| Day 19: It’s Raining Toads |
[July 26, 2008
02:08am] |
A Sooty Tern was brought in. The people who brought it in thought that it had been shot. We looked at it, and we think that it just ran into something. It looks more like a laceration, so we may take the bird up for an x-ray tomorrow, or we may just end up releasing it after feeding it a few times and letting it rest for a while. We’re feeding it smelt smoothies and shrimp guts. Gross.
We cleaned out the flamingo pond today, washed out their feeding bowls, and gave them mud. Apparently, mud is erotic to flamingos. How weird. While we were cleaning, Ann was throwing toads around. She hit me with one. D:
We worked with Mr. Big a bit more. Today, we actually performed the penis cleaning that Ann was telling us about yesterday. It was…interesting. Then we all got to learn horseback riding again. We don’t ride with a saddle. Instead, we just use a pad. It’s really cool. Ann says that this way, you feel the horse more. So fun. I want to do it again.
I also got to disarticulate more mice today. The first time I ever did it was a disaster. The second time wasn’t much better. But I’m getting better. I’m not as fast as Ann, but at least I’m able to finally cleanly break their necks. >D
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| Day 18: How to Care For Your Horse’s Penis |
[July 25, 2008
01:20am] |
During morning feeding, we got a call about an injured seabird in a hotel lobby. We finished really fast and drove to pick the bird up. Turns out, it is a Newell’s Shearwater, an endangered bird. We took it back and examined it. It just banged it’s head, nothing serious. We let it sit for a while and then fed it fish rubbed with fish oil. The little guy had a sharp and serrated bill. Poor Ann donated quite a bit of blood to the bird while she fed it. Then tonight, we took the bird out to the shore and released it. Really cool.
We continued our wetlands clean up today. It was pretty gross. I don’t mind all the mud and grime and toads, but I really don’t like being attacked by red ants, flies, mosquitoes, and spiders. Those things just can’t leave me alone. Now we’re all so dirty. The grime just doesn’t want to come off. I still have streaks on my arms and my nails are all brownish.
I cleaned out Mr. Big’s hooves today. While I was doing that, Ann taught us about horse penis care. Apparently, it’s very important that it be cleaned often or else they develop bladder issues. Afterwards, I got to ride him! Ann taught me correct posture and steering. It was so cool. I’ve never actually ridden a horse before. It started to pour while I was riding so we had to stop. But I get to ride again tomorrow!
Tonight Ann made me kill a cockroach. That was pretty stressful. But I did it. Go me.
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| Day 17: Zebra Hunting |
[July 24, 2008
02:02am] |
Christina and I went to the humane shelter to help out. Afterwards, Ann came with Stephanie to teach us how to do behavioral assessments on dogs. When she got there, we took Ann to see a ram that someone had brought in earlier. It was not able to stand and no one really knew what was wrong with it, not even the vet working there. Ann looked at the ram, ran her hand over him for about twenty seconds, and declared that he was most probably hit by a car because his spine was wrenched. That was so amazing.
Behavioral assessment was really cool. We were basically looking too see the dog’s personality and whether or not it would be good for adoption. One of the dogs that we were asked to assess was a wolf hybrid, Blitz. This alone would make most people wary of adopting this dog. The humane society head, Lynette, was hoping that by assessing the behavior of Blitz, people might be more willing to adopt him. Blitz was perfect. No aggression whatsoever to other dogs, strangers, children, etc. However, as were assessing Blitz, Ann noticed that Blitz had arthritis in his ankles. When we told Lynette, she told us that this dog would not be able to be put up for adoption and would have to be put down because the humane society is not allowed to adopt out dogs with a long-term condition. I felt so terrible for Blitz because he was such a sweetie. He had been there for so long as was so bored that he spent his time watching water run down the drain from his kennel. I was pretty much in tears when we left the humane society. A couple of hours later, Lynette called to tell us that Blitz’s owners, who had surrendered him a few weeks earlier, had gone to take him back. I could barely believe what I was hearing.
Coming back to the ranch, we finished building the second chicken coop. Afterwards we went to go give the zebras their West Nile vaccine. I got to dart Tootsie! :D That was so cool! I got a good spot so we don’t have to worry about this zebra dying on us. However, I shot the blow dart pretty hard and so it went in pretty deep. Tootsie freaked out and apparently contracted her muscle really hard, so the dart got stuck in her flank. She just kept running around trying to shake it off, but it wouldn’t come off. I felt really terrible about that. We left her alone, hoping that she’d calm down and just pull the dart out with her mouth or scrape it off on something. We’ll know how that went by tomorrow morning.
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| Day 16: Rabbit Stew Coming Up? |
[July 23, 2008
01:14am] |
We got to see a rat neuter and a rabbit spay today. Rat neuters are more complicated than I had expected. You actually have to tie things off. Rabbit spays are rarely done because the rabbits usually die from being spayed. We’ll have to watch this one and see how she does. It was kind of funny watching the spay. Dr. Annette Timmel and Dr. Christine basically figured out how to do the spay by reading about the rabbit anatomy in a book during the surgery and winging it.
The rabbit stopped breathing partway through the procedure and I got to see bunny mouth-to-mouth. We got it breathing again after a while. It’s now in the treatment room. We finally managed to get it to eat something tonight, which is very good. Now all we have to do is hope that it poops tomorrow. If her bowel seems to work fine, then she should survive.
We started to put the Nene skeleton together today. It’s crazy. There’s no cartilage, so sometimes the right bones don’t seem to fit correctly. The fact that we’re looking at diagrams of a parrot skeleton instead of a goose skeleton also makes things difficult. Some of the bones are fused differently or shaped differently. Unfortunately, it also seems that we’re missing some pieces. I guess we didn’t go through the dirt carefully enough yesterday. However, I DID manage to put the wings together even though we’re missing the wrist bones. :D
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| Day 15: Exhuming a Body is Harder than it Sounds |
[July 22, 2008
02:09am] |
We dug up a Nene skeleton today. The Nene is Hawaii's state bird. It's also really endangered and so this was a rare opportunity.
It was a lot messier than I had expected. You get all that gross stuff that corresponds with decaying flesh. The fungi, the worms, and the wax. The wax is pretty much decaying fat. Gross. We dug up the skeleton and then had to sift through the dirt for loose pieces of bone. We then cleaned all the bones. I guess we’ll start putting it together tomorrow. But it’s hard. We have pictures of bird skeletons, but not one of a Nene skeleton. Hopefully we’ll be able to put all the pieces together properly.
Nothing much went on today otherwise. Norm fell off a ladder, landed on the aviary, and then rolled off and fell. Now he’s really sore and I think has a sprained back. We fixed the fence in horse corral. And I got bit by Tia today. Now I just need Kalani to come at me.
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