Zoo stuff!

This was a busy week at the zoo. Busy for me, at least.

I was especially accident prone today, more so than usual, which is a dangerous level of accidenty-ness. (I'm also extremely tired, so my English is not forming sentences very well. Forgive me.) It was rainy a little this morning and I was gather bamboo for the birds when I slipped on some grass into a little pothole. I flung out my hand to help me balance, but accidentally hit a thorny blackberry branch, but only with my pinkie finger. So now I have some nice deep cuts in my finger, and I had to use tweezers to pull the thorn splinters out. It was a lovely start to my day. And later I closed a gate on the same finger. Ouch.

The highlight of my zoo week was playing with the mule deer yesterday. I wasn't really playing with them. I was mostly just walking through to get some tools, but the baby deer came to say hello to the keeper and me. They are sooo adorable and soft and I just want to cuddle them all day!

I also got to clean the wallaby habitat. It was the most fun I've ever had scooping poop. Most of the time, the animals are in a separate place when you're cleaning their habitat. But the wallabies were in there with me, watching me and making sure I didn't get too close. I get to put my bumblebee training to use though, because as soon as the wallaby starts moving, I have to freeze so I don't scare them. Which is the same thing I did when a bumblebee got out. Well, except for the time the bee went up my skirt, of course.

My favorite zoo visitor question of the week:
"Is that the mommy deer?"
No! We have a one year old deer named Leeloo that everyone thinks is the mother of the three babies. First, Leeloo is only one year old and she's not going to have three babies at once. That is very rare. Second, there would have to be a daddy deer at the zoo too. How do you think the babies just come from one deer? Oh people and their lack of common sense...

Ok. So. The deer are all supposed to be named after strong literary female characters. We have Leeloo, who is from something called The Fifth Element, i think. I'm not sure about her. And Willow from Buffy, which i also don't know about. And then we have Alice and Bella from Twilight. While I like the names fine, I just can't agree with the "strong female" part. Bella is always such a wimpy damsel in distress type until the very end of the book when she finally sucks it up. But then by the next book she's annoying again. I'm sorry. I don't like Bella much. She has less of a personality than Edward. Anyway, I found this all out yesterday and it's still bothering me. Rawr.

I'm sooo tired. And I just drank coffee. I do not approve.

Chuffing and Psych

I'm not very good at posting regularly. Oh well.

I got to play with the baby tigers on Sunday. It was five of the most exciting minutes of my life. Who else can say that they've petted a tiger? Other than all the other volunteers and people who booked encounters at the zoo.



I also got chuffed at by the baby royal white today. I was guarding the tiger perimeter (we have to keep people at least three feet away, and they need to be reminded every few minutes) and the white boy came up next to me and looked at me with his beautiful blue eyes and chuffed. Chuffing is like tiger purring. It's a friendly greeting, saying they recognize you and are happy to see you. It's a pretty amazing feeling when the tiger looks at you and does it. I'm trying to learn how to chuff back. Soon, I will be able to talk tiger!

My parents are gone on vacation this week, so I am all alone at the house. I'm a little worried, since I don't know anyone up here to call if I need help. We'll just hope that I don't need any help. Awesome. Being alone at the house also means I'm taking care of the birds. So I come home from taking care of the zoo animals to take care of our parrots. It's fine though, because I get to do more than just scrub poop and fill water dishes for my birds!

My very exciting Friday night involves sitting on my couch, wrapped in a cozy blanket and watching TV. Yeah. I'm such a party-er. The first episode of the new season of Psych is on tonight. It's pretty much the best show ever.