I’m In Love Alri-i-i-ight With My Crazy Beautiful Life.

Happy first day of work to me!!

I was nervous about it for a bit. I didn’t know what I would be expected to do. We start at 8 am and go until 430 ish. I got my lovely knakis on and my new Tassie Zoo shirt and my surprisingly comfy work/hiking boots. I’m really glad I got the boots. We do a ton of walking. Also, the khakis are really comfy. I’m mostly just really comfy. Ah except for the fact that it’s raining quite a bit, so I’m pretty soaked through. I pretty much look like a wet dog. Probably worse. Anyway, so we get into the zoo through the back, which is pretty cool and makes me feel special. Ha. So Justine and I walked up through the zoo to the front to find Rob, but he wasn’t in the gift shop area. A guy in there sent us to the staff room where they do all the food stuff and what not. So we headed over there and ran into three of the people who work at the zoo as well. Aaron boy, Aaron/Erin girl (I have no idea who to spell either of their names, and Cody (I think). They seem nice enough. I’ve spent some time with both Aarons doing some stuff around the zoo. Rob showed up like a minute later ready to work. There was a bunch of fruit and greens. I got to cut some up for the monkeys. Rob took us to each monkey cage and showed up how he feeds them and stuff. He let us into like three of the monkey cages, as well! It was so cool! I don’t really remember the order of everything, but I did heaps (they say “heaps” instead of “a lot”) of really awesome stuff.

So we did the monkey stuff. We gave a lot of the animals fresh water. Most of the birds already had fresh water, so we did the wombat, the rabbits, the sheep, the goats, the cows, the pony, the alpacas, wallabies, etc. I got to hop into a lot of the animals enclosures. Like a big bird one, and there was a cute bird named Sweet Pea that likes getting a scratch so she let me pet her. Wombats apparently really love sweet potatoes, so girl Aaron let me take one into the wombats area and feed her. She came up to me and put her big paws on my leg and let me pet her. Talk about amazing. Rob had to chop up some road kill wallabies and roos to feed the like 20 Devils they have there and the Australian Dogs, so we watched him as he put dead wallabies and roos on a stump and use a big cleaver to chop them into pieces. We took those pieces and fed them to the Devils. The ones we fed are some of the breeding ones so they aren’t on display in the actual zoo.

Side note: I really need to stop saying “cool” so much. I say it heaps. Justine just came in cause Rob stopped by to talk about some internet stuff and since I’m in my room listening to music and writing this, I didn’t know. So she was telling me what he was saying, and I kept responding with “Oh okay that’s cool” and “Cool!” and “That would be cool.” I need a new vocabulary.

Okay so yeah I fed some of the breeding Tassie Devils. It was so fun. They can smell the meat, so they come out of their little hiding places and run up to the gate and some of them try climbing up the gate or running into it because they want the meat so badly. Some of them will growl and stuff. Some are really timid, too. They wouldn’t come out of their hiding spots, so we would throw the meat really close to their little caves and they still wouldn’t come out until we left or something. Most of their enclosures have about three of them in there, so we would put multiple wallaby legs or whatever in there. It’s really funny because all three will go for the same piece of meat instead of going after all the pieces. It’s like the find it necessary to fight. Also, Tassie Devils are really freaking crazy, they eat every part of whatever wallaby part you give them. It’s a little weird to hear them crunching away on the bones like it’s candy.. I found out that their jaw strength is the second strongest of any land mammal, Hyena being first, and it’s just below the strength of a freaking croc’s jaw strength. These guys are really small, like the size of a large cat or something and they could rip your arm off. How insane is that!? It’s really sad though, they only live for about six years.. They are absolutely fascinating creatures. I love them.

So we also tagged along with girl and boy Aaron to watch them feed different stuff. Girl Aaron fed the quolls. They eat this awful mixture of food. I had to mix grated carrots, sweet potatoes, and apple (Who the heck has even grated an apple before? Well, I have now. My skills are expanding rapidly here. Apple grating, meat throwing, wombat feeding, what’s next!?) along with eggs (Not cooked eggs, mind you, just eggs. Snatched out of a carton and thrown into a bucket with the grated stuff.) and some meat and like bird seed looking stuff. How totally random is that, eh? I mixed it all up. With my hands. It was nasty. I went with girl Aaron to move some birds to different cages. We moved this pink Cockatoo named Dolly who is actually a boy Cockatoo. Ha. A ferocious little bugger took his place. He was another Cockatoo, but he’s white and he’s a meanie. He does talk though. It’s funny walking around the park and you hear all these random birds saying stuff like “Hello boy!” and “Polly want a cracker!” and “Puss puss puss.” There’s a cat that walks around the zoo, hence the puss thing, I guess. Maybe it’s just a weird freaking bird. I also got to feed a penguin! The little Fairy penguins, which they call little blue penguins now or something. Only one of them would eat from me because I’m new.. Some day they will love me and all eat from my hands! The big macaw, Marigold, doesn’t like me. I guess she doesn’t like anyone really at first. I went into her cage with her food. She can say cashew because she gets them to eat and likes them. So I went in her cage and girl Aaron told me to stick out my arm and told Marigold to hop on, but Marigold mostly want to snap at me. So I set her food down on the other side of the cage and she flew at my head. Ha. It was a bit unnerving, but she will be fine with me soon hopefully. Justine and I had to clean out the Koala’s cage. The Koala is SO BIG! Apparently his name is Hitler, but they call him Billy for obvious reasons. Man oh man that Koala poops a lot, I mean heaps. Ha. I think that’s most of the cool stuff I did for the day. It was way awesome. I can’t believe I’ve been allowed to do all of this. I never thought I would be climbing into animals enclosures at a zoo, and it would be legal. Nor did I think that I would be feeding any of them. I think it might get a bit monotonous feeding the animals every day for ten weeks, but I can’t believe the amazing experience that I’ll get from all of this!

I forgot to mention that we missed some stuff when we were exploring the zoo the other day. There is in fact a reptile house, as well as some fishes. They have a lung fish. Lung fish are weirdos. They are building this new area for their freshwater croc and gator because they are getting a saltwater croc, and they are going to put all those fish in that area as well. Anyway, they don’t have a ton of reptiles. The zoo is pretty small so that’s not surprising, in fact it’s mostly just a little wildlife park, I guess. I think it’s main point is for the Tassie Devil breeding program. So yeah. Anyway, they have a few Tiger snakes and like one other small ish snake. There are a few lizards that I believe are some sort of skinks. Now the real treat is the two massive snakes that they have. One extremely large python and a boa constrictor, which Rob took out and let me touch! I think the python was much too big and powerful for anyone to take out without seriously fearing for their lives. He had a shed skin in his cage and it was so big, I couldn’t even believe it.

I just remembered a funny story from today. So we were at the Mandrils cage, those are monkeys. Rob was talking about how if you go up to the cage, the smaller Mandril will come over and stick his belly against the fence for a scratch. So Rob went up to the fence to demonstrate. The smaller Mandril did indeed come over to the fence, but definitely did not put his belly up for a scratch. Instead he stuck his butt against the fence towards Rob. Haha. Rob stepped away and went to try again, but the Mandril did the exact same thing. The monkeys are definitely some cheeky little buggers.

Anyway, I think that’s most of the highlights from my first day working at a zoo. I’m tired from eight and a half ish hours of walking around and my feet hurt quite a bit, but it was a good day. :)

Oh one last thing I forgot about. Curse my tiny memory. The Aussies really enjoy making fun of my “American accent.” It’s really hilarious to them how I pronounce banana and emu. The proper Aussie way to say emu is like e-mew (Like the pokemon name. Like pew, but with an m.) instead of like e-moo, which I think is how most Americans pronounce it? Maybe I’m just mad. Boy Aaron very much enjoyed pronouncing banana like an American. Boy Aaron could maybe be cute if he didn’t wear girly sunglasses. He seems fun though. He said that he really likes the southern accent. I thought that was really funny because most people make fun of the southern accent and think it sounds kind of stupid. Also, girl Aaron told me that Australia was voted dumbest country, so maybe that’s why they like the “slow” sounding southern accent. Haha. I actually like a good southern accent, so I’m in no means poking fun at it. Anyway, I apparently say tomato incorrectly as well. I guess I have to start working on my Australian accent since I’ll no doubt be made fun of until I sound like one of them.