Aye-Aye...

This week was a short week for me because I had to call in sick on Wednesday. Other then that the week again went pretty routinely, especially in the mornings. This week I cleaned the ruffed exhibit all three days of my working and foamed it on Monday, we normally foam the exhibits, Monday, Wednesday Friday, and back holdings get foamed everyday. I cleaned the ruffed holding area, another holding area, either the fossa or the upstairs or downstairs mongoose lemur. After the holdings are done morning enrichment is done for the aye-aye and giant jumping rats, then herps gets done, then diets get done, and that is usually it for the morning. After lunch tends to be different everyday since the only things that get done everyday are feeding the aye-aye their fruit, feeding the bats, preparing lemur enrichment and hand feeding the collared lemurs their fruit.

On Sunday I went with a keeper to get our snakes back that were removed from their exhibit last week for maintenance, then I washed some dishes and spent the rest of the afternoon painting rusted areas in the upstairs holding area with rust preventing paint.

Monday I did extra stuff in the morning, I cleaned out the tenrec’s tank and I helped to clean the cricket tanks. In the afternoon I did more rust preventing painting, this time in the downstairs holding areas, and then cleaned the floor in the keeper area upstairs. This was done the same way as cleaning the holding areas, with hosing down, then foaming, then scrubbing, then hosing again, the squeegeeing.

On Tuesday, in the morning when I cleaned the downstairs mongoose lemur holding area I also cleaned the vasa parrot holding area, this was a little bit different because the parrots are in there and I have to be careful not to let them out. I also went out to meet a keeper in the outside red ruffed lemur exhibit to feed the ibis that are also out there, they got pinkies, some of which I tossed to one bird and then the keeper put the rest up in the nest while I held the ladder. The ruffs were also fed while I was out there. Then another intern and I stripped the aye-aye holding area. Then I watched collared lemur training and that was the end of the morning. Not really sure how so much got done that morning. In the afternoon I helped put the new crickets in their tanks, watched ringtail lemur injection training, cleaned the upstairs keeper area again and cleaned crates that had been used.