34 days! Working with Claire.

Day 34.

Today was just to be Valerie & I, but Benji the vet is on vacation, so his intern Claire came to help us! She's helped a bit before, but not for a whole days work! :)

The Lion yard lawns were being mowed, so we had to leave them in their hut and start with the Brown Bears this morning. The bears were extra sleepy since we were waking them up about an hour early! Sometimes we find them still spooning and being sleepyheads, but this morning was just too cute! They were all still yawning and laying there with feet in the air, not wanting to get up yet. When I opened the door for the boys they took a little bit to want to go out. So lazy, like highschool kids. :) When they and the girls were finally out, Claire & I started cleaning the hut. She had a project she was working on with the Elephant department, so she had to be taken over there all of a sudden. We left the hut unfinished and while she was busy with elephants, I helped Valerie clean stuff at the Black Bear exhibit. We cleaned off all their toys, a big pool, and a little tub that goes in the hut. Once we scrubbed everything and refilled the pools, we let the Bears have full access again and Donna jumped right into the tub! It was so cute- "fat girl in a little tub"! She's not fat, but she's pretty big for that tub!

Claire was ready to be picked up then, so I drove to get her on my way to Lion hut. Valerie & I quickly checked the fencelines while Claire sprayed perfume around for enrichment. The Lions were pretty anxious to go out by then! They all went out quickly, but Tau rubbed himself on the wall for a minute until Sarabi bossily peeked in the door to see what was taking him so long! He looked nervously at her, then rubbed once more and went out. Claire & I cleaned their hut together (Claire was very good and we finished quite fast!), then picked up Black Bear midday enrichment (horse legs) and went to go throw those to them. I let Claire do the throwing cuz her first attempt was so perfect! The younger 3 (Donna, Takoda, Mo) didn't seem very interested in the legs. With the older 3 (Ricky, Little Boy, Little Girl) we were trying to get them all into one side yard so that we could pick up the other side, so we threw all the legs over on the left, but Ricky just came to sniff and scratch each leg as we threw it, and Little Girl & Little Boy weren't interested enough to cross through the guillotine door to the other yard. Little Boy came through at one point, but Little Girl was busy jumping in the pool and getting Little Boy to chase her. Oh well! We had put in a good attempt, but it was lunchtime, so we left them with full access to both yards.

When we'd gotten a nice lunch break, we drove back out to Brown Bears to finish cleaning their hut. It didn't take long again (Claire is an excellent teammate!), and Valerie had us meet her at QB to help prepare meals. Our job was to cut meat hunks to proper proportions for each Bear. I'm getting better at this, so it didn't take me so long, and I'm also able to tell more how much a meat hunk weighs, so soon I won't need the scale (we don't have to be exact). For now though, I want to double check myself. :)


There was a Big Bear encounter coming up, so Valerie sent me to do it on my own with Claire to watch. I think I did very well! This group had 12 people, half of which were little kids under 5! :) I started by introducing Claire & I, then all of the Bears- saying what kind they were and how old, and that Brown Bears have the hump on their back that's digging muscle, and stuff like that. Then I got my clicker and donuts ready, but no Grizzlies nearby to do the "Big Bear"! I guess it was getting too hot to care for donuts! I finally got one to come over and do it. Then another came cuz he saw the donuts I was throwing. Oso only came at the very end and got a few crumbs thrown to him (all I had left!) Then the people got to throw apple slices out to all the Bears. The parents held their little kids up to throw and they all made it over the fences! Actually one little girl (about 2) got it ON the fence, so I handed it back to her for another try and that time a Bear got it. :) Some of the people also noticed the Girls (Claire & Russell) coming over, so they held onto some slices to throw to them. How nice! I bid them farewell, then Claire (the person) went with me to wash dishes with Valerie! Woohoo! Right after that was another encounter to do- Lion 101. Valerie went with us this time, I drove the people out, and Valerie did all of the training and talking. I got to distract the other Lion with meat chunks, which is always fun. ^_^ It is a fast night for the Lions, so we made sure to give them every chunk we had so they'd get a nice snack.

From this point on we all three rode together. The end of the day was upon us, so we quickly put the Brown Bear food in boxes and set those up in their rooms, then threw all the Black Bear dinners out to them. After that we had many many dishes, so we washed those before heading to Lions to put them to bed. On the way there, the free roaming animals were all finding nice places to lay and relax- we saw a weird group who found a tree-shadey spot to lay in together: a Camel, an Emu, and a Guanaco! haha. The other Camel was laying in the midst of the herd of Sika Deer.

So since it was a fast night for the Lions and they usually go in slowly since they've figured out what night this is, we tried to act like the container with their snack was heavy with food! They all came in pretty quickly, and once Tau was in his room and noticed his measly meat chunks he roared with indignation! Every time we walked passed his room he jumped up and roared at us! He was angry that we'd tricked him! Poor Tau... and his toy was the metal keg which he batted around a lot- not sure if this was out of anger/boredom or just cuz he wanted to play. hehe. Sorry Tau and other Lions...

Since we were sharing a car we all went to lock gates together and let the Brown Bears in, who did nothing notable in coming in for dinner and bedtime. :) Very good bears. And that was it!

Bye for now...