Day Five

My fifth day of my internship also marked the end of my first week of this internship. The days have gone by so quickly and it feels like I've been here forever. Countless chicken butts checked, poop picked up, and I have tripped and either landed on my face or "gracefully" stumbled in front of everyone exactly one infinity times.

Today was also a first. Because the internship is six weeks long and we don't have just lions, tigers and leopards, we got our new assignments. For the next few days I'm assigned to the small compound. It's a nice break. :)

Don't get me wrong. I love working with the big critters. I really do. But the part that stinks is that we don't get to interact directly with the large cats (for obvious safety reasons). We aren't allowed to enter their habitat with them still in there, we aren't allowed to touch them, and we aren't allowed to get too close to the fences. When you are around the big cats your guard has to be up. The smaller animals can be dangerous, yes, but you're more in danger of getting bitten or scratched than eaten.

Let me tell you. It is so cool! The servals and jungle cats know when it's feeding time and are crowded up against the fence. To feed them you basically take grill tongs, hold a rat with it, and offer it to a serval or jungle cat, then they'll take it and pull it through the fence. The wolves have to be moved into another area by the keeper, but once that has been done we're free to enter and clean up.

By the scattering of the poop, I have to wonder if the wolves poop while running. They're far more scattered than my old dog's (who did the squat-walk poop).

But one of my absolute favorites (and all of the animals are my favorite) are the New Guinea Singing Dogs (colloquially called "singers"). You can actually enter their habitats with them.

I have to back up a little here and explain. When I first found the Conservators' Center website, I read about every single animal on there, and looked at their pictures. The singers seemed to be regular dog-sized (which by my definition is about 40-60 pounds or larger. I like big dogs). Imagine my surprise when they're actually the size of miniature schnauzers or beagles. They are ridiculously cute and very affectionate. They are each paired male-female because males do not get along with males, and neither do females with females.

If one so desired, they could pet one of these dogs. With what I hope is common dog etiquette among everyone, you should approach a dog at its level with your hand out so that the dog can smell your palm. Instead of on the top of its head, one should pet a singer under the chin. Also, do not try to go after a dog to pet it. You cannot make the dog do what you want, and that includes having him let you pet him.

Other than the servals, wolves, and singers, the interns were allowed to enter the kinkajou and genets' enclosures. They are both nocturnal species, and we had to check their dens anyway to ensure that they looked healthy. An intern and I also went in the lemurs' habitat. We basically had to clean up after them, change their water and place new bowls, plus hide treats for them.

After lunch, we continued work on Oliver's habitat while he and his kittens looked on.

The result from being outside so much? Carolyn shoved sunblock in my face and made me put it on. I still burned.

Day Four

My fourth day of the internship was.... different to say in the least.

I have to back up a little here. We get very regular deliveries of chickens from local farmers. Occasionally people will bring "goodies." These goodies can consist of anything from deer to goats. We are strict on the policy that we do not accept full-sized cows due to Mad Cow Disease (but calves are a-OK) or horses (it is difficult to know all the drugs that horses have been dosed with. There are some types of drugs that horses have been dosed with that they are fine with, but could potentially sicken our animals), but we will accept almost anything else. 

Monday, a truck arrived carrying two freshly dead goats. The goats had outgrown their use to the farmer and had been humanely killed that morning. We were responsible for harvesting the meat while they were still fresh, and ensuring that it was done correctly. The goats were so fresh that they were still warm - eughhh! The keeper, Megan, showed us how to cut off each leg without having to saw through bone (surprisingly easy), then we removed the organs of the goats and saved the ribcages. The process was long and disgusting (I gagged a couple of times), but it was worth it to see the carnivores enjoying the ribcage and legs. 

One lion in particular, Matthai, got the special treat of having the ribcage of the larger goat all to himself. I was sent to place the ribcage in the habitat, then the keeper let him out. It was great watching him walk up to it, pick it up, and then roll over, rub his face in the meat, then start chewing on it. You could practically tell that he was saying, "Ah! This is the life!" 

Unfortunately, because it took so long to cut up the goats, we finally got to sit down for lunch at almost 2:30! To say that we were starving is an understatement. I think I could have eaten an entire goat, I was so hungry. 

Goats ahoy!

Day Three

I had Friday and Saturday off, so getting back in the swing on Sunday was a little difficult. It's a little like the "Monday blahs" when you have the normal Monday-Friday work schedule, or are in school.

It was a pretty regular day by any means. Since I'm now writing this three days after the fact, I can't remember much of what we did (whoops). However, I was with the large animals, it was pretty fun.

I have short term memory loss. I seriously cannot remember what we did.

I'm sorry.

In exchange, I thought it would be a good idea to make suggestions for what a summer intern could wear and carry to make their days easier.

First of all, pants. It is necessary to protect you against bug bites, poison ivy, or animal scratches. While you can wear jeans, it is honestly much more comfortable wearing lightweight pants.

These are the pants that I got. They're basically frumpy old-lady pants in real life (nothing looks as nice in real life as they do in ads) but they do the job. I'm a little bit vain so I bought a size up since in my size, I had a slight muffin top. Yes, I know. Nobody cares about muffin tops. The sucky part is that I keep forgetting a belt and my pants are always falling down.

As for shirts, I usually check the forecast before I leave the house. If the day is going to be ridiculously sunny and hot, I will wear a tank top or a racerback. They are usually light colored like bright blue or yellow or red (but mostly blue and red) although I have a black one in my car ready to be changed into. If the day is not going to be ridiculously hot (which never happens in NC), I will wear a short sleeved shirt. The neck style of the shirt honestly doesn't matter. I have worn both crew-necked and v-necked shirts with no problems.

There was one morning where it was cool enough I considered wearing a jacket, but then I realized I only had my really nice sorority lettered jacket in my car, and didn't want it to be stained, so I went without. It wasn't that bad anyway.

As for shoes, it is entirely up to you. Many interns wear sneakers and others wear hiking boots. If you wear sneakers, be prepared to get your feet wet. Hiking boots, in my opinion, are better. I have a bum ankle and I haven't felt a twinge while in my boots. The pair that I got is waterproof with a steel toe. I've got my feet stepped on and run over (oops), then walked through puddles or got my entire lower half soaking wet, and my feet have been dry (aside from sweat). They rock! It hurts to break in but only takes a couple of days of walking. I suggest you buy your boots well ahead of time to break them in. I initially bought these boots for my class trip to Pt. Pelee in Ontario. We walked something like twenty miles (maybe that's an exaggeration? maybe not) in two days, and by the end my boot were perfectly broken in. The best part? I got them from Walmart at a ridiculously low price (yay Walmart and yay being a broke college student/graduate!).

What about miscellaneous items? The staff at the Center advise you to get cloth gloves to wear. I didn't get a pair, and I sort of wish I did. It would make handling chickens much better, and I'd be able to wear gloves in the compound when I do heavy lifting (splinters suck). However, I do well enough with latex gloves while doing chicken prep. They get super sweaty in the summers, and I absolutely hate getting latex gloves wet (the texture... ucccch) so if I have to wash buckets or something and I'm wearing latex gloves, I have to take them off, go to the field kitchen, throw them away, and come back. Not a big deal, but it can be a pain if you're in a time crunch.

What I do strongly advise getting is a good knife. While the Center has their own knives in the field kitchen, it's pretty nice having a pocket knife to carry in your pocket if you have to do emergency gutting in the compound. They also come in useful for cutting chickens open to put vitamins in, which we do right before giving it to the animal (so that the right vitamins are given to the right animals), and if we have to do some emergency cutting (which hasn't happened yet, and I don't know what we would cut anyway) for whatever reason. I would suggest getting a knife of good quality. The one I have has a cheap plastic handle and the blade used to go dull quickly (before I went insane with the sharpener. I already sliced open my finger. Do not do) which makes sense since it was a freebie... (for anyone curious, I took Ecology of Hunting and Fishing winter quarter, and we had to make our own fire kits for whatever reason. My professor didn't spend much time on the ecology portion. Anyway. He gave each of us a knife so that we could whittle our sticks for the fire kit. That's how I got my knife)

I wear a baseball cap, since my eyes are pretty sensitive to the sun. In the four years that I've lived in western New York, I developed an allergy to NC. I will start randomly sneezing and stop only after five, six, or seven sneezes. And they hurt. Combine that with my photic sneeze reflex, and I'm done for. A hat helps counter the photic reflex, and I can just focus on my allergic-to-NC sneezes, which I have realized only happens when I'm at the Center in the compound... uh oh. A cap also protects your face from sunburn (mostly).

I also very strongly advise sunblock. Like, seriously. The keepers will yell at you if you get sunburned and shove a tube of sunblock at you.

A photo is coming. Stay tuned!

Ta!

Day Two

My first day at the Center, the Large Compound interns were with a keeper called Carolyn. I had shadowed her for my work interview, but she was a little distant when I was there (understandable, considering that one of her beloved lions, Sadie, was very sick and wasn't interested in her food or her surroundings, which I was told was very unlike her). Carolyn seemed a little sad during my interview, and I didn't see much of her. She was "on"Wednesday, though, and it was a very rich experience.

Day Two? We were with the Director of Animal Care, Janine. It was very interesting to see how different both Carolyn and Janine were. While both clearly loved the animals deeply, they cared for the animals differently.

Janine showed us the feeding chart the keepers created, and how to decipher the written codes. On the back side of the chart was the enclosures and what had been done that day. It was very comprehensive and easy to understand once it had been explained. We could refer to the chart and decide whether Jacob Tiger's pool needed to be cleaned that day, or whether it was okay to just refill it (depending on whether he has pooped in it), or whether Mufasa's Pride's water buckets needed to be scrubbed. A lot of this depended on visuals as well. If the water looked murky, it was a better idea to bail it out and give the bucket a good scrubbing.

While I love working with both Carolyn and Janine, I appreciate the different styles of animal care and education that they both provide. They are both brilliant caretakers and I am very fortunate for this opportunity to work with them, and other keepers. I also like this style of working - we typically stayed with the keeper for the full day. During my internship at the zoo, I would often be shuffled between five keepers in one day, so it was difficult getting to observe the keepers and their interactions with the animals. At the zoo, I sometimes missed so much that I didn't know how the polar bears were fed until my last day at the internship, because I was always somewhere else (and the zone I was in at the zoo was smaller than the Center).

While pulling out the hose for some interns to water Tonka Tiger's pool and buckets, I made a new friend. There is a narrow walkway between Kira Lioness/Arthur Tiger's enclosure and Bella/Spike/Shelby Tigers' enclosures. People have to walk single file and keep an eye out for the cats. As I pulled the hose along this walkway, I noticed something sandy-colored bouncing along next to me. Oh no. Head full of warnings from the zoo, of stories of large cats' paws fitting easily through chain-link fences, of zookeepers' cut and scarred legs, I kept my eyes on the ground and edged just a little bit closer to Bella's side of the walkway. I met with the interns, dropped off the hose, and turned around. I made split-second eye contact with this sandy-colored thing. Kira the lioness. She had herself pressed against the fence and was pawing at the air.

Could it be? Turns out this lioness, which I had decided the day prior to be shy and not very friendly toward people, had taken a liking to me. I'm still not sure whether she was just hungry and I smelled delicious, or I somehow became her buddy. Walking back through the walkway, the lioness was still bounding next to me. I met Janine, who had spotted Kira and her antics, at the head of the walkway. She grinned and pointed out what I had deducted - Kira liked me.

Now, honestly. I have a soft spot for tigers. I fell in love with Seneca Park Zoo's two tigers, Anastasia and Katya, who had the sweetest personalities. They both loved Chanel No. 5 perfume and often would go straight for their toys instead of the dinners. The zoo was in the process of getting lions when my internship ended (no, I don't think California sea lions count as actual lions) so my first brush with the king of the savannah was during my work interview. My first impression, dropping a chicken through the feed hole, was of a very large, very angry, very hungry animal roaring at me and pawing at the ground. That is an image I have held in my head in the four months since my interview.

Kira? Was she very large? Well... yeah. Was she very angry? She only seemed angry when Arthur the tiger leaped up and swiped at her leg while she ate, and she reprimanded him like a proper lady (roaring, of course). Was she very hungry? I'm not sure about that. Arthur honestly seems more hungry than her even after eating his meal and plenty of treats.

After lunch, the interns helped the keepers with building a hanging platform and a hammock for Oliver Binturong. This was the first time that I had been near his enclosure. While a binturong's appearance is quite unusual, they become endearing quite quickly. While I was checking out Oliver and examining his appearance, I was greeted with a surprise. The cutest black cat with the brightest green eyes! Apparently Oliver likes cats and two or three cats live in his enclosure with him, quite peacefully. While helping with construction, I observed Oliver sleeping in his hammock with "his" cats comfortably cuddled up against him.

Oliver and one of his kittens!
Photo courtesy of Sam Trull

Note: If you are interested in more of Sam's work, her website is http://primatography.photoshelter.com.She is a photographer whose work focuses on primates and sloths. She is currently in Costa Rica, and many of the photos used in this blog were taken by her. Her pictures are amazing - go check them out!

Day One

My first day at the Center actually went very well! To be honest, I was a little bit nervous. Even though I had experience working with exotics from the zoo, the Center seemed to be a different ball game. For one, the zoo had a collaboration with RIT and the keepers and staff had a full understanding that any intern at the SPZ would most likely be inexperienced. The Center seemed to welcome interns from all walks of life with a variety of experience.

Even though I felt that working at the zoo gave me an advantage - I knew how to work around tigers and had actually handfed Katya the Amur Tiger once (under a keeper's supervision, of course!) - I was worried that I would get too cocky or that someone else might have had once been a zookeeper and would see the errors of my ways.

I honestly had nothing to worry about. Sitting in that conference room full of complete strangers, we were all on the same footing. Some, like me, had experience. Others had never seen a tiger up close, let alone fed one. We were all clueless, but excited.

I was also mildly nervous because the Center is not AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums) accredited. I was wondering why it was not accredited, since my one-day-a-week class for my zoo internship held such a huge emphasis that the SPZ was AZA accredited. After learning more about the Center I have come to realize that accreditation does not really mean much at all when it comes to the quality of animal care. The Center takes exemplary care of its animals, and each animal is a sweetheart in its own way.

This is the Center's official statement and explanation on why it is not AZA accredited.

We respect the work performed by AZA-accredited institutions and believe they do a great job entertaining people through exhibiting animals. We support some of the same conservation programs and deliver some of the same educational messages.
 
AZA does a lot of work to manage the very limited gene pools of the different species under their species survival plans (SSPs). We work with a large variety of other facilities around the world to manage some of the tens of thousands of species that are not included in the AZA's restrictive breeding programs.
 
In addition, AZA accreditation requires a lot of resources that are more important for visitors than for the animals who live here. The AZA takes management of the animals away from a facility, meaning they control what animals can live at a site, and what is bred at a site. And they do not allow rescue. While we have many overlapping goals with the AZA, that organization is not a good match for our current goals.
 
Any accrediting agency is mostly a business model. It can focus on good husbandry practices and smart population management decisions. For that reason, we think the Zoological Association of America (ZAA) is a better accreditation for us to strive for. That would allow us to manage our population in coordination with other facilities that have the same high standards we do.

While chatting with Mandy, our communications director, over e-mail, I brought up my concerns that the Center was not AZA accredited even though it offered exemplary care and the animals were more than happy. She responded with the following,

I am not suggesting that your concern about us being AZA was unfounded from your perspective before arriving at our site. A lot of people assume that facilities that are not AZA are somehow not accepted into that “club.” In reality, facilities of all sizes and types choose to affiliate with different organizations for various reasons.

Back to the first day of the internship:
We introduced ourselves, and then went outside to prep the food and feed the four-legged members of the Center. I was lumped with the "LC" (Large Compound) which is the big cats. For my work interview, I actually helped with the prep and feeding. It was nice and helpful knowing what to do! It was also nice getting a review on how to tell whether the meat was fresh or not, and remembering how to check chicken butts. It is essential to check their butts to ensure that the chickens are still good, since the color of the butt indicates the quality of the meat within. If the butt is pink or flesh-colored, it is most likely fine to feed to the animals. However, if it looks greenish to "ick" (use your own definition for what that might look like!), the chicken either needs to be gutted or disposed of.

After food prep, we went out to the compound to feed the large cats. The only animal missing from my work interview was Sadie Lion. She actually passed away two or three days after my interview. Work was pretty standard - the animals were moved into holding dens or "shifts," then we would go in to pick up any poop, change out the water, and move around things in the enclosure. We would finish by placing food in the enclosure, leaving and locking the gate. This was the "cue" to release the animals back in the enclosure to enjoy their "noms."

We finished around 12:45  and headed back for lunch. After lunch the interns had a brief class on the safety rules (most absolutely the important!), and the cell phone policy (in other words, absolutely no phones in the compound with some exceptions). Afterwards, we met up with a keeper who showed us how to prep food for the next day. We headed back to the house to clean up and head out after that. We finished around 4:30 to 5pm.

Day Zero

Hello!

With being a recent college graduate (as of three days ago), I'm back in North Carolina and already raring (kinda) to go. I've been out to the barn, on adventures around Greensboro, and so forth. With my brief two days in Greensboro over, I begin my adventure at the Conservators' Center.

About a year ago, I was scrolling through my old Facebook posts and came across a status I had made two years ago about getting the zoo internship at Seneca Park Zoo. A friend of mine, Liz, posted to congratulate me and to recommend that I try getting an internship at the CCI as well.

I completely forgot about Liz's suggestion until last summer. After a great quarter interning at the SPZ, I was hungry to work with more Anastasias, Katyas, Annas, and wolves.

The Conservators' Center presented the perfect opportunity. On a whim, I applied. I went through the interview process.

And I got it.

And I begin tomorrow.

This is my first "real-world" internship outside of RIT. This will be my first internship where I am going almost solely without an interpreter (with the exception of tomorrow).

I will attempt to post about my experiences each day.

As of tonight, I'm going to lie on my stomach in my temporary room, cuddle with a pit bull, and try to get used to the idea of not being in school anymore.