Volunteer Keeper Week 23

Here is Bandit, the Ringtail (cat) who lives all by his lonesome in the Hamadryas night house. They are actually nocturnal, solitary animals in the wild so Bandit is quite content with his situation.


Catta -- so pretty up in the tree.

Below is Pia, you can really see her identifying pink ear tag here, as well as one of her grooming teeth. She's licking bannana off her hands --- aaw.

AAZK

Last weekend I was at the zoo, but we had the American Zookeeper Association fund raiser so I helped out with that. Silent auction, live auction, raffle, you know all that stuff. It was really fun being a part of AAZK though and we earned almost $13,000!!

Volunteer Keeeper Week 21 & 22

Week 22 - worked with Denise on Orangutan string. Snuck away for a moment and one of the elephant keepers invited me to feed Reba some peanuts. That was really cool.

Reba
Photo courtesy Phx Zoo

Week 21

Sad day. Found out Gladys, one of the Hamadryas girls, has an in-operable form of throat cancer. She'll be put down tomorrow, just a couple of weeks before her 30th birthday. :-( We put extra Behavioral Enrichment in their night house just for her, since it will be her last night there. *so sad right now* I'm in total agreement with Denise when she says, "I'm tired of watching animals die". It is an extremely depressing part of this job.

Didn't get to see my RedRuffs today, but did spend a little time at Stingray after all the work was done. Met up with Mike there, hung out for a bit, then had a really nice dinner at Philly's. Even when everything else in my life seems hopeless, I can always rely on Zoo Sundays to remind me of what it's really all about - and that it's really not all that bad.

Stingray Bay