A Journey of Pants

Let's play a game...

What is on my pants?

This may sound like a strange thing to talk about, but animal care staff get a wide variety of things on their pants throughout the work day. It's not because we're slobs... OK, we are a little bit. From things we're stepping in, to things being tossed in our general direction, to things we wipe on them to attempt to "clean"our hands... our pants certainly have a story to tell.

Which of these things was not on my pants today?

1. Mud

2. Poop

3. Some combination of mud and poop ("pud" or "moop", depending on which team you're on)

4. Grass stains

5. Blood

6. Frosting/dressing

7. Rotten produce sludge

8. My lunch and/or coffee/tea/hot cocoa

9. Animal hair including: horse, bear, lion and cheetah

10. Paint

If you guessed Number 8: "My lunch and/or coffee/tea/hot cocoa" - You are correct! My own food and beverages are among the few items I manage to keep off my clothes. But, as you can see, there is quite a variety of fun things I come home wearing. These items, and the quantity of such help us determine if our pants are "day 1 pants" or "day 2 pants". We rarely see "day 3 pants"; they are usually too gross to last that long and be socially acceptable. Day one pants you might be able to wear out in public. Day two pants means you definitely can't use your pants as a napkin (darn). It's always good to have at least a two-pant rotation, with one spare.

Since my first post about the housing situation, many of the interns have moved out and different cubby spaces have become available. That said, I am happy to report that I no longer have to sleep on a couch! I was able to score a king sized pillow top mattress (with two twin box springs!). I think the mattress alone is bigger than my previous cubby, and I still have a foot of space at one end and 2-3 feet in another (woot!). Needless to say I have actually gotten sleep, which is excellent since cheetah/carns interns worked 5x10s this last week (whoops).

Working 5x10 hour days was rough at first. But by day 5 I hardly noticed. Despite the fact that every day seemed like a week (what did I do this morning????). The park hours changed from 10-4 to 9-5, so the carnivore and cheetah departments come in at 7am and stay till closing which usually ends up being between 6-6:30pm. The park closes at 5, but since its a drive through, that's when they let the last vehicle in, and it takes about an hour to go through the whole park (so basically we are there closer to 12 hours with an hour for lunch). Some days are better than others.

I realize that I have been posting for a few weeks, and I feel like I should introduce my department a little bit, since I will be mentioning them by name from time to time.

The Carnivore/Cheetah Department do a lot together, including cross training, so I will just lump them all together for the sake of simplicity.

Supervisor for both departments - Sarah

Carnivore Lead - An

Cheetah Lead - Arielle

Keeper staff - Jordan, Bo, Sierra, Danielle, and Melissa (she just started this week).

Carnivore Interns - Me and Suz (she lives in a trailer on site)

Cheetah Interns - Alyssa and Emily (they live at the intern house with me and 8 other interns; we usually carpool)

That said, we as interns tend to get thrown around between departments. On Tuesdays its just Alyssa and myself, so we tend to end up doing all the diets for everyone together: bears, lions, cheetahs and Saigon (the one, the only - 18 year old tiger).

Yesterday was no different. We spent three hours sorting produce for bears, and cutting meat chunks for the cats. Bears are usually easy, except when you're out of produce and the Costco haul for the day consists of 5 mangos and 2 apples (like today, there was a ton more stuff donated but nothing we could use). Our bears are picky. The girls like mangos, artichokes, berries, lettuce and celery. The boys love apples, oranges, pears, berries, and lettuce. The black kids (black bear juveniles) pretty much get whatever's left. Everybody loves grapes. OMG do they love grapes! If they could eat a diet solely comprised of grapes they would be over the moon. Of course thats..... 96 servings of grapes.... (12 servings of produce for each of our bears, currently feeding 8 bears), and we will probably increase their caloric intake soon anyway (bears can eat up to 50-75 thousand calories a day in the summer!). After produce, we had to cut meat for the bears, lions, cheetahs and Saigon. There are 22 cheetahs, 2 lions, 1 tiger, and 8 bears. Bears love the fatty meat. Lions and Saigon eat just about anything. But the cheetahs... you have to trim off all the fat because they can't digest it and have sensitive stomachs. Sometimes the donations we get are SUPER fatty and this means arduous, tedious trimming. This also feels like a lot of wasted meat. The actual trimming of the meat isn't so bad, I almost feel like I'm preparing a fine cut steak for a gourmet fancy restaurant. Except that its going to cheetahs. And they wont think twice about it before scarfing it down. The thing I hate about cutting diets is how cold my hands get. It is one of the worst feelings... makes me think my fingers are going to fall off. Or get frostbite.

I will share more excitement in my next post!

Also, if you are reading this: Welcome! I realize that I may actually have an audience now that I've had my blog advertised on Facebook (mine and my mother's). You are more than welcome to comment and/or ask questions if you want. That said, don't feel obligated to comment, if you don't want to or don't have anything to say. But either way - Welcome! And thanks for visiting!