In a world where Friday is Monday...

Welcome to Winston, Oregon.

Home of Wildlife Safari.

Population 5,905.

Or

5,925.

Depending on which direction you’re coming from.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Wildlife Safari offers a lot of animal encounters, ranging from giraffe feeds, watching an elephant lead a workout class (Tava’s Workout World), hippo encounters, tiger tours, cheetah photos and strolls, lion training sessions, and bears up close and personal. Since Wildlife Safari is a non-profit organization, these encounters really help us stay afloat. It costs close to 5 million dollars a year to run this park! Additionally, a dollar from every encounter ticket sold at Wildlife Safari goes straight into our conservation efforts. This year there are three organizations we are working with: Iranian Cheetah Society, International Elephant Foundation, and the Ruaha Carnivore project. Every little bit helps!

As interns, we do a lot of these encounters for our specific department. Carnivores have 2 primary encounters: Lion 101 and Big Bear. Lion 101 and Big Bear are basically the same type of encounter. This includes a keeper talk about the animals, and the guests get to watch a training session. We train our animals for a few reasons. Its not only stimulating for them, but it is also tremendously helpful for us, so we can routinely examine their bodies for overall health without having to put them under general anesthesia (which is stressful for everyone!). By training them (we use clickers), we can ask the animal to present their paw, so we can check the pads for cracks; ask for teeth to see general health of their mouths (this is how we found out Mak needed a root canal!); we can also ask them to stand up tall so we can look over their undersides for any abnormal swelling or lacerations, etc. It’s fun for the animals, because if they do what we ask, we click, and they get food. Not a bad gig. It’s also good for the keepers to have these interactions with the animals so that stress levels can be reduced.

Training each animal is fun and challenging. Everyone has their own personality. For instance, when training with Tsavo and Enzi (the lion boys), Tsavo is usually the first one to run up to you and start training right away. He is more social, and tends to be the more dominant of the two. He can be super stubborn during training, because sometimes he just grumbles and paws at the fence instead of doing the behavior we asked. Enzi on the other hand, is a little more shy. When we come over to train, he usually watches and stalks us from afar. Then before you realize it he’s right in your face and ready to train! He can also be stubborn – he basically refuses to sit or lay down in the mud. But he is much sweeter and gentler than his brother. We feed them meat chunks through the fence via chopstick, and Tsavo is notorious for taking the stick with the meat chunk and then breaking the stick in half and dropping it on his side of the fence. Thanks a lot, Tsavo. Enzi will sometimes take the stick, but he sticks it back through the fence so you can snatch it back. It’s really fun training with lions when it’s muddy. You ask them to stand up (on their hind legs, putting both front paws on the fence), and you get a face full of mud.

Training with the brown bear boys, there are only two behaviors we can ask for during encounters (due to the hot wire): teeth, and Big Bear! Big bear is when they stand on their back legs and hold it for a few seconds. The boys are really smart and learn from each other. Victor used to be the only one who would do this behavior every time you ask for it, but over time, Oso and Mak started joining in. Oso even adapted his to holding his paws together as if begging for food (the cuter you are the more treats??). Then Victor started getting lazy, and only coming up halfway and coming back down, so we need to be careful when we train with them so everything is consistent. They will be as lazy as possible to still get food. It’s challenging to train three animals at once!

This is me clicker training with Enzi; I am asking for his left paw.

This is what happens when you ask for UP when it's been raining....

TEEEETH!

This is the wrong way to do the BIG BEAR behavior.

That's better!

This is Alyssa, clicker training with Saigon, our one and only tiger.

It may look like Alyssa is giving Saigon a thumbs up, but she is actually asking for the SIT behavior.

Mmm, meat chunks.

Spring break sure keeps us busy!


And now I leave you with this fun photo collaboration:

This is Lindsay (Richard's baby cousin) riding Saigon into battle.

No tigers or children were harmed in the making of this picture. 

Photo credit goes to myself, Shannon (Richard's aunt), and the boys at CIO.

You're welcome.