Sunny Days

Today we had and intern form another department shadowing us. We also had encounters for all the new hires in guest services, so they can better describe them to the pubic. Because of the encounters we had to do a very quick cleaning job in the morning. We left Anna at lions to clean by herself while Sarah, Jen, and I all went to bears. I showed Jen how to spread their enrichment in the pens while Sarah did some cleaning, then we got them out and slammed out cleaning huts. We had to stop in the middle so we could go do a Big Bear encounter for the new hires. As Sarah and I were going to do that we were sending Jen to unlock gates at the lion drive-thru. But then there was a Code 2 Houdari in the wetlands and Jen and I had to go assist Ungulates while Sarah stayed to do the encounter. Houdari is one of our giraffes who frequently likes to cross over cattle guards to other areas. A Code 2 is a non dangerous animal out of its enclosure. We had to go shut down some gates while Ungulates herded Houdari back into the Africa section of the park. Our cattle guards have special gates next to them so we can open them up to herd an animal through. Even though Houdari walks over the cattle guard to get into an area, we don't want to push him over it back out because he could hurt himself. After the code was clear we unlocked lion gates and then went back to help Sarah finish cleaning. Once bear huts was all done we headed up to lions to do the tug-of-war encounter.

After lunch we gave the lions some hide burritos and the brown bears some big fruitsicles. They had a lot of fun with them.

Tashi girl taking a nap

Keeno has such a handsome face

See?

Victor enjoyed his bucket sized frozen juice

Russ eating the last of hers

And Claire Bear

Victor with his fruitsicle..

I got in a  good training session with all three black bears. we are just starting tog et back in the swing of training with them and they are all doing very well. This year I am the primary trainer for Donna, Takoda, and Chochmo and I am pretty excited about it.

Sit Up with Donna

We also put the pool back in yard D for the first time since hibernation. We only had time to fill it halfway but it gave them something to play in besides their water trough. Donna took a walk around the edge.

We also got to spread all of their food around in the yard to find, which is a lot more fun then just putting it in piles. We were able to gauge how much they ate while in hibernation time by putting their food in piles in the huts but now that they are up and doing more we are giving them better things and we can hide stuff in the yards for them to find.Their diets are also going up now and will continue to get larger throughout the summer.