San Diego Zoo Bornean orangutan Janey is an artist extraordinaire. She loves to paint and she has created several one-of-a-kind masterpieces which Zoo guests and visitors to the Zoo's Web site may have a chance to own by placing a bid in a silent auction for conservation.
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Starting November 1, the Petting Paddock in the Children's Zoo at the San Diego Zoo is going to be closed for a few weeks for a much needed face lift. The new digs will include a stainless steel perimeter fence that will be expanding the area by about 200 square feet (19 square meters). A new concrete pad and drainage system will be put in to allow for easier cleaning and drainage during the rainy days. There will be an area for the pot-bellied pigs and rabbits to be pet through a child-friendly barrier. The miniature horses will be getting a new roof and new wire framework. (Read about the mini horses in the blog, Katie the Mini Horse.)
As I carry out my daily routines as a visitor assistance office throughout the San Diego Zoo, some curious and wonderful moments often occur. We often call them Kodak® moments.
Recent Kodak moments follow:
So what is a typical day as a Zoo hospital keeper really like? Well, for one thing, there are no typical days. There are things we have to do daily, but how they are done tends to vary. Here's how the Zoo's hospital keepers spend a typical day:
We start at 6:30 a.m. every day. The first thing we do is check each of the animals that are at the hospital. We discuss how they are doing, what happened to them the day before, and check how they ate overnight. Once all the animals have been checked, we read the list of cases that are scheduled for the day and prepare for them as needed. After this is done, the hospital animals are divided among the hospital keepers and we begin our cleaning and feeding duties.
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I have been pretty lucky throughout my years working at the San Diego Zoo. For over 10 years, I have been able to work with a variety of animals, such as hippos, meerkats, antelope, and great apes. When a position for a hospital keeper opened, I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn about more of the animals in the Zoo's collection. Boy, was I right! For the last three months I have been learning all kinds of things about the many mammals, birds, and reptiles we have.
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South Africa! Mozambique! Open air markets full of color, excitement, and beautiful pieces of art I just had to buy! This is a most pleasant side to being the director of merchandising for the Zoological Society of San Diego (ZSSD): bringing the unique and often one-of-a-kind World Market goods to our stores at the San Diego Zoo, Wild Animal Park, and online at Shopzoo.com.
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As a San Diego Zoo bus tour driver/guide, my busiest time of the year is summer. About 40 percent of the guests who visit each day take the guided tour, and on a Saturday or Sunday in summer, that works out to around 70 tours a day! Thankfully, we have an excellent group of dedicated driver/guides to share the work. Our staff this summer includes a number of teachers, university students, year-round employees, and some folks who just thought it would be fun to work at the Zoo. We look for employees who are friendly and outgoing and have experience driving safely.
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Only once have I been able to observe one of our western lowland gorillas during a procedure here at the Harter Veterinary Medical Center (HVMC). On that first occasion it was 34-year old Winston, a nearly 600-pound (270-kilogram) male who lives at the Wild Animal Park. When I walked through the doors to the hospital, there was a very strange, pungent odor I had never experienced before. As ever, my curiosity got the best of me, so I followed the smelly trail to the large animal treatment room and was surprised to be staring at a very large, very imposing - and very anesthetized, I was happy to discover - gorilla. It was a humbling experience.
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Since starting the Girls In Science blogs, I have received several requests for more information about the program, along with expressions of disappointment when I had to explain that the program is only offered to Roosevelt Middle School students and program alums at this point in time.
I have some good news for you, though! There are two programs I know of that offer similar experiences and are open to students throughout San Diego County.
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Girls In Science made a visit to the Panda Team earlier this semester to observe and learn about panda behavior (see Cindy's blog, Of Pandas and Polars). In a special follow-up visit, we were lucky to meet with two special women"”Staci Wong and Pamela Crowe"”who introduced us to the finer points of data collection and panda research!
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