see-saw for animals project

Been working this week on my intern project, which is to build some sort of enrichment toys for the zoo animals. The idea I came up with was a see-saw made of logs for the bears, porcupines and maybe foxes with holes throughout it to place treats. The idea is that the animals will have fun foraging around the holes for food treats and climb around on the see-saw, and enjoy lots of teetery-tottery hijinks and shennanigans. Last Monday we went into the woods and gathered some logs from trees that had already been cut for trail maintenance. An interesting story there, we found a few logs of various sizes, but none seemed to really be quite the right size to me, we went in with some chainsaws to cut some up and load them up on the gator and had one that was too small, and one that was too large, but didn't find much else. But while we were out a really powerful breeze blew through the forest, making lots of golden leaves tumble down from the lofty treetops, hinting of autumn's arrival. When we drove on our way back with the logs we had we found that right before the end of the trail was a tree that had literally just fallen across the trail, blocking our path, while we were in the woods for that few minutes. And it was the perfect size. We cut it up, both to pass through and to collect this log for the see-saw. And it is the one I used.

I know I'm being a bit obsessive about this, posting five freaking pictures of two logs from every angle, but hey, this is my project, it's good to get some documentation of it. How often does one get to build toys for bears? I hope this project idea can be used and implemented for bears elsewhere, but maybe I speak too soon. We havn't even let Callisto play with it yet! We'll have to wait and see in the next few days...

What I basically did was take two heavy logs, one eight feet five inches in length, one six feet, cut a "saddle" notch into the center of each one on one side, fit these two together, drilled a hole through the middle of both of them and hammered a 1" steel rod to hold the logs together. Actually this hasn't been done yet, as the logs will have to be brought into the bear's enclosure first, then they will be hammered together, otherwise we couldn't get this behemoth through the door. Holes were drilled in various places around the outsides of both logs. These are where treats go. Don't make them too deep! If you do, the animal won't be able to get them out and you probably won't either, the food will rot inside them and it will be worse than the insides of those mcdonald's playground tubes when you were a kid and some other rotten kid squirted a ketchup packet inside there and it went bad and smelled like a garbage dump dutch oven.

...I hope Callisto and the porcupines have fun with these!

I am currently in the planning stages of a project to build some enrichment toys for the zoo animals. More on this later.

Even when things are going very well, and every day is interesting and rewarding, I begin to fall into a rut of monotony, and begin to lose track of each day, even working at a zoo I begin to lose track of what i should talk or blog about... I've been here since Aug. 1, more than a month now, I've had an immense amount of experience here and learned alot about zoo maintenance. Yet I've failed to document this progress on a regular basis, so I will try to change that. I will sum up basically what each day is like for me here.

Each day I get up about ten minutes before 8:00 (when work starts) scarf down a bowl of cereal, throw my clothes on and go over to the office, where we sit and talk about work, tasks for the day, drink coffee and yes, shoot the breeze a little bit, and then get to work, usually around 9:00ish, sooner if we're low on staff and have alot to do between us, daily chores at the zoo of course include cleaning out each exhibit of excrements, leftover food, and other debris such as fur or feathers, if frequent digging takes place such as with the badgers or coyotes, we fill in the holes. Cleaning the automatic waterer or bowl is also important. Then food is given out. Grain and hay are for the horses and cows, feed for the chickens and turkeys. Gophers and mice go to the eagles, hawks and owls. Raw sections of meat, such as expired donated beef and chicken from grocery stores, or chops from roadkilled deer, which we give to the wolves, coyotes, cougar, foxes, fishers, and bobcat. The bear gets 5 gallon buckets of frozen fruit, usually a mix of apples, cantaloupes, honeydews, watermelons, mangoes, pears, along with a few vegetables here and there like squashes, lettuce and eggplants (which the bear never eats, she's a picky eater, won't eat strawberries or bananas, either) Each day I try to mix in enrichments here and there, be they a spritz of perfume or some other smell in a few spots in the exhibit, (only a small amount so it doesn't stink up the whole place and overwhelm the animals' sensitive olfactory nerves) I like to change up their toys from day to day, be it just another boomer ball or spool, (types of heavy duty toys designed specifically for zoo animals) and I try to make it more interesting, say, but rubbing a smell on it or adding food to it somewhere, making it into a sort of puzzle, like an old tank that you can put marshmallows in so the bear rolls it around to try to get them out. Each exhibit is differently treated, some you don't have to worry about, domestics are of course safe for visitors to pet and to walk around in their enclosures, we can go into the enclosures with the foxes, fishers, bobcat, otters, coyotes and birds, though some you're required to carry a shovel at all times just in case they do approach you, possibly to bite you. This is advised by the staff for the otters and coyotes. the other animals usually don't approach too close or carry much risk. The large carnivores, bear, cougar, and wolves, we of course never go into the same enclosure as the one they're in.

The same is true for bobcat, we do not go into her exhibit with her. Though only a little larger than a housecat, she is no pussy you'd want to pet. She looks innocent enough watching her in her enclosure, she even looks playful sometimes, but get too close and she can quickly turn one hundred eighty degrees. One volunteer has already had this happen just by standing too close to the bars of her off-exhibit pen. She was badly scratched with deep cuts on her legs. Since then safety acrylic has been put over that side of the pen, which is close to where the door going into her exhibit is.

Philosophy Phriday!

A time each week to sit down and drain my personal ontological hubris into the keyboard

We humans have little to go on in trying to figure out our universe, all we have is ourselves and our own minds and other humans to figure out all the vast questions our own minds ask for which the universe provides no simple, straightforward answer.
What is our place in the universe? What are other lifeforms, where do they fit in? Being alone, our grotesquely swollen craniums brim with questions, which only ring out hollow into what appears to be an empty, indifferent universe. This is because our society and state of living today has caused us to forget the great peace of mind and contentment that can be found in simple meditation in the quiescent solitude of unspoiled nature. But nonetheless, we still look for answers, and feel so uncomfortable and isolated. It is easy for us to feel alone. Unlike in many stories we ourselves have written, which only project our own ideas onto others, we cannot consult the trees, the mountains, or the animals for answers. At least not straighforward, verbal abstract answers. It is a good thing it's not that way. Can you imagine what would have happened if mountains could talk, and had just shrugged their shoulders and said "Iddl'no" or if the animals had just said "eat! sleep! run run!" Our craniums would have just buzzed away in frustration, seeking something more profound or satisfying. And what if the trees did tell us something poetic, like "to give love and take nothing but memories with you." Perhaps we would have been touched for awhile, or formed some sort of tree-based religion, but we would have inevitably launched countless wars and genocides against each other and with the trees over some trivial disagreement about what one particular tree meant and how it was meant to be practiced, as with any formalized religion and overtinterpreted dogma. A universe that doesn't act or think like we might simply want it to is the best kind. That's the universe that leaves us to search, to guess, to wonder, to dream. The one where the answers we come up with our our very own and reflect what kind of existence we are leading. We must remember that our minds are not the universe, nor do they reflect its ways. This is tao te ching first page stuff. Maybe the reductionist nihilist atheist scientism advocates are correct, and it is all just a big accident with no purpose, the bad guys win, the idealists kid themselves and we all die and rot just the same. But despite all that bleak possibility, there is still good, and it is real, and perhaps if a mind seeking satisfaction in building some comprehensible structure of abstract meaning in a non-abstract universe does not ever find comfort, then the mind can create its own good, even as frail or evolutionarily disadvantageous that may be against the greater power of selfishness and arrogance.

And no, I'm not schizophrenic, I just type garbled thoughts down really fast and don't bother to edit them. I have to vent sometimes and I'm too lazy to go back and refine it, okay?

The Zoo's wolves

I love wolves. Who doesn't, excluding Sarah Palin and the governor of Idaho? They look great on your mom's xxx large t-shirts, all over truck stop souvenirs, and of course, on Sarah Palin's wall. (bitch) These graceful, jewel-eyed, silvery charismatic megafauna are only a few alleles away from being our own cute cuddly dogs anyway. It's so easy to love them. The two wolves at oxbow are no different. How cool it is to work at a zoo with them! This morning, I got to clean out their pen, hide meat around in clever places for them to find, and give them one of their "enrichment" toys for the day. It's too bad we're not allowed to directly interact with them in any way. I don't mean to say I wish we could just roll and tumble around with them like they're golden retrievers, no, that's a good way to get some free facial reconstruction surgery, but maybe a little more interaction than just a few brief "who's a good boy! who's a good boy!" through a fence before leaving them all alone in their pen at the mercy of screaming children for the rest of the day. I'm sure there's a fine, yet reasonable line between the two. I dunno. I'm not trying to criticize the way things are done at the zoo, I'm just expressing my own wishes mostly. Maybe I do just want to be part of the pack. Can you blame me? Who wouldn't want to howl with these guys?

...So, there's two wolves, brother and sister, who both spend all their time basically running about playing and fighting, the male spends about all of his time asserting his dominance over her, growling, biting her face, standing over her, you know... just like all siblings do. I've been trying to think of names for them and have drawn a blank. I keep feeling like it should be some sort of fancy mystical native american sounding name, like Nodari and Istoka, or Quinlai and Shinoon, and other gibberish I made up off the top of my head. I'll say it means "walks like the wind" or "has low self-esteem about his tail" or something. Since none of those random words sound good enough, namely because they're just words I made up, I think I'll just name them after two characters in a book I'm reading right now, characters with names some other author pulled out of his/her ass, which just happens to be a book about a boy and a girl wolf, named Faolan and Edme. they'll have to do. I haven't managed to get very high quality individual photographs to show you which one is Shitooknook and which one's Quicokblok, so you'll just have to guess that for yourself.

You may have already caught this if you're on facebook, but if you choose not to get your soul sucked into that evil global superpower, then I don't blame you. So basically I'm going to talk about the zoo's animals and I'm going to try and find names for them all. The zoo has an official policy of not naming its animals, but that doesn't mean individuals can't personally give them names. I choose to name these animals not because I'm trying to "make them into pets" or "anthropomorphize them", I'm just doing it so I can tell them apart, and also begin to appreciate their individual characteristics and personalities. It's just not easy to do when you just call them "bear" or "the fishers", or even worse, not acknowledge that there's animals existing at all, and just refer to it as "the back wall" or "the circle" as the staff lingo goes when dealing with the daily chores of zoo maintenance.

So first off, let's just get this over with, you know what I'm doing first,

This is Callisto. It's the name I gave the oxbow zoo's bear. She looks like a Callisto to me. She's waiting for her bear chow at closing time. She's quite a character, and very smart and spunky. She loves to jump up in the air and clap her paws together to try and grab at low-hanging vines at the top of her enclosure. She also goes nuts for enrichment toys, throwing them around, somersaulting and and splashing in her pond. Can't get very good pictures of her, but they'll have to do.

This is Helena, the zoo's badger. Doesn't she look like a Helena to you? Anyway, working on coming up with names for the animals, it's a work in progress... but Helena spends most of her time sitting in a hole she's dug and hissing, snarling and bluff charging me with her needlesharp fangs and 2-inch claws when I climb into her pit to feed her and change her water.

...This is the snowy owl, Albedo. This is the look I get every time I go into his cage to throw him mice or pick up his crap. From the looks of it, he ******* hates me.

That wednesday, on the third, I am already forgetting what I did exactly. Thursday I took off, needing a break, and went with Emily to Thursdays on 2nd in Rochester, an event held every thursday where 2nd street is closed down and used for arts and crafts sellers, with live music and food. Fun event, we walked around Rochester for a few hours, I bought a book, (the Wolves of the Beyond: Watch Wolf by Katheryn Lasky) and then we went and saw The Zookeeper that evening. How appropriate it seems that while I'm starting out doing zookeeper work there's a goofy romantic comedy currently in theaters about it, just to mock me and my equally awkward social skills in relationships. Only for me, the animals don't talk and try and pull the strings to help me, out, they just hiss at me and make me clean up their poop with impunity. Oh well.

PICK UP MY POO! PICK IT UP! PICK IT AAALLL UP!



On Friday I continued to work, I can no longer remember the details of who's poop I cleaned up or why, but anyway work as usual. I think I ate with Emily at Dairy Queen that night. Then we went back to my place and watched the Mind's Eye. She was wierded out by it. Saturday, that morning at opening led a bear talk, basically went over the whole factual mantra about bears I already had used in North Carolina at my last internship, while Pat fed Callisto, putting out fruit and hiding it for her to find. For some reason some woman randomly vomited in the middle of my talk. Jeez, I didn't think I was that bad.