Shadowing Mammals 1 department- amazing day!

I AM SO HAPPY! AH, today was absolutely wonderful fun! I'm just sitting here sipping away at iced coffee, singing my little heart out, and smiling as big as can be. I'm tickled! Here's why:

Today I got to hang out with the keepers in Mammals 1. The Mammals 1 department takes care of our elephants, cheetahs, giraffes, rhinos, and deer. Basically, the coolest animals at the zoo are under their care. So, naturally, getting to spend a day with these animals was an exciting proposition, but actually doing it was positively magical. Honestly, my heart is so full of happiness when I think of today's activities that I think I could cry and sing and dance all at once! I feel almost manic with glee. I'm laughing to myself. And guess what?! I DON'T CARE! I'm just so full to bursting of flowers and sunshine and all the good things in the world.

Now that I have utterly spazzed out, I will try to calm my racing heart enough to actually explain the stuff I got to do today that made me so happy.

Part 1- Baby deer! So remember Squirt that little cutie who was in the vet wing for a few days? He's been out of the vet wing for a little while now, and he's growing strong and bright. He's still tiny and adorable, wobbly on his long, skinny legs, and this morning I got to help feed him and his sister Cassie. They eagerly sucked the bottles, skinny bodies filling with the warm milk, and long eyelashes blinking happily. They decided that today might be a good day to try them out on the yard with the other does and their babies. After releasing them out there, we had to watch them for quite some time to make sure that no does would beat up on them, especially since Squirt is so little. As we stood in warm sunshine, grass lush, soft, and green spreading around us, yellow coneflowers blossoming through the field, and we watched this yard, I felt the most overwhelming sensation in my heart. Among the two mothers were seven babies, all running and leaping and playing just for the joy of using their bodies to carry them, dancing for life. Squirt and Cassie, after some initial timidness, fit right in and let their little legs carry them at great speeds, leaping up and twisting tiny bodies mid-air to test their landings. I felt the sense that life, just in its existence, is beautiful. I felt the fact that all of these molecules and all of these cells and all of these reasons are so little compared to the simple feeling, the knowledge, that to simply breathe is a precious gift. I saw that new life abounding, and I knew that one day I will grow old. But though I grow old, newness will spring again and will follow me. Twas never yet a springtime when the buds forgot to bloom. The earth renews what grows weary and the miracle of living possessed me with such force that I was soothed and enflamed all at the same time.

 Cassie runs free

Squirt being timid at first

Part 2- After the deer, we got to do work with elephants. As I have mentioned, we have 3 female elephants here at the zoo- Tonya, Binti, and Rolinda. They are all extremely smart and beautiful. We brought them into the barn and got them tethered by a foot, and then we headed out to to what every zookeeper does best- shovel poop! The yard was nice and full of it this morning, as the elephants had stayed out there the night before. It felt so good to get out and just use my muscles in the sun, to sweat and to see the fruits of my labor come to fruition. Once the yard was nicely cleaned, all four full wheelbarrows of the fun brown stuff hauled away, we went inside the barn. The girls get cracks in their feet due to wear and tear, and they must have coppertox added to them to keep them dried up. the coppertox is a lovely shade of deep green, and the elephants are so well trained for their pedicures. They are very responsive to commands, and when asked to hold a foot up to the bars, behind which the keepers stand, they put it up kindly and let them scrub the toes, rinse them, and add the coppertox to the nails, in such a way that they appear to have gotten their toenails painted green! The girls also got fed some grain and veggies this morning, and I got to give each of their trunks a little loving as we passed by. How incredible it is to hold the trunk of an elephant. They are so exploratory and surprisingly soft. The bridging of the gap between man and animal is just so beautiful to me, and touching elephants trunks just warms my heart.

Tonya posing

Part 3 -Next, I got to go with two of my favorite people here at the zoo up to the rhino house. For enrichment, the rhinos get to use their prehensile lip to paint. So, lucky little me got to pick out three colors; yellow, turqoise, and purple were my choices. A piece of paper was taped to a wooden board and a dot of each color was applied to the paper. Jumbe, a handsome rhino boy, used his lip, with the assistance of a keeper, to swirl the colors so beautifully. It is abstract and wonderul and was painted by a rhino. Art and animals in one thing?! Does life get any better than this?! I can't say I believe it does. I will cherish the painting forever! After that, I got to do some super fun cleaning in the way of hosing and bleaching, and then to the best part.

Isn't it lovely?!

The master artist, Jumbe

Part cuatro- Drumrollllll, this is the best part of my day....slash life, maybe? Okay, if you read my blog, you may have read the entry about petting giraffes one night, and you may remember that I was highly ecstatic about this event. Well, today trumps that time by alot, so you can imagine how dang excited I am. Maybe you can't actually, unless you know me very well, and you've seen me at my craziest. I'm just exuding rays of sunshine right now. We got some raw potatoes, carrots, and sweet potatoes and trumped down to the edge of the giraffe yard. The fence is low on that side, so the giraffes can bend their necks over and get to your level. The first eager soul was Nyela, the pee-headed pig (a nickname I have given her due to her habit of sticking her head under other's urine stream, and also due to her voracious eagerness to eat the produce I had for her today). Cute juvenile she is, just loped right over to me and searched my bucket and hands for treats. I gave her some happily, and called the other girls over. After some coaxing by showing them the fruit and shaking the bucket, the other two girls came over, and this is when the joy just ensued. Three little giraffe girls all up against the fence just leaned their heads down and were looking everywhere for food. Despite their eagerness to get the food initially, they rubbed their faces all over mine, their soft noses taking the pieces of food gently and slowly. For some reason, that was precious to me. Possom is a notorious licker, and she bent down to my face, licking my hair, my cheek, and allowing me to kiss her nose. We nuzzled for some time while I giggled gleefuly. A dang giraffe was rubbing faces with me- a giraffe! I think I could have stayed exactly in that position for the rest of my life and never have grown tired of it. I'm honestly in love. Ah, how my heart bursts with joy. How can I ever be sad again?

Part cinco- Oh, another thing we did this morning was feed cheetahs and apply fly repellent to their ears. The repellent is a sticky substance, the shade of bubblegum pink, and it's pretty great to see the cheetahs with their ears all painted in it. The cats come inside their stalls and go into what is known as a squeeze. Essentially, it is a thin box where they can enter, lie down, and be tong-fed meat while another keeper uses a swab to put the stuff on their ears. One of the cheetahs is a strange little thing with an interestingly blank stare, and as he got his ears done, he kept making these chirping noises. Jason is a goof. They are such gorgeous cats, and being that close to them was a real treat!

Seis- After lunch, I went to help finish up the giraffe house cleaning, so more hosing and bleaching. And the the oh so fun task of cleaning out the drains clogged with poop and hay. But, something to neat happened to me today as I was in there! I was singing while I hosed, an obscure, ethereal song from Lord of the Rings, and all of a sudden I heard someone else's voice. I peeped around the corner to see a lady sitting in the giraffe house, and when I fell silent for a moment, I heard that it was her, singing along with me! I started my tune once again, and we went on singing together until the song was done. I looked out at her to give an appreciative wave or word, but she simply got up and walked calmly out. It was a very connected moment, and it gave me hope in remembering there are people as strange as me in the world.

Beyond that, I fed some rhinos veggies that they loved, smelled sweet hay and feed that drew me so strongly home that I just wanted to jump in it and play, and pranced around with a smile on my face. Great day! Great great day!

Birds with leg problems.

Ah, what peace. I am drinking iced coffee despite my frozen fingers and toes. I'm listening to beautiful flutes and strings in a song from an album entitled "I am a river." It takes me back to my happy place, sitting on my front porch, overlooking the fields where my horses graze, sunlight playing all through my hair and on the canvas upon which I paint, my cat snuggled up next to me, a soft Virginia breeze moving the soft Virginia grass, incense burning sandalwood smells to my nostrils, the creak of my porch swing in my ears. Ah, what I would give to be right there and be right here simultaneously. And what I would give to have one of my instruments with me! I am thirsting for musical expression. I guess I will have to make my words into a melody, and that in itself must suffice.

I have a feeling that I have forgotten some procedures in this blog. Certainly I have...but I guess the ones that stick with my memory are the most important anyway. I had another busy day on Friday. I very much enjoy a busy day. Here's what all happened:

Sacred ibis with leg lesions
Friday morning we had two birds brought into the vet wing almost simultaneously. Sacred ibis are pretty birds with very long, thin, black beaks, and black and white coloring. They have skinny long necks and long legs. The one that was brough to us had terrible lesions all over its legs. The thighs and bottoms of the feet were highly swollen and several reddened masses of about the size of a quarter were on them. The center of the lesions were hard and cornified. We could not make a definite diagnosis, so we needed to take a sample scraping of the lesions. This required us to anesthetize the bird. It was an interesting task doing so, as this birds beak is so long and thin, and his nares are high up on that long beak. We ended up using a face mask made by a previous intern, and it was made of a plastic coke bottle. That bottle gave us the length we needed to cover his beak and airways. Once he was good and asleep, the veterinarian took a scraping of two of the bumps. After their removal, the area began to bleed heavily, so gauze was held until the bleeding quit, and a false skin, similar to thin saran wrap, was applied around the wounds. To put pressure on that wound, a wrap was also applied around the leg. It was a nice teal color, and looked pretty against the black and white bird. We took some xrays of the legs just to cover many bases. The bird also left a nice fecal on the floor of the vet wing, which I floated and looked at under the microscope. No internal parasites were present, so that was another thing to rule out. The xrays looked normal, too, so no bone issues. As the cause of these lesions was not readily apparent, the bird was moved to the vet wing to keep quarantined from other birds. We were hoping that it wasn't something contagious, but being a skin issue...the chances of that weren't great. We got the little guy started on some pain meds and I set him up a nicely padded stall with a hidey crate full of hay and a nice bowl of fish diet. We shipped out the samples of skin that were scraped, and we will know in a few days what is to be found from them.

Sacred ibis #2
As if one lesion-legged ibis wasn't enough, I got a call on my radio that afternoon that was disheartening. I was called up to the enclosure where that ibis had been kept, and where there were other ibises and birds. The supervisor had seen another bird with the same leg issue going on. We corraled the birds into the barn, and she netted the suspect bird. As I came over to look, we both sighed, as it was the same problem we had seen earlier. Granted, this bird's legs were not as highly swollen, and the lesions were somewhat smaller, but they had the same shape and coloration. We left that bird in the barn, sent the others out, and I went to call the vet. She agreed that this bird should also be quarantined. The bird supervisor and I caught the bird and brought him back to the vet wing, where we adminitered pain meds through a rubber tube down the throat, and we got him set up in that same stall with the other ibis. Until the results come back from the lab, all we can do is keep them comfortable, monitor the birds that were in the same enclosure, and wait.

Sun conure with a bloody leg
The other bird that was brought to the vet wing with ibis #1 was a sun conure. Sun conures are positively beautiful birds. They have bright yellow bodies with green-tipped wings, and bright orange heads. They do appear as a ray of sunshine. This little guy was holding to the front of his crate with his beak, and from that vantage point we could see a problem. His left leg and part of his body were covered in blood, and he was not bearing weight on that leg. This pretty boy had to be anesthetized, too, and so we got him under. While he was dozing peacefully off, the vet examined his leg. He had a pretty good sized fresh wound under his thigh, probably inflicted by another male conure, as it is breeding time for them. The vet intended to stitch up the wound, but as we cleaned it and saw that it was in the crease of the leg and the body, a place that would be hard to get a stitch, the wound was just cleaned very well, he was given pain medication, and it was decided that he, too, would be living under vet care, separate from the group, until more healing had taken place. We looked up his band number in our computer system and found out his name is "Max." He is a very sweet bird, and even in his pain, was no trouble to hold and remove from the cage, and he didn't mind being handled as he was waking from anesthesia. We got him set up in a small cage in our quarantine building once he has fully awoken, and he will now be monitored and cared for daily until he is strong and healed.

Worming prairie chickens
I've mentioned prairie chickens quite a few times in this blog. They are fickle little birds, and people are desperate to preserve the species, but we lost yet another of our babies at the zoo last week. Samples were sent to a lab, and mineralization of the heart was found (possible due to a vitaminosis), but many internal parasites were also found. So, the little guys needed to be de-wormed. They had previously been treated with de-wormer water, but a more direct and aggresive approach was now needed to help treat the others. I headed up to the barn, and the birds were brought in. I had five syringes, each drawn up with the correct small doseage of medicine. I held the little birds while the bird supervisor put a metal tube down into their crop, put the syringe on the end of the tube, and gave the meds to the birds. We had to be efficient and quick, as the birds are so stressy to being messed with. It is my hope that these actions will help our remaining five babies of the season. Only time will tell. Two had been losing weight, and we had been going up to their barn 3 times a day to feed them a little nutrient milkshake through that same metal tube method. Friday afternoon, when we went to worm, those two birds had both gained weight and their crops felt full of food, so we didn't tube them that day. I really hope they continue to improve, as well.

Another logan update
I still love my baby man. And I will use this moment to comment on animals and their care. Animals can be highly particular. Sometimes this is a vice, if you have allowed them to become particularly attached to something that is not easily accessible or is difficult for you to fulfill. However, if an animal is particular to something that is easy to fulfill and causes them no harm, there is no shame in meeting that desire. Let me explain. We have a variety of nipples available for bottle feeding little Logan. However, Logan only likes one of them. There is a particular one, which has a blue ring at the bottom, and it is the only one he will readily drink from. I can't sit down and tell you the scientific reason as to why he loves it. It was the only one he would eat from from infancy. Maybe it feels most similar to his natural desire for mother goat's nipple. Maybe it's just the one he grew up on, and so he likes it most now, because it is the one he associates with eating. Maybe the others taste funny. Nevertheless, it is not a difficult task to provide Logan with this nipple. It is as simple as picking that particular one up and screwing it on the bottle top, which you would have to do with the others anyway. If Logan chooses not to drink from another nipple that he has been provided, he should not be punished by receiving less than his usual portion of milk. That only encourages him not to eat from that nipple. People get the notion that, with animals, they must always be the one in control. I get the impression that they feel, 'If he doesn't do it my way, then he is wrong.' I'm here to say, it is okay to let the animal be in control at times. It is okay to let them have their quirks if their preferences are easily met, and especially if they are just as easily met as the alternative, as is this case. I (to my shame) used to think it was the strong who could manipulate an animal to bend to their will. Over the years, I have determined that is the truly strong who have the patience to learn what an animal wants and to work with the animal with gentleness and care to achieve something.

That's my soapbox for the day.

Squirt update
In other news, baby Squirt, the sweetest white-tail deer ever, is now permanently back at the barn with his twin sister. It is very sweet to have had a success story out of him, and I can't wait to see him to continue to grow up big and strong.

And so it goes
I have two weeks left here. My music has now switched to a slow piano piece. I sorely miss my piano and the expressions I have with it, but I will be heartbroken to leave here. This music just tears at the strings in my heart, and I hope that I can positively enjoy every last minute I have here at the zoo, because it has been such an amazing experience, and I have learned so much. More to follow. Adieu.

Monkey surgery, hanging out with meerkats, and others.

Wow, so much to catch up on! I haven't posted anything in a while, and much has transpired.

We've had two surgeries this week, which is super neat. I love being involved in surgery, because it is a process where, in general, you know exactly what you want to accomplish and you go in an accomplish it. It is great when you get a medical case that can be resolved, but in general, they take much time to do so, or they are chronic. A surgery is simple, direct, rewarding (if all goes well). Granted, the pressure is much higher, and I have a tendency to get kind of flustery under pressure. I hope that this will soothe as a grow older and more practiced. But anyway, the surgeries:

Pinioning "James":
James is a goose who is kept in the quarantine building, with his companion Jesse. I have known these two since they were quite small. They still had downy, grey feathers when I arrived here, and were going on daily walks with supervisors. When I would go clean the hammerkop's stall, these little guys would eagerly snap their beaks at the fence, and I would always squat down to their level and say "Hi gooses." No idea why improper grammar seemed to be the choice endearment, but I said it nearly every morning. They have no grown up to be real-sized geese, and they are still quite sweet. They are getting ready to go on exhibit though, since they are larger, and here is the thing. Our geese are out on a yard where they can walk around, and where they can swim, but because they are zoo property (saying that an animal is property just sounds wrong to me!), but because we want them to stay at the zoo year round, a surgery is preformed on one of their wings. This surgery is called pinioning. Essentially, the lower portion of the wing is removed, bone and all, so that the bird still has balance, and can still flap, but cannot fly away. I am not one hundred percent sure how I feel about this in general. It allows for beautiful enclosures, with no netting on top to hold flighted birds in...but it also keeps them from doing what is natural. Anway, the surgery was a pretty bloody one overall. In preparation, a surgical site had to be prepared. Well, in case you didn't know, geese are covered in feathers. Big surprise. So, I had to pull out enough feathers that a site for cutting could be exposed. James was under anesthesia the whole time, and he had been given a numbing medicine. I had to take needle-nosed pliers and twist while pulling out the feathers. It is incredible how well embedded in the skin those feathers are. The tips extend into the epidermis for about an inch. After a good rectangle of pink skin, thin as a piece of paper, had been exposed, I scrubbed it up and the doctor took over. He cut around and exposed the bone, tied off the veins and tendons coming down the wing with suture material, then used large bone cutters to slice through the white toughness. It was very strange to be handed a gooses wing for disposal, especially one that is wrapped in vet wrap to hold the feathers away from the surgery site. I had this bloody bone knub, with some black feathers peeping out, and a long conical wrap of brown tape. Strange. Anyway, the skin was then sutured closed and cleaned. It looked very good. Considering James had really bad angel wing (something i mentioned before, where too much protein causes the wing to splay out unnaturally), and we removed the wing that had this problem, he actually looked more handsome. After he began to wake from the anesthesia, we put him in a padded stall and stayed with him while he recovered. Poor guy was still a little loopy, because when we put him on the ground, he acted as if he would like to stand straight up, pushing his big chest out...and then he went backwards, tipping goofily like a toy goose would fall back if you pushed it. No worries- we caught him and steadied him until he was fully alert and walking fine. He got to go back with his other goose friend, Jesse later that day, and is doing really well today.

Butt Cheek Monkey, otherwise known as "Cheeky":
It is an obscure name, to be sure, but if you could see the junk in the trunk on this girl, you would understand.  Cheeky is a squirrel monkey, a very darling small grey monkey, with yellow arms and a little black mask on the eyes, and white fur on the face. They have grabby little hands about the size of a quarter, and I find them to be adorable. But Cheeky has been having an issue. About a year ago, when they put her under anesthesia for her yearly checkup, they noticed some swelling on her behind. Over the past year, the swelling has truly grown, and she had begun to scratch at her butt. I could not see the extent of the problem when she was on exhibit, because they are quick little suckers, and her tail helped to hide it at times. Once they brought her to the vet wing, nicely drugged up enough that she could be removed from the crate and put under anesthesia, and they layed her on the table, I saw the spectacle that was her rear. Poor little thing had two fat blobs where her butt should be, pale yellow in coloration, one the size of a golfball, and one a bit smaller. It was truly quite funny looking. Now, as far as anyone can tell, these swellings in no way cause her pain. She had merely begun to scratch, and the vet staff had become curious at to what the swellings were. She was thoroughly examined and no external lesions or other skin issues were seen. She only had the fat butt issue, and some chafing between the flubby cheeks. The vet cut a small incision, about an inch long, along the bigger of the two cheeks, which was now poking from a hole in blue surgical drape, so everything was sterile. The swelling seemed to be composed entirely of fat, but he removed two pieces to be sent off for testing, just to make sure. The sleepy little girl was sutured up, and the staff was afraid she would pick at her stitches. Because they want to prevent her from ripping them out, they did something bizarre. They painted her fingernails all sorts of bright colors! Apparently, she becomes distracted by the color and texture of her nails and it will cause her to leave her butt alone for a bit while it heals. Crazy! Apparently, they once had a monkey with more extensive stitching, and to distract him, they sutured macaroni noodles to his fur, so he could play with them! I found that to be hilarious. The little girl woke up from surgery well, huddled close to the crate door in a dark room, tiny body curled and no bigger than a bottle of windex or something of similar size (other common objects of this size elude me). They took her back to her other monkey friends, and though she seemed to be picking at her rump some, she is doing well.


Meerkats and mealworms:
So, my housemate and friend is working on her intern project with meerkats. I've always been quite obsessed with these curious little guys, who perch up on their hind legs so their black-skinned bellies can absorb warm sunlight. They have adorable little black rings around their eyes, and tiny clawed paws, apple shaped bodies with fat round thighs. They like to lay in giant piles with dark eyes wide, or dig tunnels, or play with one another. I have a poster in my room back home that has a picture of meerkats and says, "The more the meerier." It kind of makes my life, as it incorporates animals and puns. To describe her project to you, I must first describe the set up of the meerkat house. The long barn is composed of 5 stalls, all with doors that can be slid open between. The meerkats have full reign of the stalls, going between each as they please. They are hard little suckers to catch, and it is a stressful process to do so, so a previous intern had built a really cool way of getting a weight on them or scanning for their microchip. Essentially, in one stall a box is set up. It is made of clear plexiglass, has a removable lid, and has two tunnels connected to it. Each of these tunnels connects to a plexiglass window that fits in the door between the stalls. There are pieces of plexiglass that can be slid into slits in the tubing, thus blocking a meerkat in one of the tunnels or in the box. The goal is for the meerkat to run through the tunnel, get closed into the clear box, and thus be able to stand on a scale. The girl running the project is the controller of the sliding pieces to trap the meerkats in, but she needed someone to reward those meerkats that make it through the tunnel and to the other stall. Well, as it turns out, meerkats love mealworms. Mealworms are like meerkat crack. When given these delicacies, they emit low, gruff, barks, almost like that of a dog, but softer and more gravely. They scramble for mealworms, swiping them with their little claws, drawing them up to eager mouths full of sharp teeth. They chomp eagerly, quickly, on them and keep barking for more. Basically, I got to sit in the stall with them and throw mealworms to those that made it through. The first ones through the tunnel were obviously the most brazon, and would come very close up to me. Today, one even got so brave as to take a small swipe at my outstretched hand, hoping to find  a mealworm. It's tiny paw was no bigger than the end of my finger, and the little guy kept edging closer and closer to my indian style crossed legs, 'gruff, gruff, gruff,' swiping his little hand for more mealworms, beady black eyes trained on me. It was very cute and enjoyable! Here are some pictures of me hanging out with the meerkats!

Logan, baby goat:
Ah, man that little guy. I'm still just in love with him. He's about 4 weeks old now, and it must be the "terrible twos" of goat aging. His little horns have grown to two quarter inch gray stubs that are hard, and as I found out, painful when they smack you in the lip and bust it. Anyway, he has gotten positively crazy. He jumps all over everything--his log, the wall, me, the food dish,...when he wants more milk, he aggressively scrapes his hoof across my leg. I now have many lovely bruises on my thighs from his hooves. It's quite frustrating, too, as I must keep him from acting this way. He is growing every day, now at ten and a half pounds, and he must be calmed. As he gets larger and larger, his little jumping and parkour antics will not exactly be a good thing, and they won't be adorable anymore. So, sadly, I'm having to train him to eat on the ground, not my lap, and I can't let him nuzzle my face as he so desires. It's very hard work to do so, as he is very persistent and adorable. I'm in the middle of also training him to eat goat pellets of grain. He doesn't like them much, because they are not the yummy warm milk I frequently feed him. I've added milk powder to the pellets today, so that he would maybe enjoy the taste a bit more, and one time I even put a little of his milk on there and hand fed the pellets. He did chew them up and eat them, but he isn't going for them much outside my presence. Excitingly enough, they've decided to keep him in the vet wing until I leave, so I can continue to feed him and love him. I'm so happy about that decision!

"Squirt", darling baby deer:
Well, we had a new addition to the vet wing this week, and what a great one it was! Our white-tail deer have been having babies these past few weeks, and one mother had two twins- a boy and a girl. The boy was about half the size of his sister, maybe only 1 lb, half a loaf of bread with pencil thin, long legs to hold it up. It was clear pretty early that his mom was not interested in him. He had not been able to nurse, and he seemed quite weak. Over the next day, many of the staff from Mammals assumed the duty of trying to feed the little babe who would come to be named "Squirt." Unfortunately, he would not take the bottle. He was getting weaker and weaker, and so he had to have a tube put down his throat to his stomach, and have milk given to him that way. After his stomach got a taste for milk, he started to be more eager for it. He was brought to the vet wing, where he could be temperature regulated and frequently monitored. He needed regular exercise and feedings, so he would get to walk around the clinic, slowly on shaky spindle legs. His big eyes would glisten and tiny tongue would lick things. He was still stumbling on his legs, awkward, and the slick floor would cause his front legs to splay and his chest to sink to the floor. He would follow you around the clinic, and if you would sit on the ground, he would come to you and lay his tiny head on your lap. Over a few days, he began to eat well and has now gotten up to 3 lbs. Due to his increasing strength, he was sent back to the barn with his sister. They apparently curled up together sweetly upon his return and slept together all day. He is still spending the night in the vet wing, so I was happily surprised to see him with us again this morning when I arrived at work. He's so precious.

Prairie Chicken Chicks:
Lately we've had a few prairie chicken chicks who are not doing well. Prairie chickens are highly edangered, and the birds and very easily stressed. This year, we had 7 babies start to grow up, but recently, some have been losing weight. One even passed away this morning as they went to administer fluids. We have been going up to the prairie chicken house several times a day the past few days to give the babies a fluidy mix of crushed parrot pellets for protein and LRS for electrolytes. The birds are fed in a similar way to the way Squirt was fed, but the tube is a small metal Gavage needle, rather than a rubber tube. I hope that this forced feeding will put the weight back on them and that they will be okay.


There have been a few other routine medical cases  and prodecures this week, but those above are the major ones. Have a beautiful evening people of the internet, and remember, as a lovely quote from Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities, "A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other." Share your life, your secrets with others, for they have secrets of their own that may just change yours.

Baby deer, prairie chickens, and others.

Essentially, if you want to skip the next bit, until you see the big bold words ACTUAL ANIMAL STUFF…you’d probably be saving yourself a bunch of time. This is mostly vague conjecture.

A few things have been going on, and considering we had a vet meeting today and new cases were brought up, I’m sure there will be more interesting animal things to follow this week.

I get the feeling that my writing style is too flowery, hard to follow, and unnecessary. Being concise isn’t really my way.

I’m scatter-brained.

This is seemingly somewhat irrelevant, but I will get around to my point eventually…I have been watching a fashion design competition all evening. Now, any of you who know me are pretty aware that ‘fashion’ per say isn’t high on my priority list. For me, I merely see clothes as another media with which to produce art. Anything that I can improve upon by adding a hint of my own style to it is how I like to roll. I buy thrift shop t-shirts and cut them up just to see what I can make from them. I sew a lot of things without patterns. I sew a lot of things to a lot of things. I like to decorate myself with natural elements, and you can frequently find me in an assortment of wooden and faux leather jewelry pieces, with flowers strewn in my braid. The previous paragraph is what is known as a tangent.

Here is the actual point: I felt that it was pertinent for me to blog in this moment because I am feeling artsy, as I have just been watching a creative show that inspired me to create.

There I go again, making things sound so darn complicated.

I may be feeling artsy, but that sure doesn’t mean I am capable of producing a sound piece of literature at this moment.

I’ve had quite a bit of Dr. Pepper and my hair is getting so scraggly I fear it will start to dread soon. Okay, puns aside, I’m still really thirsty, my arm is sore from spending the last hour practicing cool braids on my hair (I am so odd), and I really really should focus and stop blabbering on or people will ultimately quit reading my blog if they start to believe this nonsense is what is generally on it.

Actual animal stuff

And so I finally arrive at the point. I hope you have skipped over the bit at the top and are just now jumping into the crazy pool of words my mind is conjuring this evening. This week has been pretty busy/crazy, and most of what we have accomplished, I have gotten jumbled in my head. These are the procedures or cases that stick out in my mind for the week.

Baby Goatie, otherwise known as “Logan”

Well, that little nut finally has a name, but I still continue to call him Baby goatie or Goatie goat. He likes it, I like it—we’re happy. Feeding him all glorious 4 times a day is a true joy of mine. He knows me very well now as his milk bearer, and gets so eager as I approach the stall. Once I get in there, all nicely suited up, bottle in hand, he goes wild. He’s jumping up on the log, running up the sides of the walls, bucking and twisting. Honestly, with his long legs flailing and all the crazy stuff he attempts to do, he looks like he’s trying to do parkour. And he’s only seven pounds. It’s too much cuteness to handle. I honestly laughed out loud for about ten minutes the other day watching him. He still stands on my lap as I bottle feed him, and he has been gulping that milk like a champ lately. After he finishes his bottle, he has a most hilarious time rummaging my face for more milk sources. In fact, I’ve had to get much sterner with him about getting off of me, as today he jumped up and onto my shoulders, started standing like some ridiculous scarf Lady Gaga would wear, and munched on my hair. I’m not particularly interested in raising a goat who will do that crazy stuff in adulthood, so I’ve had to keep pushing him down off of my face and saying, “No” a lot. Which, I’m not gonna lie, is also kinda hard to do, because he is so darn cute when he is using me as a playground for his circus parkour jumping acts. I’m still smitten with him.

White tail deer fawns

Hoorah for fresh life! Two new deer twins were born yesterday. One is female, and the other is a male. The male is teensy weensy. When he stands beside the other baby deer, he almost looks like ‘a fawn of a fawn’ as one employee put it. It’s pretty precious. Here’s the sad news though: the mother of these deer is not doing her job at being a good mom. The tiny male was walking the fence and bawling all day today, hungry, because she would not let him nurse. They started bottle feeding them today, in a very similar fashion to how I feed little Logan goat, but we were a little worried about if they’d received any milk at all from mom. Essentially, in the first few feedings, the baby receives antibodies from the mother in the ‘first milk’ known as colostrum. This colostrum has antibodies in it that protect that baby from disease, and it also has higher protein content than regular milk. We wanted to make sure they babies had received the antibodies from their mothers, so we took a blood sample from each of them. The dear wee mouths bawled as the small needle went into their jugular. I packaged up the blood in tubes, and took it back to the vet wing for testing. The blood was spun down in a centrifuge, so that the red cells went to the bottom of the tube and the serum remained on top. I removed some of the serum with a pipette and added a chemical to it. The reaction that occurs with the chemical tells whether the baby has received antibodies or not, and it is measured by weather the serum clots of doesn’t. For both the male and female, the serum clotted upon addition of the chemical, indicating that they had indeed received some of mom’s antibodies. Had they not gotten colostrum, we would have had to inject them with serum derived from cows that contains the necessary antibodies.

Prairie Chicken Pre-shipping

Prairie chickens are the most endangered animal in North America. They are pretty little birds, but have a hard time successfully breeding, as well as surviving in the wild. This year at the zoo, we had seven baby prairie chickens survive, which is apparently a great success compared to some years.  Several of our birds are going to be sent to other zoos or wildlife centers, so we had to perform some necessary tests on them. It has been made clear to me that prairie chicken catching, blood drawing, etc. is a very stressful process for these guys, and many will often die from the stress of capture. This leads to a tough call. What are we to do? They must be tested before sending, so essentially, we just tried to prepare as absolutely efficiently as possible, and we tried to complete the necessary tasks on each with speed. We had to weigh each of them, draw quite a bit of blood (around 2 mL) for various tests, deworm them, and take a cloacal swab. Each bird had their own little baggie of supplies and everything we did had to be recorded. We only had one true scare during the morning. One baby started to gasp as the needle was inserted into his jugular vein, and the keeper holding him immediately put him in a cage to let him chill out. As she sat him down, his tiny head lulled back as if he had passed out, and it was a very scary few seconds. However, he did manage to get himself roused and started walking again shortly after. Every other bird did quite well, and even that one recovered with no further issues. I was so thankful it went smoothly, and was highly impressed with the efficiency of the staff in the vet department.

Penguin West Nile Vaccines

Well, this is about the last thing I can talk about this evening. There were other cool cases this week, but I was not personally there for them and so do not have a full idea of what happened. Not a terribly exciting event, but we had to give our penguins vaccines today. All nine birds were caught up by the bird keepers, finagled into submission by them as well, and I was frantically drawing up syringes of vaccines as the vet stuck ‘em, injected, and was ready to move to the next one. It was a quick and easy deal, but it’s still so much fun. After all, how many people do I know back home who get to go give shots to penguins at work?

Broken hearts and baby goats...circle of life.

What a lovely afternoon it was, just planning my words as I sat in a barn, scents of hay and goatiness filling my nostrils, the sound of rain pounding on the roof and box fans blowing inside. It felt so pensive and home-like. Its funny to me that home has really become a transient thing, but I know now that it truly is, for me, wherever the barns and animals are.

This morning was not so bright for me. The disclaimer for the following section is this: I am highly sensitive and become easily attached. The following story is sappy and maybe in your eyes childish. But for me, a life without deep love is not one at all, and so I continue to deeply love and thus to get deeply hurt. I must not be afraid of these feelings that so define me, and I am not embarrassed of them.

Now to the story. I came into work today and performed some new and exciting duties, which I will expound on later. After said duties, I went to take care of our parakeets. If you've read my late entries, I speak of a certain wonderful success story in the entry titled "happiness that won't budge." A little parakeet that I named Verde was brought in on the brink of death and was saved unexpectedly. Verde and I had a special bond because of my fear of his death, and his resilience to live. He begun sitting on my finger as I readied the food bowls in the morning, nipping lightly as he awaited his seed. He had an obsession with eating, and I'm not sure he was mentally all there. Today when I came into work, Verde was very lethargic. I got him out to examine him and his little butt was covered in a tarry thick stool. I cleaned him off and put him back in his cage, but he looked really bad, so I got him back out and gave him a dose of pain medication as well as gave him some fluids by mouth. At this point, he started to gasp for air, only slowly taking the water drops. I had my finger under his wings so I could feel that tiny heart still beating. I was holding him against my chest saying, "Stay with me, babe, stay with me" over and over again. I hoped I could keep him roused long enough that his resilience would defeat the reaper who loomed so close. When the tiny heart no longer moved, I didn't want to believe it. I grabbed a stethoscope, a special tiny one, and held it to his rib cage- nothing but the sound of silence. It was then that I started to let tears fall. My boss was out at a meeting, so no one was there that I was trying to be strong for. I let the tears flow as I gingerly wrapped his tiny body and took his remains to later be necropsied. It seems sad that my little guy will be cut open in death this afternoon, but if by doing so we can figure out his diagnosis and thus save other birds from the same fate, it's what must be done. I am very sad for little Verde's loss, though, and still acutely remember the sting in my own heart as his did stop.

It almost feels wrong to write joyous things after such a eulogy, but isn't that how life is? The bitter with the better? So, it is my pleasure to say that though life is always lost, it always springs anew in this circle that we are all a part of. Imagine something about the body size of a Pomeranian. Now, imagine such a thing with legs 3 times as long and ending in hoofs smaller than match boxes. The head of such a creature is no bigger than a softball with tiny little horn beds, floppy long ears, and big eyes. It has a mouth so small it can only suck on one of your fingers and a cry so sweet it will break your heart. It is tri-coloured, black, white, and brown. On its little face are brown coloring that look like big aviation goggles. What I am speaking of is the most darling goat baby ever! He is just two weeks old and he is going to eventually be the breeding male pygmy here at the zoo. However, there is a disease in goats that is terribly hard to get rid of and terribly detrimental to health. We have this baby under the absolute strictest of quarantines right now. He is tucked away at the back of the vet wing, and only authorized people may even see him. We change our shoes before getting in that part of the hospital and must don full quarantine gear as we enter his stall. This morning, I was not about to feed baby goat as a precaution, because I had petting pen this afternoon and wanted absolutely no chance of being contaminated while traveling to other goats. However, my boss was going to be late, and this little goatie is on a very strict feeding schedule where he drinks goat's milk from a bottle 5 times a day, every three hours. So, I had to do the morning feeding. However, as I was to be in the goat pen, I had to fully change clothes into a pair of blue cotton coveralls from the vet wing (janitor style) and then go back to his area where I added an additional hazmat suit, gloves and boots before entering his stall. Per usual, the little guy hopped right up into my lap and started searching my face for a nipple. He tried at my chin, earlobes, and nose, all unsuccessfully, before finding the bottle that I held at my shoulder for him. Once he got a hold of that, though, he was a happy man! He sucked away, only taking brief breaks to show my his jumping skills on a log, do little bucks with his back legs flying, or to pee a tiny little stream. Afterwards, he would leap back into my lap, and start enjoying the warmed milk once again. Needless to say, I am absolutely smitten with the little guy, who does not yet have a name. I insanely look forward to our moments nuzzling while he tries to make noises while drinking or gets really excited and wags his minute tail. It is pretty much impossible to be unhappy within a 24 hour period of being with this guy, and so I'm always happy! When he gets out of strict quarantine and I can take pictures of him, I definitely will! For now, just imagine the most adorable thing you've ever seen!!

In other news, we have a capybara who is very pregnant, and she has been having diarrhea this week. We sent a sample and hope that nothing is wrong with her or her pregnancy. She should be due in about 1 week.

Also today we had to check on a penguin with a reddened eye. The redness was only in the sclera, likely due to an injury by another penguin. We added an eye drop and some pain meds by mouth as I held open the snappy, pointy, black beak. As we were in there finishing his checkup, I heard a loud calling, and I immediately thought, 'Tanga.' However, the donkey-sounding bray was merely the loud call of the black-footed penguins, also known as jackass penguins. This was my first experience with their calls, and boy what an apropo name!

That's about all the new stuff this week! My parents are coming for the weekend and we are going to six flags!! I am super excited!

Picking wildflowers.

Scarcely have I felt more like Elizabeth Bennet than in the moments prior to this. I spent a few hours watching Tanga today, but as the thunder started to roll, I felt that it was an okay time to head home. Had I possessed more provisions, I feel that it would have been interesting to study his behavior in the rain. However, I am now thankful for my coming home. Just as I reached the house, the fat drops fell and rolled off my arms. They were slow at first, but it was amazing how quick a rate their presence caused the cooling of the air. I find that the stifiling heat often hinders my desire to explore here, but for once, the weather felt quite perfect to me, so I decided that surely I must go pick wildflowers. They are so nicely in bloom around the woods of our backyard, and I knew that if the black-eyed susans were coming alive as they so were, there were other flowers to be found. Now, had I donned a dress, I certainly would have felt more 19th century romantic, but I might as well have been in one. I slipped off my shoes and felt earth--of a soft nature due to its dampness (!!!) squish between my toes. Ah, how grateful I became. I began to traipse at a leisurely pace among the trees and weeds and high grasses behind the fence that holds in the bricks that hold in me when it's hot out. Not today, though, I traveled around, feeling rough trunks with my hands, tickles of weeds on my legs. The raindrops were falling incredibly fast at this point, soaking my hair, face, clothes. I took my pocket knife to gingerly cut flowers of red, purple, yellow, as well as sprigs of evergreens, pink flowers from trees, the delicately shaped leaves of weeds. I traveled around for some time, finding the best colors and shapes, and then traveled home. I sprawled out on the back porch with different shaped containers of glass and tin, and I arranged lovely boquets. Beauty solely for the sake of beauty is my favorite--it's what true art is. I pulled a weed and planted it in a pot with soil I had found in our garage. "A weed?" you might ask. Yes, I weed, I would say. For what is a weed, but a plant we have not yet named worth of status in our gardens? Culture has merely chosen those plants that is most desires for planting in pots and keeping in windows, but I will tell you now, a weed is still green and alive and holds lovely shape and color and is something to tend and let beautify a room. In fact, I feel strongly affectionate for weeds, as you may call them. I am quite happy in this moment, my hair still a wet mess, sipping coffee and eating grapes.

Nothing incredily new with Tanga boy. He's still a little stressed by the female, but is observing her more frequently. I am also becoming quite familiar with the places he spends most of his time, and the place where he goes when he is stressed. This is a great finding, as we can now provide him enrichments and distractions in this area, so that he may be comforted in the area where he was previously displaying stereotyped behaviors.

Soil soap box and Tanga.

Hello, humans of the internet. I just want to start by saying I am really thankful to you all who read my blog. Mostly, I do this for myself, because I have this terrible habit of getting really passionate about something, starting it, and then getting fickle and moving on to the next project before that one is completed. By telling people about my experiences this way, so that people ask me about what's been going on if I haven't posted in a while, it encourages me to complete this project of describing my summer. My long-term memory is pretty shoddy, and one day when I'm old (or a few months down the road, knowing how my mind goes) I want to be able to actually remember how I feel in these days of blissful summer of youth, whilst I learn and grow and enjoy what life is offering me. So, again, thank you for keeping me motivated.

It's Saturday morning, and I've just switched from my cleaning music, hiphop, to my writing music, soft acoustic ballads. It's an odd transition, but I'm starting to calm down into a place where the words flow. I'm sipping some green tea, and looking out at my back yard. It's an interesting yard, to be sure. It reminds me of the thing I miss most about Virginia: the soil. That sounds utterly ridiculous, I know, but how true! I never in my life knew how much I truly appreciated the soft, dark, moist earth of home, with grasses so lime green and soft that I can go barefoot almost anywhere. I never wear shoes at home, and I frequently engage in one of my favorite activities- lying in the grass, studying the sky and the landscape of my thoughts. But here, oh what disdain I have for the ground beneath me! It is positively dry, like walking through a sandbox, because the arid, light soil just flies up into your shoes, between you toes, on your legs, everywhere. The grass is sparse and mixed with brown. What grass there is is a deeper green than home, and it is prickly. I can hardly wear sandals happily in these conditions, and God forbid I every try and lie down! I would be covered in dust and prickly things and ants. My, my, how I miss the soil of Virginia. I just needed to get that off my chest, but now back to animals.

Unfortunately this week wasn't incredibly eventful, as no veterinarian was scheduled to be at the zoo. On two occasions, we had a vet stop by for a few hours, and we did a few things, but no wow procedures. As we were checking on a spoonbill who hasn't been feeling well, we decided to deworm him and take a blood sample. Unfortunately, as I was drawing up the syringes of dewormer, using a 16 gauge needle (which is a pretty thick needle for ease of drawing up the liquids), I accidentally stabbed and drug it through my pointer finger. I started bleeding quite heavily; I think I must have pulled through a vessel, and I do not deal with seeing my own blood. I got highly nauseous and dizzy, but was trying to remain focused and professional. I couldn't bear to be seen as weak somehow (that's how I am), so I kept on working. I wrapped up my wound in an alcohol-soaked gauze piece, which burned like the fires of hades. We got the blood we needed from the bird, performed an examination, and gave him the dewormers, and I thankfully did not pass out. I came out of there with quite a few stains on my shirt and pants...hopefully the dewormer will help the spoonbill feel better, because I'm honestly getting dizzy just thinking about the experience. It's so strange to me how I can see animals cut open, see other people's blood, work with poop and worms, and dead intestines, and yet I can't deal with my own red water coming out. Oh well, thus is life.

I've been working on my ethogram of the zebra, Tanga, each day. I've learned alot about him, so far. He gets very stressed if people pass on ATVs and are talking to one another. This Wednesday, a female zebra was put in the yard beside him, so they can acclimate. The keepers are hoping they will breed when they let them together soon. I don't thing Tanga is a real fan of change, though, or maybe he dislikes this particular female, because he has been highly stressed by her presence. Each time she approaches the fence near him, he goes trotting or cantering off to the other side of the yard, huffing and kicking. Yesterday, I observed, for the first time, his stereotyped behavior of weaving. He'd gotten to the point of being comfortable with the female at a distance. If he was grazing a good two yards to more away, and she approached the fence, he would just study her for a second, then go back to eating. However, if he was right at the fence, and she came to face him, he bolted to the corner, faced the barn, and moved his head right to left over and over again for several minutes. Poor guy. I wish that this weren't such a stressful experience for him. You'd think he would really benefit from another zebra's company, especially a female, but as it is out of his normal routine, he seems highly unhappy with it. I hope he continues to get acclimated to her, and everything turns out all right when they are put in the yard together. Being able to study his behaviors and seeing what makes him tick is a real start to seeing how we can help him feel more comfortable. I'm very happy that I'm having this opportunity to watch him. Here's a picture of him:

Starting of a project

I won't say too much about this today, as it is very much in its beginnings, but I started my project officially today. Essentially, the zoo's male zebra, Tanga, is kept separate from the other hoofstock because he is agressive, and because by separation, his breeding with the females can be monitored and controlled. He displays what are known as stereotyped behaviors. Stereotyped behaviors are those which seem to have no purpose, and are excessive in repetition or intensity. Tanga continually rubs his head against his stall, and many people at the zoo are concerned about his happiness. He has been offered many enrichment items to distract him, and offer him interesting activities, so he will not engage in such behavior. No one is quite certain on what triggers his stereotyped behaviors, or what would be most helpful in alleviating them. I am doing an ethogram on Tanga, which is a behavioral overview. I get to watch him for one hour each day and record his behaviors. I am also going to try out different enrichments so as to help with his boredom. Watching him was a hot activity in the sunshine, but it was an enjoyable one. I could sit and watch animals all day. Some people think it's a boring activity, but I eager to see what I find out. Just today, I learned that when people drive by on the gators, he is triggered to paw at the fence or call out loudly. I am very interested to see what develops.

The hamerkop was very cute and endearing this morning. I had never seen him eat one of his fish in front of me, but today I got that pleasure. He took the fish from the dish on his perching, carried it in his beak down to his little pond, and then proceeded to dip it in the water. He shook it rigorously back and forth, as if the fish were swimming, dropped it, and then he 'caught' it with his beak. It was positively adorable. I love that little guy.

That's about all for today.

Petting rhinos and giraffes.

Time to talk again. Yes, I feel mildly ridiculous posting another entry just a few hours after my previous one. But I just can't contain my excitement. I feel like a little child, but honestly, isn't that what makes life special, feeling young and vivacious and free?

I had just reached up to scratch my nose and suddenly drew back. Ew, my hands smelled terrible! And that, ladies and gentleman, is how you know you work the coolest job in the world. I laughed when I remembered the reason my hand smelled so weird. I had just had it in a rhino's mouth.

Tonight was awesome. Me and a few of my fellow interns went running in the zoo as it was darkening outside. This is a customary activity for us a few days each week, but tonight was very special. I mean, it's always special at night. It's just us, the night keepers (about 3-4 of them), and the animals. The few that are out in their yards at night are ones that we love--a cheetah named Kali, the elephant girls, and the cute currasow Scud who races you down the length of his enclosure, and is a pretty good racing companion. Ah, I love them, and I know their names and their personalities, and I call to them as I pass and they respond. We talked to Kali the cheetah for a bit, and at first she was growling ferociously at us. But as she saw our soft expressions and that we meant no harm, she softened, too. She even started to perform for us, rolling leisurely on her back, rubbing her beautiful face in the grass. Rolinda the elephant heard me call her by name and walked to the edge of her moat, waving her trunk and throwing dust on me. It was adorable. Then, drumrollllll.....the best part of the evening!! We went up to the rhino and giraffe barns and happened to see a night keeper there. We asked if we could go and see the girls and boys, and she said yes. I got to get quite close to the rhinos and as I laid the back of my hand against one of the girl's bars, she took her prehensile lip and wrapped it around my knuckles. It was surprisingly soft and a little bit spitty and definitely stronger than I had expected. It was so cool! Next, we got to go into the giraffe barn with the keeper, and the giraffes were very curious about us. They all had their large eyes with long eyelashes bending down our way to see if we had produce for them. They sniffed our hands and wrapped their soft, long upper lip around our fingers. Their blue tongues reached out for any bit of food they could find, which we did not have. I got to reach out and pat a shoulder, feel the long faces and soft lips of these adorable creatures. Yeah, maybe for the people who work with them everyday it isn't a huge deal, but for me, it was bliss. Making connections across species barriers, touches that may only mean a possiblity of food to the animal, but mean love and acceptance to me. Honestly, running was no task after such a fun time because I was floating from my heart outward. I positively adored this evening!!

Limping giraffe, etc.

Well, there's not a ton of new stuff going on, but the veterinarian and I did check on a few things as we walked around this morning. I'm still really happy. Honestly, I can't imagine that I'll ever be satisfied working with dogs and cats again, just because of the fascinating animals I've been getting to work with here.

This morning we went to check on our old goat lady, Baby Ruth. As I mentioned in an earlier post, her arthritis has really been hurting her lately, and so we added a few new medications. Two of the meds she is on are in powdered form, and she just gets them fed to her. The third medication is an injection of which she has had two out of three shots. I'll give her the third tomorrow. Good news is, she's actually seeming to walk alot better and seems to be in less pain! Everyone is really happy about this news, because she's a really sweetie and a favorite of the petting pen attendants, so we absolutely didn't want to have to put her down. We're gonna keep monitoring it, but it's great that she seems well right now :) I love that little lady.

Well, one of our cute juvenile giraffes is lame. I've got a bit of a sweet spot for giraffes and as my best friend here takes care of them and loves them alot, I've become even more partial. I get to hear his stories of their mannerisms, and it really endears me to them. Possum has got a swollen knee that she is having trouble on, and so we've started her on an NSAID. In case you are not familiar with such lingo, that means non-steriodal anti-inflammatory drug. Like ibuprophen in people...but it's Banamine in hoofstock. It's this apple-flavored powder that makes you sneeze when you have to weigh it out, and it will hopefully help her pain. The vet wants to get some xrays of the knee if not, and that should be an interesting experience if so.

We had a sweet little parakeet come in today with a toenail ripped off. It was a bloody mess all over her face and it looked a little sick- like something out of a horror film. And of course, I've already described it as a sweet little parakeet. Why I do that, I don't know. It comes in, looking kinda freaky, and frankly, she bit the snot out of my with her blood-stained mouth...and yet I think she's dear. Because she is small, and because she is wounded, and because I can help her, I feel that I love her. I'm a strange person. Good news is, I cleaned her up really well and gave her some pain meds, so she looks alot better, and hopefully will be feeling alot better soon!

I got to go in the cat house today to look at a bobcat's face, which is swollen a little. When you've got a swollen face on an animal, you've got about four options of why this is so. It is either caused by 1. A dental problem, 2. An infection, 3. A cut/injury, 4. A foreign body in the nasal cavity. We're thinking it is the dental option, and may be exploring in this kittie's mouth soon. It was great fun to be inside with the bobcat's and the pumas. The pumas are especially beautiful, and they are not a fan of the vet. I was about two feet in front of their door, and they were hissing and pacing. Their agression was humbling and impressive. I am truly a cat person, and I really love the days I get to see these powerful felines at so close a range.

'Twas a good day, as always. :)