Big Lions, Noam and Tom

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Today was lion day once again, so I limped on down to the restaurant and went in with the tigers. All you have to do for the lions is take out the bones, rake and pick up poop, they are normally the easiest. But today, we had to rake the entire enclosure and turn over all the sand and it just takes foreverrr! The only good thing is we use red rakes because they don't like the color red so they stay away from us, not like we couldn't handle it anyway, but we could turn our backs to them and we were fine because we knew they wouldn't come after us. The worst part is definitely taking the bones out, they just get so possessive of them that you almost have to sneak them out and hide it behind your back and quickly toss it over the fence and be like oops all gone! and try to distract them.

For breakfast we had french toast, now I normally don't like french toast but this was really good, we did get in a little late because of having to rake the whole thing but we all still got food of course 😊

With lions, comes meat prep and this time I was lead on it because Pascal had the day off because he leaves soon, so I had Chantel and Gee along with me and we had to teach Gee what to do, because she's new. We get down there only to find out that the 3 kilo scale is broken, most of the meat is green and disgusting and there are no legs and little chicken. Someone has to run up to go get the other scale and we weigh what we can of the chicken, but it's not enough so we'll have to cut extra meat instead. Because we are missing the legs, Delano goes to fetch a cow, but takes Chantel with him so that it is only me and Gee in the locker doing meat prep which is definitely a 3 person job. I have to go in the fridge to grab some meat, there's no way to do that without getting all bloody which is just gross. When I finally get it down and pick it up to cut it, I find out Gee is a vegie and hates meat. Man was this going to be a long meat prep! But she did try, so I'll give her major props for that, she just keeps saying its just smelly red dough. It was the first time she had ever cut meat in her life, which I thought was a little silly but alas. What meat we did have, could only be found by taking the green meat away and cutting around it which just makes things wayy more smelly! I haven't taken pictures of it yet, but next time I probably will snatch a few, so make sure you're prepared!

When we ran out of chicken, we had to find extra meat, which in an empty fridge is difficult. We couldn't weigh the things out correctly because we need 1.5Kilo steaks and a scale that only goes to 1 kilo is no help, so we had to cut them in half which just isn't good at feeding time, so I think next time, we'll just estimate. Then, when we were all done, we had nothing to wash things down with! Without water, we had trouble washing the knives, the mats, our hands. That to me is the worst. You wear gloves, but they can rip or whatever and your hands get all bloody and then you have to go up and eat. blegh.

The hill to the restaurant is pretty awful for me, especially carrying extra weight. It hurts my ankle and my asthma, so I always have to sit for a while afterwards. I want to text people, but it's like 5 oclock your time so no ones ever awake so I can't because I won't get any responses, unless I catch Vicki when she gets up to pee, which I've gotten pretty good at actually....

For lunch we had chicken, potato casserole and noodles. The noodles came with either tuna, or no tuna. I clearly chose the no tuna option. Tuna is okay, but in noodles? who does that?!

I've been spending more and more time with the lions because they are always so relaxed, they sleep like 18-20 hours a day. They are kind of energetic in the morning, since we are in there doing stuff, and they get more energetic around 4 or 430, because its almost food time. My favorite used to be Joseph, the white male lion but ever since he scratched me, I don't like him as much. I'm certainly not afraid of him, because he didn't mean any harm and it's not like it hurts, I just have found a new favorite. Jason is my new favorite and he's one of the brown lions, he's known as the fatty. He's the best during play time and handlings because he's too fat and he doesn't want to do anything. He is obviously not wicked fat, he's just a bit chubbier than the other ones, normal people don't notice that, but because all of us volunteers spend so much time with them, we can clearly notice it. Today, I gave him some kisses on the nose and laid with him. I'm not really one to go in there with my camera raised and catch every little thing, yeah I know it'll be nice to have, but if I know I did it that's almost good enough for me, so unfortunatly I don't have any pictures of me with him. Someone might have snapped a quick shot because they thought it was cute because I remember a flash, but I'll have to figure out who it is and take the photo, which could take some time, so I'll try to upload it soon, but no promises! Who knows, maybe it'll happen again and I'll actually get a picture. The newer girl Gemma and I have decided that she is going to be my new photographer, so hopefully she'll get some cool chots for me. I figure with all of us in there, if one person has a camera, that's enough and then we can just share the pictures. I always forget my camera anyway, most of the shots I upload are from my ipod which isn't very good. I also really love Judith because she is so pretty. She's the female white lion and she's just so gorgeous, if she's not covered in mud because she loves to roll around in it so much. When she grows up, she'll be so amazing.

I don't go in with the tigers too often because Amber still wasn't feeling good and even if you avoided her, Or was always so hyper and playful because she had no one her size to play with anymore that she always runs at you. They don't come at you with their claws but man when a big ass tiger made of muscle comes running at you and pounces on you, it hurts. Well it doesn't hurt it's just a lot of pressure and it shocks you a little. Or has realized though that I am bigger than her and I won't take her shit, so when she runs at me, I step towards her and although she still jumps, she backs off immediately, its kinda like once you start doing something you can't just stop. See tigers are smart. A lot of the volunteers are smaller than Or when she stands, but not me! See my size did come in handy haha.

I did get to go in with Shadow today, only for liek 5 minutes, but he's so adorable! He's very small, he's basically just the size of a large house cat (with a super long tail), but he loves legs! He wraps around them and you can drag him around, you really shouldn't because he digs his claws in, but it can be pretty funny. I thought someone was occupying him, but apparently not because he came running at me and jumped on my back and over my hair and onto the ground (I was sitting). I couldn't stay in there for too long because Melissa was trying to work with him, and there were wayy too many people that came in after me. It should really only be 1-2 people in with Melissa, but I figured since I have 2 more weeks here, I'll have time to go in with him later, so I could leave now, instead of fighting over who stayed.

Its a good thing I left when I did though because I caught Ashley getting ready to leave and he asked me if I wanted to come. It doesn't matter what he says, if he asks you if you want to go somewhere, you say yes and ask where later. This time we were going to check on the water tanks to see how much water we had left, but of course we took a few detours. First we went to go see Noam and Tom, two of the full grown male lions. He and Tamz went in there and the experienced volunteers could go in, which included me, but you aren't allowed in if you are "leaking vaginally" (Ashley's words, not mine) so unfortunately, I couldn't go. Last week, I wasn't experienced enough and now this. So lame, but like I said, I have two weeks left and I'll force Ashley to bring me to see any of the grown cats.

I've probably mentioned this before, but Ashley is so amazing with the animals, he's been working at Seaview since he was 13, which was about 20 years ago, so he's seen all of these cats grow up and have been with them from the start. He's just so good with them! People who come in to handlings are suprised at how good we are with the animals, but that's not even scratching the surface of how good he is. When he walks around, all eyes are on him, they know he's the daddy and once he goes in, they fight for his attention, they turn into big babies! You'd never believe they were lions, my gosh, they just snuggle up to him. Noam did something wrong and Ashley had to hit him and he went in the corner and pouted! It was too funny, he wouldn't look at Ashley! He knew he had done something wrong and Ashley actually had to try to coax him to turn around, it was so adorable. BIG BABY!

We took another detour to a tiger enclosure, which we had to climb through a fence to get to which was not at all fun, but it was certainly worth it! The big cats are just so gorgeous to watch, especially with Ashley! I so bad want to just pet them! But no one's allowed in with these tigers but Ashley obviously. There are two of them but only one would come out to see us.

We also went to go feed Marinka, one of the other tigers, Ashley has some volunteers go see her every so often and just talk to her because she doesn't get nearly enough attention, but man is she beautiful too! Before finally checking on the water, we also picked up a lion/tiger carrying case and put it in the truck and then squeezed in with it, it kinda sqaushed us when we went over bumps, but we survived!

Once we actually checked on the water, we discovered that there was only 500 L left for all the cabins, which means, definitely no showers, try not to flush the toilet, the more we flush now, the less we'll have for later. We also picked up a back up tank that was just chillin near the cabins and brought it back up to the restaurant. I don't know what we're going to do with it, but Ashley said it has to go on the roof, I think he's just being Ashley though.

By the time we got back to the restaurant, it was time for dinner prep, and usually you want to keep someone there who was at meat prep because they know what they are doing and who's food is who's and so on, but no one was there so when we got there is was a bunch of chaos, they didn't know why we didn't have legs, why we were missing chicken, where the extra meat was etc. Thankfully we got that all settled pretty quickly and the leg situation was quickly dissolved because when they went to fetch the cow, they also grabbed a goat. Not the prettiest sight ever, but still kinda cool. It was like inside out, Pascal was trying to make it talk, but their jaw wouldn't move. Oh well. We had to use the machette to cut it in half, half for one tiger, half for the other. The legs that were brought up were used for the lions.

Once I got there and could explain all the food, things went a little smoother and everyone eventually got fed. And then it was out turn. Nothing interesting for dinner tonight, just grilled cheese again, but I did discover that there's PB and Fluff! I'll have to have that soon 😊

Back at the cabins, I didn't do much of anything. I skyped for a little while and then we went over to the communal cabin and watched Batman and Robin, which is just an awful movie. We were all making fun of it the whole time. The acting is bad, their lines, the effects, just the whole thing. It was fun to make fun of with so many people around, but if I was by myself, I probably would have watched it. I must say though, that without Christian Bale, Batman is not my favorite superhero. Everyone in the room thought that Robin was the cuter of the two (Chris O'Donnell) I know him because of NCIS:LA and I must say, he is cuter when he was younger, not saying he looks bad now though. Anyway, I lasted through about half of the movie and then I needed to go to bed. Each day here is just so tiring, I don't know how everyone stays out so late!

****NOTE*****So the wifi here is not the best so the pictures don't upload very well, I know this stinks, but I will try to upload a few photos each time and then upload all my photos again once I arrive home, so you'll just have to stay tuned for that! Also, the captions keep getting messed up, so you can basically ignore those...

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