USDA

This was a bit of an interesting week because the USDA inspection wound up happening this week. Sunday through Tuesday the mornings were normal and routine, I cleaned the ruffed exhibit and holding area all three days, cleaned windows, then cleaned another holding area or two. Also in the morning, the aye-aye and giant jumping rat enrichment is given, I do not think I ever explained why these two animals get fed/enriched so many times a day. The rats, it is very easy for them to over groom themselves and each other so we feed them three times a day to try to prevent that. The aye-aye, in the early morning they are given their gruel, then with their second feeding they are given their vegetables, and the third one they are given their fruit. This is done this way because they like the fruit the most and if they were given that with or before the other food they would only eat the fruit and not the other food. Sometimes in the morning I will help with herps, and give the crickets new food. Then tomorrows diets are prepared and that’s the end of the morning. In the afternoon most things are different from day to day, but feeding the bats, and the aye-aye and rats again, as well as preparing lemur enrichment is done every day, most days I also get to hand feed the collared lemurs their fruit.

In the afternoon on Sunday, I went with a keep to the jungle to start laundry and try to find balloons for paper mache, then spent most of the afternoon making paper mache.

Monday was interesting too. In the morning I cleaned the downstairs mongoose lemur holding area with them in it. They were not going on exhibit because they were being moved upstairs and separated. The two mongoose lemurs upstairs were separated as well. They are switching mates in hopes that they will breed. All lemurs were put in separate cages with one empty cage in between them and their new mate. In the afternoon another intern and I stripped one of the herps exhibits.

Tuesday in the morning I cleaned the tenrec’s tank. In the afternoon I helped a keeper to fix fallen shelves and other various tidying up jobs. Then while I was feeding the collared lemurs we learned that USDA was at the gorilla area next to us. Everyone quickly ran around trying to straighten everything up and make sure things were where they were supposed to be. After we did all that we discovered that they were not actually getting to our area until the next day.

Wednesday started off a little bit crazy because we knew that the USDA was going to be there sometime that day and so had to make sure to clean everything very well, including all drains, and make sure all chemicals were put back where they belong after we used them. I started out helping one keeper get down cobwebs from the bird exhibit, but then went to help another keeper clean the giant aye-aye and bat exhibit. After that I neatened up the enrichment hallway a little, and then cleaned two of the upstairs mongoose lemur holdings. Today after the holdings were cleaned, the mongoose lemurs were put into cages right next to each other. In the afternoon I fed the ring tails on the island, watched collared lemur training and fed the red ruffed lemurs outside.