Yay Lemurs!

This week was mostly routine, days started in the morning with cleaning either the ring tail exhibit and holding area or the red ruffed exhibit and holding area, which is then followed by cleaning the downstairs mongoose lemur holding area, the upstairs mongoose lemur holding area, or the fossa holding area, cleaning holding areas also always means cleaning the footbaths that are in that area as well. Sometimes I will also clean the windows in the public viewing area. Once all the holding areas are done we prepare the day enrichment for the giant jumping rats and the aye-aye, and do herps. Diets for the next day are sometimes prepared before lunch and sometimes after lunch depending on when a keeper has time to go get them because all we do for diets is add in the dry food like browse biscuits and pellets and such. Once diets are prepared, aye-aye and rats are given their afternoon enrichment, and the bats are fed. Then lemur enrichment for when they return to their holding areas for the night is prepared.

There were a few things that happened each day that were not part of this normal routine. On Sunday, I got to go with a keeper to get diets and see where all of that is prepared. Also on Sunday, I had to strip the snake exhibit, this meant removing all the mulch that was on the floor of the exhibit and then hosing it down. This had to be done because they are adding new heating sources into the exhibit so that all the snakes can be at one at the same time.

On Monday, I got to go out and bring enrichment to the sick lemur holding area, and brought food to the ring tail lemur island and to the red ruffed lemurs outside. A keeper usually does this alone so I was happy to get a chance to do this and was able to get some very good pictures of the ring tails and the red ruffed. Today I also helped move around plants that were upstairs and cleaned the dirt that was around the plants, and then cleaned shelves that were removed from holding areas due to rusting.

Tuesday was a short day for me because I injured my ankle stepping out of the ring tail exhibit in the morning and did not come back after lunch to give my ankle a chance to rest. What ever I did to my ankle it is now better and no longer hurting.

Wednesday was a special day called Member’s Day at the zoo. And for this we had ring tail island training at 2pm, fossa training at 2:30pm, and then were putting enrichment out for the lemurs from 3-7. I got to watch the ring tail training, but then had to stand inside and watch the button quail for almost 2 hours. The male and female were just being put back together on exhibit and were not getting along very well so someone had to watch them to make sure they were not fighting.