then found some branches to place inside for climbing space. Once the exhibit was put together, I then helped another zookeeper hang lights above some new turtle tanks. After break, I got to watch the Komodo Dragon get fed. A few of us went out to cover the alligator crate with a tarp and then our manager asked me to grab the thawed rats from inside. When I came back outside with the rodents, he had me come with him to feed the alligators! We fed the American Alligator first since he got most of the rats. It was really fun to be able to throw him food and watch him attack/eat it. We then fed the Chinese Alligator pair. These alligators are very intelligent, when my manger called the male's name, he swam right over! I fed the male while he fed the female alligator. Since we were feeding, it did bring some visitors over to watch and ask questions. Back inside, our manager said he was going to quarantine to check on our animals there. I asked if I could go along since I had never been to quarantine and he said I could! I was glad that I was able to go to because the walk to quarantine allowed my manager and I to talk about my future career plans and how he got to be where he is in his career. Every animal that comes into the zoo must go through a quarantine process to make sure that they are healthy and not carrying any illness before being introduced to the current population of animals. Most animals undergo a 30 day quarantine  period if they are healthy, but our venomous snakes go through a three month quarantine. This longer quarantine period is due to the animals having different seasonal cycles and being more prone to illness. After checking on the snakes and changing their water, we headed back to the herpetarium right as it was time to head out for the day.

Fiji Banded Iguana