Feathered Friends

So today was kind of  a slow day we aren't checking the brown bears until tomorrow. Me, Mandy, and Rachel were working. But because we had some extra time today we were able to spend some extra time with the animals, which is always nice. For morning enrichment we through over some meatsicles for the lions.

Sarabi enjoying her meatsicle.

We got to work a little bit on making some paaper mache enrichmentfor the animals, which is always fun, and Shannon, one of the village keepers paid us a visit with Carmen the Cockatoo.

They were dancing :)

I also spent some time breaking our lion tower, which was a nice pause in the day for me. We have a tower set up near the lion drive thru, bear drive thru, and a lodge in the cheetah area. We have volunteers who stay there all day to keep an eye on the animals and the customers. As a cheetahs intern I did bear tower once a week and broke towers or filled in as needed but I rarely do so now. Usually giving the towers their lunch breaks is something the interns do but every once in a while its really nice to do it because it gives us a chance to sit and relax and just watch the animals. We had some to train the lions as well after that. We actually trained Tau and Sarabi twice today which is always really great for them, and for me too since I really like training. When we went to black bears today we got to spend some time getting all three yards cleaned. We are feeding them all their least favorite foods so they are more inclined to go into hibernation.

I fed Takoda some lettuce. He would never eat this in the summer.

It was pretty rainy today, and cold, so I was wearing lots of layers with my tight raincoat over them. We didn't see any of the adult bears out today to eat, they are definitely getting sleepier. At the end of the day we gave the lions some chickens for dinner. As I have mentioned they usually eat horse meat but every once in a while we have some chickens donated. We like to give these to the lions whole, it gives them a nice change of diet and its a good form of enrichment as well. Sarabi will eat all of her chickens but Keeno and Natasha will actually pluck their chickens first.

Natasha plucking her chicken :)

To finish off the day I spent some time at the intern house, and I just had to include some about that because there was another visitor there too.

Willie, the Village department's amabassador wallaroo, was spending the night with Jen, the Village intern. He goes home with a different keeper every night, and will until he is old enough to be on his own.

(This is a terrible pic of me, but he is sooo cute) This was a god end to the day :)