Rainy Friday

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Friday was really rainy. It's the only day it's rained since I got to South Africa (except for the first morning) which is pretty good considering this is South Africa's rainy month. My morning was spent working with the reptiles and amphibians. Johannes is the curator for the reptiles and amphibians but we work more closely the people that work under him like Christo, Apul, and Garrett. First thing in the morning, we did some maintenance, monitoring, and interior decorating on some of the turtle tanks that are on display at the restaurant on-site which is appropriately named Turtle Restaurant. It reminded me of the days when I did the same with my pet turtles, Skye and Bailey. We had to fill up the filters, record the water temperature, and rearrange some of the plants in the tank.

After taking care of the turtles, we moved on to snakes. There, we had to take out the snakes empty out all the sawdust chips, wipe down the cages, put in fresh sawdust, and change the water. I think my favorite snake was the white and yellow corn snake. I also got to pet Joanne, one of the large albino pythons. She was huge. It takes three people to move her around. Cleaning the snake enclosures wasn't too difficult. Since it's the winter time for them, they hardly ever poop.

We helped Mimi prepare food in the kitchen for the turtles, fish emus, wallabies, lemurs and other animals. We had to cut up strips and cubes of calf heart for the Arowana fish and turtles on display at the restaurant. Garrett wanted us to feed the arowanas (which are 3 feet long and very ugly). Basically what you have to do is hold a chunk of meat at the surface of the water and they come up and take it out of your hand. We were a little afraid of getting bitten by the fish so we asked Garrett to demonstrate. He assured us that he had done it hundreds of times and he had never gotten bitten. Right as he said that, he held out the meat, and one of the arowanas jumped out and took a nice big bite of his thumb. We thanked him for that demonstration and ended up using a stick to skewer the meat to feed the fish.

The afternoon was pretty slow because it really started pouring. We had to bring all of the land tortoises inside their habitat, but after that, we just hung out in the kitchen with Mimi and helped prepare the rest of the food and finished washing the dishes.

On Friday, most of the employees head home around 4 instead of 5. It was also payday so you could see all the workers with their envelopes. Everyone was paid in cash.

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