So yeah, day six of working at a zoo in Tassie, I believe.
Adam and Rob are the “head honcho” kind of guys. They know what all needs to be done around the zoo, so they are the ones who tell us what we should be doing or who to go with, etc. So whenever they tell us to do something, it will be something like, “Okayy I need one of you to do this job and the other can do this job.” They only sometimes specifically say, “Caitlin do this. Justine do this.” It’s always the first to say which they wanna do, gets to do that. Also, the jobs they offer are pretty always a good/bad combo. For example, today it was, “Okay girls, I need one of you to go feed the wombat and roos and emus, etc. The other can chop up corn for the swifties and possum.” Obviously the going off and feeding the cute animals was the better one. Justine said, “I’ll feed the animals!” like a millisecond faster than me! I was so sad. I wanted to hang out with Bumpy. That’s the wombat. Her name is Bumpy. I asked Adam why that’s her name and he was like, “Well she bumps into stuff.” Haha. Cleverrrr. I wanted to get a good picture of her because Robbo said we could bring our cameras to work! As long as we got our work done.. Which meant that I didn’t have time to take many pictures today, even though I spent a lot of today following Adam around. I got a few pictures. Specifically THESE PICTURES...
Eeeekkkk!! How coooool!! I guess the Tassie Devils don’t always like girls. Erin can’t do the Devil feeds because she’s a girl. I just found that out today. I’ve got some little scratches on my arm from this girl cause she doesn’t know me. Look how cute she is though! Nine and a half month old baby Tassie Devil. Awww. I’m going to be furious if they go extinct. The zoo I’m at has the largest privately owned Tassie Devil breeding program apparently. I would love to see them make a comeback. The devils at the zoo are totally devil facial tumor disease freeeeee. It’s a wild disease I guess, so they can only get it from another devil that has it through biting around the face. It attacks nerve cells around the face. Poor devils. So yeah. I got to hold this baby girl. She’s precious. I love her. She has lots of whiskers.
I also got some pictures of the snake, who’s name I have a really hard time remembering. I think it’s Boris. I keep wanting to say it’s Brutis because I think subconsciously I would love to have a HUGE Scrub Python named Brutis. This guy is for reals large. He’s also a bit scary. He sometimes gets really close to the glass and strikes at it, like he wants to eat all the silly humans looking in at him. Crazy snake. Speaking of snakes, I got to watch Adam feed the snakes today. It’s pretty insane watching a snake just swallow a big rat whole. Here’s a nice picture of Boris swallowing a rat.
I helped Adam prep a bunch of dead mice for the next few weeks of feedings. We took groups of five little dead mice and wrapped them in cling wrap and stuck them in the freezer. There was like twenty little cling wrapped packages of frozen goodies for the snakes in there. So we do all these gross things here at the zoo, touching dead mice and chicks and chopping up wallabies and roos and picking up poo, etc. Neither Justine or I have had any issues with any of the gross stuff really. So today we were chopping up pumpkin and onions and potatoes and carrots to cook for the monkeys, once they were cooked we were putting them in bowls for the monkeys and Justine goes, “Oh my gosh this smell is disgusting. I’m seriously going to throw up.. I hate vegetables. This is so nasty.. etc.” HAHA. She can handle blood and guts and touching dead fish for the penguins and all this gross stuff, but she smells some cooked pumpkin, and she’s about to hurl?? So funny. When we were in Cairns and we went to an Indian restaurant, she was like, “Yeah I’ve never had Indian food before.” Someone asked her, “Well what do you like to eat?” She responded with, “Meat and potatoes.” “That’s it..??” “Yes. That’s it. Meat and potatoes.” Hahah. I mean I love my meat and potatoes, but I like some veggies and fruit and stuff. When we get fruit and stuff for the animals, we are allowed to take some of the food because it’s all this stuff that gets donated from the local grocery store, so there is heaps of stuff that we don’t use. She’s been eating some of the fruit with her lunch and she was like, “Yeah I’ve been eating fruit with my lunch and I don’t totally hate it! It’s so weird.” It’s like she’s never eaten anything, but meat and potatoes. Mm this reminds me of another annoying trait of hers. Whenever she says something and I say, “Oh really?” Like, “Oh that’s interesting.” You know? She responds really negatively and meanly. For example, today she was chopping onions and Erin, her, and I were talking about how onions make people cry. Erin was saying, “My mom would be chopping onions in the kitchen while I’m watching a movie, and I’ll start crying.” Justine was just like, “Well I’ve never cut an onion so I’ve never cried cutting one.” I was like, “Oh really? You haven’t?” Just cause that’s kind of strange, I thought so anyway. She was like, “Uh well I don’t eat them so why would I be cutting them. Duh.” Imagine a really snotty attitude filled Wisconsiny voice saying it. It sounds ruder. Hah. I don’t eat onions either, I’ve cut up onions before. Was it a bad to think that someone never having cut up an onion in their life is a little weird? She’s twenty three. I’m sure the opportunity has presented itself. Anyway, the food didn’t even smell bad. It actually smelled pretty tasty. Haha. I couldn’t believe that after all the stuff we’ve seen and touched at the zoo, she had serious issues with the cooked veggies. Speaking of potatoes, which I guess was many sentences ago.. whatever, I got a free bag of potatoes today! As well as a free loaf of bread! And free muffin things! Huzzah! Food is expensive out here.. I thought all the stuff I got would last me longer than it apparently is. I got stuff for sandwiches so that I could make sandwiches and bring them to work with me. The lunch meat they sell here comes with enough lunch meat in them to make like two sandwiches, if you’re lucky and don’t like a lot of meat on your sandwiches. Stupid.
Anyway, I also got some pictures of the alpacas, cows, pony, and goats. Haha. I know everyone has probably seen them, but they are so cute. They thought I was bringing them food because it was their feeding time. So they came up to the fence to investigate, and let me pet them and stuff. The goats are really silly. They are always up at the fence wanting attention.
A quoll escaped!! It was a special breeding quoll, too. Eek! I guess some girl volunteers at the zoo on Saturdays and accidentally let a quoll out when she was feeding them, but didn’t tell anyone. Justine said that her and Rob had to chase the quoll around with a net trying to snag it on Sunday, but they never got it. They set up traps for it around the zoo. So far, no luck.
I pet the koala today. Hitler. He’s so soft and big and snuggly looking. We were changing his food, and Adam walks up to him and was giving him a scratch and he came out and was like, “He smells delightful. Go smell him.” So I did, even though I was pretty sure that he was just trying to get me to go smell the koala so that he could be like, “Oh man! You’re such a loser! You just smelt a koala! Haaaaa.” But seriously, he just smelled like eucalyptus and it was, in fact, delightful. I bet having a koala as a pet would be awesome! He would never smell! Best pet ever! Funny story, only sort of related to Hitler the koala. Rob got this insect zapper that is in the staff area because there are lots of flies in there because of the large amounts of food that are kept in there. It’s really funny, you’ll be in there sweeping or cutting up food and you hear this little zap noise. It’s the sound of a fly dying. Good riddance. Anyway, so today Adam was like, “Man I’m going to clean out the little bug zapper.” So he takes it down and there were SO many dead flies in there! He goes, “It’s like a concentration camp for flies. Hey Rob, that makes you Hitler!” Bahah. Adam is really funny/strange. He definitely fun to work with. He has this ongoing thing where I’m pretty sure he is just trying to make Aaron uncomfortable, but he talks about how in love he is with Aaron and says things to Aaron like, “There’s a storm cloud above my soul whenever I’m not around you Aaron.” It’s rather hilarious. Today he was talking about marriage, and he was like, “Well I know when I’m going to get married. I’ve got it all planned out. Aaron doesn’t know yet of course. I’m going to kidnap him the night of. It’s going to be real exciting. Kidnapping is illegal, but it’s more like stealing his heart for myself.” Hahah. Adam is already married and has seven month old twins. So it’s not weird when he says stuff like this. It’s mostly just hilarious. Speaking of boys liking boys, whenever Aaron tries to say stuff in an American accent, he just sounds suuuuper gay. I told him that. He didn’t think it was very nice of me. Hahah. He’s fun to work with too, sometimes. Today we were raking the roo paddy and he asked me if I liked 30 seconds to mars, when I said yes, he took out his phone and turned on a 30 seconds to mars song. It kept repeating. We ended up listening to it like four times. Haha. It was actually pretty fun. It made raking less boring.
The Gang Gang Cockatoos had babies a while ago! The little babies don’t get along though. So they had the little boy in a cage in the staff room. He is SO cute. I was going to take a picture of him. He’s red and yellow and gray and black. So adorable. Also, he’s called a Gang Gang Cockatoo. That’s kind of cool.
Uhmmm. What else did I do todayyyy.. Well Justine got stuck mulching all the gardeny type areas. Sucka. I was doing stuff with Adam all day, and then raking with Aaron a bit. I fed the De Brazzas. These monkeys are so funny. I’ll take a picture some day. I rode around in the back of the zute. So zute is short of zoo ute. Ute is apparently what they call trucks. As in utility vehicle. Ha. So the zute is this little tiny truck. Like really tiny. It’s also zebra patterned, which by the way the say zebra like you would say the name Debra, but with a z. It sounds funny. Anyway, so I opted to sit in the back of the zute while Justine and Adam rode inside. We drove over a bump and I got some air. It kind of shocked me, but it was so fun! Haha. Adam stopped the car because he was worried that I was going to fly out of the zute. It was awesome.
Yesterday, I had to shovel mulch for some of the gardeny areas and I got a splinter. It sucks. Also, cutting corn is a lot harder than you think. My splinter hand had a zillion red lines from pushing so hard on a knife today when I was cutting up corn for the swifties and possum and stuff. Their possums are a lot cuter than our possums. The one at the zoo is all white and fluffy and adorable. Our possums are all ugly and road kill. We were talking about this and Adam goes, “But your possums play dead! Ours just bite you..”
That’s about all that went down at work today. It was a good day. I held a baby devil. My life is pretty much full.
Also, Adam has a mormon friend. His name is Chad. Adam said that he would ask him about catching a ride to church. Hurray! I dunno if he will remember though.. Anyway, so Adam asks me questions about mormonism sometimes. He asked what the six levels of purgatory were. Hahaha. It was so funny.
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