As of this morning, most of us have been to the zoo as official students.
Orientation week was a whole lot of scattered information thrown at us with many promises of "you'll learn more about that later." We learned how to do rounds, which means walking around the zoo and checking every single enclosure for the four L's - Life, Liquid, Lock, and Looks. Rounds happen every single hour, and especially as first years it will probably take us more than an hour to get through the whole zoo.
We also learned about Daywatch, a two hour shift once a week when we will be assigned to the zoo and given a list of tasks to split up.
We received a lot of helpful advice from our not-always-older but definitely wiser second years.
We met a lot of the staff and our teachers for the first time.
Friday, we had our first "work day," which is a bit of a confusing moniker because every day is a work day at the zoo. In this case, however, work days are days in which the whole zoo gets together in our grubbiest street clothes and tackles a huge list of big projects all day. There are three "work days" per year: one at the end of orientation week and two around the time of Spring Spectacular (more on that later.) Of course, projects are still being done year round, but these three days are special times for the whole zoo to come together and tackle a whole lot at once. My roommate and I were assigned to Parrots. I spent the first two hours of our day sifting through shovelfuls of dirt, pouring it through strainers to remove the big rocks so it could be safely put in the bottom of the enclosures. All in the hot, merciless sun. Meanwhile, Carrie and one of our second years were weeding, organizing and cleaning shelves, and putting WD-40 on all the locks. We also re-did the rock borders of the walkways, took down an old fence and put up a new one, trimmed an overgrown bush, and hauled the half-ton bin of sifted dirt up the hill. It was hot and exhausting, and my muscles still hurt, but there is a definite sense of pride that comes with completing a day full of manual labor like that. And the area, if I do say so myself, looks pretty dang good.
Saturday I had a day off, so I decided to use it to get some MORE work done! I woke up early and right away started tackling my to-do list. Two loads of laundry hummed away while I removed everything from our huge rat cage, cleaned it off, and rearranged the shelves and hammocks in different spots to give our rats a nice little change. I also started stringing wire through the top of the cage, hoping to keep Miss Zazu from crawling out quite so frequently. She is a sweet little thing, though. I hadn't quite finished with the project by the time we decided to walk down the hill for some ice cream, but Carrie and I decided to leave them in their big cage while we were gone as a sort of trial run. When I got home, Zazu was happily perched on top of the cage, waiting for her Mama. I walked over to her and she scampered up to perch on my shoulder, then curled up behind my neck under my hair - her favorite spot. What a sweetie.
Today, we all dressed in our official EATM uniforms for the very first time and reported to the zoo at 7:45 am. This was our very first class - Animal Care & Handling. After going over the syllabus, we headed to Carns to learn how to move an animal into the Arena. The arena is basically a super huge enclosure where the carnivores get to have some extra space to explore and play. We didn't actually move anyone today, but we did practice as if we would be moving Kiara. After a few practice rounds of opening the arena door and pretending to open Kiara's enclosure, she began to clue into what was going on and got super excited, thinking she was going to get to play. She was pacing back and forth, bouncing around excitedly, and making her moan-y lion noises. At one point, I was leaning towards her enclosure to see more clearly what was going on on the other side, and suddenly I looked down and saw that Kiara had paused next to me and was looking straight into my eyes, her enormous head less than two inches away from my elbow.
I couldn't say anything to the gorgeous lioness herself, so all I could do was turn to my roommate and mouth "wow." It is a truly incredible feeling to be so close to such a powerful animal, and it was the moment all of this suddenly seemed very real. Over the course of our two years, each student is allowed to work with only one of the big carns - Savuti the hyena, Spirit the mountain lion, or Kiara the lioness. I had made up my mind early on that I wanted Spirit. He is the only one out of the big three that is able to leave his enclosure and go on walks with his trainers. Kiara and Savuti are both protected-contact animals meaning that there must be a barrier between you and the animal at all times. However, looking straight into Kiara's eyes today, I got the feeling that she could change my mind.
Tomorrow is a big day - Care & Handling starting at 6:30 am and classes all day until 5. Despite the intimidating schedule, however, I have never been so excited to go to school.
More updates later!
Love and bellyrubs,
Christy
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