Working with the Animals

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I've had two full days of work so far not counting orientation day so I'll give a quick run down of some of the tasks that I help out with. We've been split into 3 groups and each group is paired up with a curator.

Wednesday: Amy and I were paired up with Francois, the animal trainer. We mainly worked with the cheetahs and the tigers. Our morning consisted of cleaning all of the cheetah's cages, draining and cleaning the tigers' pool area, and cutting up large chunks of meat for the cheetahs and the tigers later on in the day. We also cleared away a lot of brush that was intertwined in a fence right next to the lion's den. There's a male lion, named Charlie, and three females who have names but are collectively known as Charlie's Angels. It was cool working right next to them. I was literally less than a foot away from the face of one of the lionesses with nothing but a wire fence between us. And you don't really realize how big they are until you're standing face to face with them, at which point, you start wondering if the fence is actually strong enough to protect you. In the afternoon, we played some enrichment exercises with the cheetahs and tigers. Enrichment is a method of keeping animals in captivity mentally and physically active. With out stimulation, animals will get bored and resort to behaviors such as pacing back and forth. The enrichment exercise that we did was hide and seek with the big chunks of meat that we cut up in the morning. We moved the cheetahs into an adjacent holding cell while we went into the enclosure and strategically placed the meat on top of tree stumps, behind a rock, on the branch of a tree, on a log, next to the watering hole, on the ground. After we finished placing all the meat, we let the cheetahs in. I was a little afraid because I still had the smell of meat on my hands. However, I soon found out that I had nothing to be afraid of. Cheetahs have a terrible sense of sight and smell. I couldn't believe it. It took them so long to find the pieces of meat that were right in front of their faces. They rely more on fast movements to locate their prey. A lot of times, Francois had to help them out by strategically placing his hand right next to the meat. Cheetahs are naturally lazy animals. They are content eating and sleeping. The tigers on the other hand are generally very playful. We did the same type of enrichment exercises with the tigers. We hid the meat on their tire swing, high up in the tree branches, in their hollow barrel, in their wading pool, etc. The tigers also have a bad sense of sight and smell, but they were more eager than the cheetahs in locating their food.

Thursday: Today we were paired up with Luke who is in charge of all the birds and mammals. We helped Mimi out in the kitchen with food preparation. Then we made our rounds and fed the emus, the wallabies, the lemurs, the meerkats, the chickens and swans, the maribou, the otters, the hippos, and the flamingos. I have to say the highlight of my day was feeding the ring-tailed lemurs. You've definitely seen them if you've seen the movie, Madagascar. Those creatures were sooooooo adorable. We fed them little balls of monkey chow with raisins in them. We'd hold them in our hand and the lemurs would run to us on their two hind feet, hold on to us with one hand while they picked up the ball with their other hand and eat. They weren't scared of us at all. I stood up at one point and held the ball of food up high and one of the lemurs jumped up on me and hung on until he finished eating the ball of food. They were funny too, because they definitely had a sweet tooth. They would pick out the raisins and throw away the monkey chow. We fed them again later on in the day and gave them apples and banana chunks. Between those two, they preferred the banana chunks. The rest of our day consisted of doing some landscaping in the flamingo area, spending some time with the wallabies to get them used to human interaction because they'll be open to the public in the future for people to feed. I also got to see Humphrey the baby hippo get bottle fed. He got 4 full bottles of baby formula and he finished that off in no time at all.


Days have been filled with unique experiences. I haven't been disappointed.

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Comments

[James YH Chen]

Wonderful
Hi, Angela, It’s nice to look through your journal on adventurous eco-tour in South Africa. You are lucky to live near all the animals during the trip elephants, cheetahs, tigers, lions, emus, lemur, meerkats,otter, hippos, flamingos, wallabies etc. etc. Wow , I tell you Angela, to look through the journal I had to google through the dictionary for most of the name of animals. The trip is for sure a wonderful and unforgettable experience for you. Take care and enjoy the rest of trip. A-Gong with love

[Priam Pillai]

Helping me not do research as usual
Ya angela, Your blog has done what you did when you were here. Help me procastinate. What you are doing is so cool !!!!. I want to do this now. Cleaning and cooking for wild animals sounds so cool.