Week 3: August 28 - September 3, 2011

This week was also fairly uneventful, more time in the class room learning. At first it was kind of annoying but we really were learning a lot and in a couple of weeks we would appreciate all of the learning that we got.

On Monday I got to see a carnivore switch. Let me explain this to you. We have a large arena inside of the carnivore area, each of our large carns gets to go into the arena a couple of times a week. When a carn comes out of their enclosure and into the arena, or vice versa leaving the arena and going back into their enclosure, this is called a switch. It is a very detailed process that involves at least 3 people and I got to watch this for the first time. I also spent some time doing volunteer hours around the zoo. It was a hard working day for me.

Tuesday was the day of doing our falcon knot for a test. Once we did the knot on the fence we then did it on an actual bird. I was in line to do my knot on Alba, the barn owl. Well, let's just say that Alba was not in a good mood and kept trying to foot me in the face. This means that she kept jumping off of the glove and at one point had her large talons coming towards my face. Somehow I never overreacted and Cassie was able to get Alba back under control. I was bummed that I didn't get to hold the owl yet, but I know there is time in the future. I also practiced my knot on Arrow the red-tailed hawk.


This is when Alba was about to try to foot me in the face.

Once we left the falcon knot testing a small group of us accidentally walked up on our mountain lion who was out on a walk. He had gotten very spooked and was in no mood for more people around. We slowly backed up and let him pass before continuing back to class. Later on I helped some second year classmates (including Bubs) fix a bedroom box in the capuchin behlen.

Saturday was my first time doing All Day Area at the zoo. This is when you get to the zoo before 10 AM and are there until 5 PM. Each hour you rotate to a different area of the zoo to do watches on specific areas or answer phones or sell tickets. The day goes by fairly fast, I was surprised by this, and you have lots of interaction with the public.