Monday time

And now this brings us back to my Monday, which in real life terms is Sunday, but I guess it is now technically Monday since its 1am... Anyways, we had a lot of people working in Carnivores today. Both me and Valerie were on today, but we also had all three of our interns, Mandy, Rayna, and Rachel, and Arielle was cross-training in Carnivores. As mentiones before our bears are hibernating right now which means we ahve a lot of spare time on our hands. So with six people on today and a fairly light chore load we were able to work on a few extra things. Rachel ended uo helping out in cheetahs for the day, which gave us one less person. In the mroning we spent some time watching the lions play which was really nice. Once busy season hits are day will be extremely hectic so I am really enjoying being able to just enjoy watching the animals. Mandy and Rayna cleaned huts while the rest of us did some individual work in the office. We were also able to work a chute we are setting up to help prepare Tau for training to do voluntary blood draws. This is something we are hoping to be able to teach him over the winter. Val has primarily been working on the chute so I was glad I had the opportunity to see it today. I think it will work out nicely and I am looking forward to working on this with him. Valerie does all the primary training with the lions, but I still train all the behaviors they already know.

Today was a check day for the brown bears (we are now checking in on them every other day) and we happened to get a Hibernating Bear Encounter sign up just before we went out there. In a hibernating bear encounter the public is able to come out to the bear hust, we give them a little introductiona dn talk about bears, then bring them inside the huts (where everyone has to be very quiet) so they can see the bears close up, then we go back out and answer any questions. These encounters will be pretty common over the season so I am going to have to get back into the swing of doing them from intern days.

When we went to black bears we scattered their food throughout one of their pens and I got some cute pictures of them eating (I know you guys thought picture time would never come).

 Takoda found the food I left on the spool.

All three! look Donna and Chochmo are sharing!!

After black bears we managed to sneak in some time with the lions so Val could show me the new behaviors they've been working on.

 Sarabi's "sit up" needs a bit of work but it's super cute! *warning gruesome picture coming up*

 Keeno and Natasha's diets for the night. We have a program where farmer's bring us horses that need to be euthanized and we take them in, put them down, and feed them out. The farmer's save the cost of a vet bill and body disposal (and actually geta tax write off) and we are able to feed all the carnivores for free.

 Keeno had very muddy paws.

Tasha enjoying her meal.