Q: Why am I sticky?

A: Horse blood.

(This will be explained more in the next post)

Here is a random assortment of pictures from my first week at Wildlife Safari.

Here at Wildlife Safari, we only have stick shift vehicles. Every morning, first thing the interns do is start all the trucks, and check the fluids. We leave them running to warm them up and defrost the windows. This means we have to show up 15 minutes early.

This is me driving the janky old truck. Each of our trucks has a different personality and quirk that helps you start, drive, and park them. Don't forget the e-brake! Or, the block of wood to use as an e-brake......

Bear enrichment! This is Oso.

Sam and Danielle walking McHumba. She and her brother Khayam were hand raised, and are two of the ambassador cheetahs. They are about 2 years old. Wildlife Safari offers lots of animal encounters, including but not limited to brown bear talks (Big Bear), lion talks (Lion 101), Cheetah Photo, Cheetah Strolls, tiger and cheetah feeds, giraffe feeds, etc. This is an example of a cheetah stroll. Each staff member here represents a barrier between the animal and the guest. Always have two barriers!

This is Victor during training. He is really good at this Big Bear behavior!

Showing teeth is another trained behavior, that we use so we can examine their teeth. Mak (far right) is a little goofy.

This is Enzi. He and his brother Tsavo are founder lions from Qatar (meaning, they have really rare, and really awesome genetics, so they are ideal for breeding). They are also about 2 years old. Enzi is really sweet, but also enjoys stalking....

The brown bear boys (grizzly bears) enjoying their fruitscicle. They get the coolest enrichment. The boys, Victor, Mak and Oso are not brothers, but are all about 9 years old. We also have two Alaskan Coastal brown bears, Russell and Claire, both girls, who are about 27 and 25 years old. Additionally, we have 6 black bears, but they are technically still hibernating.

This is Jack. He and Taryn are our two white rhinos. Taryn (nicknamed Terrible Taryn because she has a terrifyingly long and pointy horn). He is fond of chasing trucks, and poking his horn into chain link fences.

I finally have my first day off, and it was so nice not to have to get up at 6:30am. My two days off this week will be spent doing laundry, grocery shopping, applying for jobs/internships and trying to get that darn Obama Care. Our days off will be switching again next week for the daylight savings thing, but we (interns) might not get 4-10s, but instead stay as 5-8s. I hope they figure out what the heck they are doing with us soon, because its a little frustrating being changed so much. We still probably have to come in at the butt-crack of dawn...

Anyway, not sure what else is terribly exciting this week. But there will be more to come!

Obligatory blog post question of the day/week/month/year:

Why do tigers have whiskers?

Tune in next time to find out the answer!