After the end
of this fourth week, I will have my second evaluation. Every intern has his or
her evaluation after every 80 hours at the zoo, and in my case that is every
two weeks since I am there 40 hours per week. I am looking forward to this
because I know I can only improve from the last time, and I want to see
specifically how and know what I can do to keep improving. Two weeks later I
expect to see an even bigger change.
This week the
keepers and I talked about reptile handling, so we got to practice that with
some of the more easygoing animals. We started out with the turtles, but as the
week progressed, we went down the list. My favorites so far are Kate, a bearded
dragon, and Toothless, a Mali uromastyx, since he is usually very calm. Another
new task with reptiles included taking their temperatures at the end of the day
in addition to when I would take back their food dishes. After that I would
write all these temperatures for the reptiles down in the daily log book, which also lists how
much each animal ate, if anything at all, and what they ate. I had been
cleaning snake tanks nearly every day. Sometimes two would have to be cleaned
per day, since there are eight snake tanks on display total.
I am getting
better with judging how much of a food item is left so I can either write it
down to be ordered, or I can either make more of it. For example, I make the
joey formula after looking at the current supply and can tell that more is
needed. I have also been making more repashy for the geckos, gator gel, and
tree monitor meat mix.
Something
that I have never done before was disinfecting the wallaby enclosure. Of course
this was a strenuous task, so luckily I did not have to do it on my own. The
other intern in my department and I tackled it together. We were warned it was
going to take two hours, and that was a correct assumption. This procedure
consists of sweeping up the leftover hay, hosing the floor and the mats, then
draining the excess water, then disinfecting the floor and mats, scrubbing
them, and rinsing everything all over again.
It astounded
me that it took me this long to hear it, but this week was the first time I had
heard one of the keepers say, “I love this job.” I thought that was really
profound since I had never heard anyone say something like that. It reaffirmed
how much I like the work that I do as well, but overall it made me want to work
even harder.
--Tierni
