Day 4.
Woke up early to arrive at 7:30. Went with Cailyn (girl I closed with yesterday, and who I trained with all day- but it was her last day today!) to open the brown bear areas. We open their side of the hut and they come out on the outer ring and are supposed to go through a tunnel to get to their inner area. They took almost an hour to decide to go over! In the meantime we threw out their breakfast of bread, donuts, fruits, and nuts over the fence into their area. We also cleaned their hut rooms (we had closed the door already so they couldn't come back in). I had to scoop the poo and then scrub disinfectant everywhere while Cailyn sprayed down everything. Once we did that the boys finally decided to go over to their area and eat their breakfasts. :) Then we shut the tunnel, then threw the girls' breakfast into their area, then finally let them out (they were very antsy having to wait on the boys!) Then we cleaned the girls' area and then deep cleaned the whole hut- grabbing cobwebs and spraying everything, including the ceiling. It looked very nice when we finally finished.
After that we went to "QB" where the food is all prepared. We prepared all the bear meals in buckets- brown bears' dinners and black bear meals. That took a while- I had to pit a ton of peaches and Cailyn had me doing it with my bare hands at first! But another girl came by to help and told me to use a knife! I was so thankful! My hands were pretty freezing after that, even with the use of a knife to open the peaches! We gave the bears dog food, nuts, fruit, meat. Counted out everything exactly.
Then we had our lunch break. Since it was Cailyn's last day we all ate together in a private room at the cafe. I brought my carrot, kale, cheese, and bread lunch, then also bought a chicken skewer. It was pretty fulfilling. :)
I had a little time after the meal to watch a cheetah encounter, and then Cailyn and another girl who just got hired from internship, Angela, and I all took the truck again to pick up a girl from a different department and take her to QB to get food for her animals (not sure what those are!), then drove to the elephant area to give them some food goodies that were donated (bread, veggies), then took her back to her department.
The 3 of us went back to QB to pick up the meals we had prepared earlier in the day and went to the black bear exhibit to throw the food over the fence for them. We toss all the fruit over, then swing the bucket to throw the dog food and nuts over.. but I messed up and it all fell short of the fence! Angela said that was okay- she still can't do it all the time. :) The black bears are very cute and small. We don't do much with them. Sometimes they are moved into different areas to be with different buddies. (A guillotined door is pulled up and the bear is called through)
After that we went back to brown bear exhibit to put their meals into their rooms- I got to choose 4 "enrichment" items to put in the girls' rooms. We then toss the food all over their rooms and also spread a bit of jelly for enrichment too (different enrichment is chosen daily- I chose the jelly!) Once all the brown bear food was placed, we went to the lion exhibit. It was pretty cool in there. The older male lion, Keeno, was called into his room. Angela and I prepared each of their cuts of meat with some vitamin powder for their joints, and Keeno gets fish oil. Angela had me push each specific cut (certain # of lbs for each lion) into their own rooms through a chute (like an old-school door mail slot), then the other lions were brought in one at a time to their own rooms and started chowing down. We stood their for a while watching them- Cailyn was milking all the time she could to say goodbye to them- and then Keeno started making some noise and the humans I was with made noise to egg him on, so then he started roaring a little and the young lion couple (Tau & Sarabi- 2.5 years old) started up too and it sounded so cool! Keeno's mate (Natasha) was too busy to join in tho. :)
We drove back to the brown bears to close up since it was after park closing. I went into the hut with Cailyn while 2 other girls went into the habitat to do the fencing to make the area smaller so we could call them in easier. We called the girl bears in and shut them in their rooms, while the other girls closed off the pen and let the boys over to that outer area near the hut and we called them into their rooms. They all went pretty quickly since it was dinner time. :) We went downstairs to watch them eat for a while and take pics.
After that it was time to drive through the park and shut all the gates. (also make sure no stragglers were left!) This was fun cuz we rode in the back of the truck and stood in the areas that the animals do! I got to jump out at each gate and help Cailyn close them all. One of the gates is by the ostrich's favorite area to hang out at (the entrance to the drive thru.) The male was hanging out there, so we had to be very careful closing the gate. Once we finally got him to move away from us, we closed the gate, jumped in the truck, and drove off. AND HE RAN ALONGSIDE US!! I took a video of this- it was so cool! He was pretty much running right next to Cailyn tho and she was nervous, telling the driver to speed up! lol!
And that was it! ^_^
bye for now...
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