Seven Days A Week.

That is a song by The Sounds. I love The Sounds. Anyway, this blog is for a whole week because that’s how much my internet sucks.

Seriously, I keep putting off typing my blog stuff up so I end up with heaps of things to type. It makes me want to type things way less. Sighh. On a happier note, I just ate the most delicious apple that I have ever eaten. The grocery store said they were the first apples of the season! Mmmm.

Monday Monday Monday. Just another manic Mondayyyyy whoooaaaa wish it was Sundayyyyy cause that’s my fun daaaayyyy my I don’t have to run dayyyyyy just another manic Mondayyyyyyy.... Yeaaaaah. I am bored.

So yeah Monday, nothing too eventful. It’s hard to write new things when I do the same things pretty much every day. We do animal feedings in the morning, animal feedings in the afternoon, and between and after those we do random things through out the park which repeat each week, like branches, waters, raking, etc. This week one of those random things was mulching. Sigh. Mulching. Erin and I had to clear our and mulch the pheasant and curlew enclosures. The curlews are currently in the round house because a while ago that quoll escaped and killed the pheasants, so they feared for the curlews and moved them. The quoll was captured though, so now they are going to put the curlews back probably. So Erin and I had to make it nice for the curlews to come back to. The cages are really short so I couldn’t stand up all the way. I was hunched over for like an hour and a half. Real comfy. Oh, speaking of quolls, another one died. We put this little girl spotted tail quoll in with this huge boy one because it’s quall breeding time. Adam and pretty much everyone else had told Rob and Dick that it was a bad idea and that the girl was too young and too little and the boy would just kill her. That’s exactly what happened. So sad.

I did some feeding by myself! We’ve been allowed to do the grain animals, like the roos, wallabies, emus, wombat, rabbits, etc., by ourselves for a while, but I went and fed the kookaburras, curlews, swifties, possums, and blue tongues by myself!

The greatest thing happened on Monday. I was walking towards the devil pens to meet Adam there at the devil feed, when someone said my name that didn’t sound like anyone I work with. In my head I was like, “...I don’t know people in Tassie... Who the heck is calling my name?” I turned around and it was this little old lady from church! Haha. This is a really great thing because it means that I know people in Australia. I was really proud that I ran into someone I know. She brought the missionaries to the zoo on their p day. There were two girl missionaries and two guy missionaries. The girls didn’t even say anything to me and looked like they could care less about me. One of the guys was off looking at stuff and looked really excited to be at the zoo, so I don’t think he even saw me. The other guy was all happy and shook my hand and introduced himself and was like, “Yeah I think I’m in your ward! Cool! How are you? Etc.” Haha. Anyway, I enjoyed it.

I was driving with Aaron. I don’t remember what we were doing, but we were in the zute. There was a fly in zute and Aaron stopped paying attention to the road because he was trying to get the fly out.. Sooo we started drifting and finally I was like, “Uhm. Aaron. Tree.” He freaked and turned the wheel. It was pretty funny. It’s not like we were going fast, but I wasn’t even scared anyway. It’s like I didn’t believe that we would actually hit the tree because that would be absolutely ridiculous. The next thing I thought was, “Wow. That’s exactly how I felt right before my accident in high school when I got rear ended.” Hah. I didn’t think the car was actually going to hit me, even though when I was looking in my rearview mirror and saw that they were obviously coming to fast to stop before hitting me, I was super calm because things like that don’t happen to me. Ha. Maybe that’s a bad way to think about stuff like that. Oh wells.
So when we do the groceries, we go through all these bins that we get from the grocery store with things that are still perfectly good, but they are just about to expire or stuff like that. So we get heaps of really tasty things. It’s lots of fruit and veggies and bread, but also things like muffins and cookies and donuts and other weird things that they have here, like lamingtons, which I tried the other day and they are like sponge cake with chocolate and coconut on the outside, super yummy, or these things that look like hot dog buns with cream and jam inside them instead of a hot dog. Haha. So while we are doing the groceries we all sit there and eat the tasty things. Needless to say, I have not been eating very well.. Haha.

Since I started Monday with a song, I started thinking about whether or not I know any songs with Tuesday in it. All I came up with I’ll C U Next Tuesday by Ke$ha.. Hahah.

Tuesday was really windy and cold. In fact, I haven’t really had much of a summer here. Haha. Tassie is notoriously colder than most of Australia. Should have figured that out before I came here, but I do love Tassie despite it’s chill. Before it got windy, Adam put a list of things on the board that HAD to happen that day, it included raking and more raking and some more raking. When it got windy, he erased it from the board because it was too windy to rake. Thank you wind! The paths are really annoying to rake because they are dirt paths, but have heaps of rocks on the too.. So when you are trying to rake up the leaves, you mostly just rake up this pile of some leaves and tons of rocks, then you have to kind of pick out the leaves from the rocks. It’s pretty awful. Raking the roo paddy isn’t too awful though, it’s just freaking big. The wind caused another problem. We have a little aviary outside the staff room for a little baby gang gan cockatoo and a baby green rosella. unfortunately, the aviary isn’t really stable and there isn’t a floor.. so when the wind knocked it over, the rosella got out. The gang gang was still just hanging out in there, so we snatched him and put him in a cage inside the staff room. The rosella can’t really fly yet, just sort of pretend to fly, so he couldn’t have gotten very far. We walked around in the bush for like ten minutes trying to find him. No luck though.

The ‘Animals that Caitlin is allowed to feed by herself’ list has increased again! Huzzah! Adam lets me feed the capuchins and debrazzas by myself now. Sweet as. Speaking of monkeys, Erin and Justine got trapped in this little shed above the Mandrill enclosure for two hours. Haha. There’s a bit of a story to lead up to that. So they usually send one of us interns to go with one of the keepers and the other with another keeper to do different jobs. Erin was doing some branches or something and Adam was going to see what Rob needed and then going to pick up poo, so I piped up first and said I would go with Erin. Like ten minutes later, Adam and Justine come back and Adam is like, “So Rob and I have to leave to go catch a possum that some farmer found on his property.. Also, he wanted to swap the girls and bring Caitlin with us..” It was the first time Justine had heard that and she got a bit upset.. Haha. I have no idea why Rob wanted me to come instead of Justine, but she was like, “Why do we have to switch?! Do you guys just never want me to do any of the cool stuff!?!! This sucks! Rawr rawr rawrrrr I’m an angry person and even though I do tons of cool stuff when I work on Sundays as the only other person working besides Rob I’m going to complain because Caitlin gets to do this ONE thing over me. Raaawwwrrrrrrr.” She only actually said the stuff up to the situation sucking for her, which it did. I was worried that she would be really angry with me, even though I did NOTHING and had chosen to go work with Erin. Oh and Erin had also said, “Maybe Rob just has a crush on you Justine, so he couldn’t possibly have you around.” She was joking, and Justine’s response was, “Maybe I should try be less pretty then.” Like she was saying that she’s much prettier than I am, so I get to go because I’m the ugly duckling. Thanks! Anyway, we left to go meet Rob, but Adam had to go back and tell Erin something about the devil feed, and when he came back he was like, “I have never had somebody look at me with such hate before. Haha.” So I went with Rob and Adam. We drove for like twenty ish minutes to get to this farm. I was stoked to watch them try to catch this possum, but it was really anticlimactic.. The possum was in this little shed and there wasn’t enough room for me to even go in. So I waited by the car and five minutes later they had caught the little gold brush tail possum. It wasn’t much of a field trip out of the zoo. Hah. When we got back, we had to do all the afternoon feedings and the devil feed and penguin feed, etc. We noticed that the branches that Erin and Justine were supposed to do hadn’t been done though.. So we walked all over the zoo looking for them and couldn’t find them. Finally, we just went to go prepare food and stuff because we couldn’t afford to waste more time, especially if they weren’t going to be around to help. Adam left to go do other stuff and I prepared all of the monkey food by myself! It was cool being trusted enough to be able to do that by myself. After I finished, Justine walked in and Adam told me to come with him. He told me that they had gotten locked in the mandrill enclosure when they went to find wire to the branches. The door had been slammed by the wind when they went in there and they couldn’t open it. Hah. It sucks that they got stuck in there for two hours. That would suuuck. I don’t think there is a light in there either. So they were in a shed for two hours without light. Neither had phones either, so they couldn’t get a hold of anyone to get them out. Aaron finally found them. So yeah, excitement all around.

Groceries were exciting too. We have to wear those ugly blue apron things, so Justine went to grab hers, but when she grabbed it she screamed and I looked over at her apron and there was a MASSIVE spider on it! Seriously, it was like bigger than my whole palm. Adam went over and grabbed it and started teasing us and bringing it real close to our faces so everyone was running around squealing and laughing. I hate spiders. They are always everywhere. We were by the devil pens and Adam stopped and pointed out a massive black widow spider. Terrifying. I’m developing a nice little fear for spiders.

There was a family with two little boys there, and one of the boys had a birthday the next day. So Adam asked him what he was hoping to get for his birthday. This kid goes, “Well I would like a large box full of gold and jewels.” Totally serious. Hahaha. It was awesome! I was like, “Sweet. What would you want if you didn’t get that though?” Without missing a beat he says, “Wings.” Hahahaha. Awesome little boy. His brother then chimed in with, “It’s almost my birthday too!” so I asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he says, “I want a penguin suit!!!!!” Bahahaha. They were a riot. I want kids who say crazy things like that. So cool. The next day at work Adam was like, “I certainly hope that boy got that box of gold and jewels or wings or else today is going to be a horrible day for him.”

There’s a kick and then a scream, but it’s only in her dream. I look around and it’s youuuuu ooohhhhhhh. I can’t believe it’s only Wednesdaaayyyyy. Only Wednesday by The Crash Kings. It’s a good song AND it has Wednesday in the title.

We are building heaps of new enclosures for more tassie devils. So Justine and I have been helping here and there. Most of the time Aaron helps with building stuff because he’s a strong guy and Adam is “head” keeper so he does more keepery things. Aaron says he hates that he gets stuck doing all that stuff. He wants to do more with the animals. Poor guy. He spent most of his time this week working with Dick building the new building for the crocs and gators. So yeah Justine and I were helping Rob and Adam with some tassie devil enclosure stuff. I think it’s cause not much else needed to be done around the zoo. So Justine put screws in while I helped carry steel in for the enclosures. So heavy. We were carrying these huge long pieces, so Rob and Adam would be on the edges and I was in the middle. I’m shorter than them, so I was holding it at an awkward height. I couldn’t really hold it on my head and I couldn’t extend my arms all the way, so my arms were bent and that felt harder to do. My arms were pretty sore after that. Haha.

We were all in the staff room when Erin walked in holding the missing green rosella that escaped from the fallen aviary. Haha. She said that she was walking around and heard wings flapping and then something flew like a centimeter over her head and landed in front of her. The triumphant return of the green rosella! Rob came in later and saw the rosella in the cage with the gang gang and was so confused. It was awesome. I worked the first half of Wednesday with Erin. We did waters. Thrilling. She was sick though, so she left early.

Not much happened on Wednesday. We did the groceries, but Adam and Aaron weren’t around so Justine tried tipping one of the bins out for us, but had a hard time. Adam showed up and said something about her being a dainty little girl and not being able to do it. I laughed and she was like, “I don’t care, I take that to mean I’m skinny.” Wow okay. Adam left again, so I tried tipping one out and I could do it, barely, but I still tipped it out. Rob saw and was like, “Well I won’t be messing with you.” I was like, “Yeaaahhh that’s right!” Justine said something like, “At least I’m dainty.” I think she was calling me fat or burly or something not nice and rather rude. Thank you once again. How I adore your snide remarks.

I realize that I have been able to feed a new animal by myself in each of these days. Sweeeeet. Quolls joined the list on Wednesday. I took a bucket of little dead chicks and tossed them in all the quoll cages. I had nasty chicken juice all over my hands. Blech. Erin had to take some and chop their heads and feet off to feed the kookaburras. I wouldn’t want to do that. Hah speaking of the kookaburras, I love those guys. We fed them mice on Tuesday and one of them wasn’t hungry, so he held one of the mice in his beak until he was. It was al stretched out and not at all mouse looking after a while. Hahah. So on Wednesday he did the same thing, but with the dead baby chick. Crazy kookaburra.

I don’t know any songs with Thursday in the title.. There is a band called Thursday. That’s as close as I’ll get.

There is this volunteer that everyone else talks about sometimes, but she comes in on Fridays and Saturdays, so neither Justine or I has ever met her. Her name is Alicia. Adam says that he hates her. I’m not really sure why. Anyway, so I came back from lunch on Thursday and went to meet Adam at the devil feed. When I got up there there was a ton of people there already and this girl was holding the red bag that we hold the baby devil in. So I thought, “That’s weird, I wonder why Adam let her hold the bag.” Then the girl sees me and starts walking towards me. Hmm. She handed me the baby devil and was like, “Here you go!” I had no idea who she was. If I was smarter, I would’ve figured it out. Ha. I was like, “Uhhmm.. Righto thanks. Who are you??” It was Alicia. Surprise. So she started chatting away with me. She seems nice. She has this weird like birthmark or something on her face, and it’s pretty large. It seemed like she was tries hard to keep it covered with her hand or something. She was there with a class. I want to be in a class that takes me to zoos.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened at the zoo. I went with Adam to feed the reptiles. There is a carpet python that is extremely skinny because he refuses to eat. It’s sad. There are three tiger snakes and one copperhead at the zoo. They are the venomous ones. I kept imagining them getting through the little crack Adam had open to feed them, and them coming after me. Scary. I went into Boris the five meter long scrub python’s cage. Adam fed him, so he was busy with a big rat, but he almost dropped the rat, and I asked Adam if Boris had ever tried to attack him. He was like, “Mm yeah a few times actually.” Hah. I felt a little skiddish after that. Every time Boris moved so that he was facing me, my thoughts were, “Ohmygoshhh he’s going to drop that rat and come for me.” I made it out alive though. Haha. We moved some blue tongues into the old echidna enclosure. There were nine blue tongues in this tiny little cage, so we wanted to give them more space. Adam lifted a rock in their tiny cage and there were FIVE of them piled underneath it. Haha. At first I thought there were only three, but they kept moving and I saw the other two. Crazy lizards.

So I went to institute. Jess came to get me, but was late because she had to pick up this girl Lori and had gotten lost trying to find her house. She got to the entrance for the zoo, but Rob had locked the gate to get in.. So I had to run out there. Literally run. Ha. I was dressed nice and did my hair, and I had to ruin it all to get out there in a decent amount of time. It’s like a twelve or more minute walk to that spot. I made it out there in like six minutes. Woooo. So we were pretty late to institute. When we got there, this girl was there and told us that it had been cancelled. Hah. Laaame. So we stayed there and hung out with this girl who’s name is also Jess. It was fun. Of course, sometimes they would talk about people they knew and I would be an odd man out. They did talk about this guy who gives talks with as many Star Wars references as scripture references in them. Haha. I want to hear one of his talks! Jess that did not drive me was talking about her theory on asians. She was like, “I’m pretty sure asians are aliens. Think about it. They are super smart, they make like everything we own, they have better technology, they are all over the place because they are planning on taking it all over, they can’t drive cars because they are used to driving space ships. It all makes sense.” Hahaha. It was awesome. We talked about it for a while. I will never look at asians the same. So we left after like an hour and a half and headed back to drop me off. There were heaps of freaking possums on the road and they don’t move when they see a car coming! Jess tried avoiding them, but she did hit one of them.. It was so sad. Poor little stupid possums..

The only song in my iTunes library with Friday in the title is Black Friday Rule by Flogging Molly. Hahah. So today is Friday, and I’m going out tonight with Erin, Aaron, and Justine. It should be interesting.. We are going to dinner and stuff. They all know I don’t drink, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Erin was like, “You can get red bulls! Those are just as good as drinking anyway.” Haha. Erin text me today and was like, “Are you going to wear a dress and heels and stuff?” I wish I could get all cute and dressed up, but I didn’t bring anything like that. She brought two dresses with her to work because she is just coming up to our place after work to get ready, so she was like well you can try them on and then she asked if Justine would wear one. Justine is like way more tom boy than I am. She said that she has worn a dress like once in her life, and it was like for a wedding or something. Hah. So when I asked her if she would wear one of Erin’s dresses, she was like, “I have never worn a dress to go out in, plus it’s way too cold for a dress.” Ha. I wish she was more girly. I would get along with her better probably. Oh welllllls. I hope that tonight is fun, and not a total bust for me. We will see.

The internets are still not working well. Justine went outside with the wombat earlier and said the internet was working outside so I went outside and it stopped working right as I got out there.. Coooooool.




I’m writing this on Saturday now. I’m currently lazing about my house because I’m exhausted and I have a headache from staying up waaaay later than I’ve been up in a long time. I remember freshman year at BYU we stayed up until like three or four basically every night. Haha. Friday night I was out until four ish, and I’m exhausted. Ha. I feel like such a wuss. It was a whole lot more fun than I thought that it would be. Erin came over after work, and we got ready and stuff. I finally got to like do my hair and put a cute outfit on and do my makeup and put jewelry on. It was nice to not feel like a boy. Hah. Once we were all ready, Erin was like, “Caitlin do you want a little driving lesson, then maybe we can drive back here tonight instead of catch a taxi to my friend’s house?” Erin has a stick shift. I’ve never driven stick before. Hah. Also, you shift with your left hand instead of your right hand like in the states and also it’s the wrong side of the car.. Hah. I had a hard time figuring out the clutch. It was pretty exciting though! I got into second gear and managed to only stall when I was reversing right when I started. Once we got near an actual road, Erin and I switched because I just would not have been able to handle driving on the wrong side of the road. Ha. It was way cool though. I’ve decided that I’m forcing one of my friends with a manual car to teach me how to drive stick! So there is like two mexican restaurants in Launceston and we decided that we wanted to try going to one of them for dinner. It was booked for like the next two hours.. So we went to a little italian restaurant right across the street from us. I had really tasty pasta. It was funny because Justine was drinking wine and Erin was drinking a vodka and raspberry and I got a coke and they put a little bendy straw in it. I felt like such a little kid. After that, we went to some bar called Alchemy. It was only like nine so it was pretty empty. We all got vodka and red bulls, of course I asked for mine minus the vodka. I had a few red bulls through out the night. I was super hypo. We went to some place called the Star Bar after a little bit. There was like half weird older people trying to act like they were in their twenties still, and half way young people since the drinking age is eighteen in Australia. They had a sweet live band there. All the places we went to had live bands, and they all just played covers, which sounds lame, but they were actually all really good covers of all the songs they played. There were a few people dancing in the Star Bar, specifically this crazy lady who was dancing like she was straight outta Footloose or something. It was soooo funny. We were sitting at a table, me with my red bull and them with whatever they were drinking. A group of boys came over to us and started chatting with us. One of them was real obnoxious, the others just looked like they were embarrassed to be hanging out with him. Ha. One boy sat next to me and was chatting with me. He was like, “Could I buy you a drink?” and I was like, “Yeah for sure! Go get me a water.” Ha. He looked confused or something at first, but went and got me a water anyway. After a while there we headed to Irish Murphys. It was way more packed and had more people that seemed more like our age. Ha. Still there were heaps of younger people. Erin heard some boy talking and was like, “Oh my gosh! That boy is American too! Hey boy! Are you American?! These girls are American!” She was a biiiit gone already. Haha. Turns out this American kid is from Oxnard. Small world! He also has a brother who went to BYU Hawaii! Of course, the guy I was talking to wasn’t mormon. He chose to bash mormons instead. He kept saying, “I know Mormons are real good people.... BUT it’s so stupid blah blah blah drinking is awesome blah blah blah you should drink blah you don’t know what you’re missing blah blah” I was just like, “Mmkay I’m going to go now.” Anyway, he left and all of his friends were still there and were hanging out with us. We were all dancing and having fun. It was good even though I was around all drunk people. No one tried to pull anything on me and no one tried to get me to drink or anything. I just got to get out of the house for a night and enjoy myself and dance and have fun. So it was good. One boy asked for my number. I gave him my aussie phone number so that I can choose to ignore it if I like and I only have that number for a few more weeks. Hah. He’s really nice though. He wants all of us to hang out with him and his friends again. We will see. It’s not like I have much sway over where I go when I want to go, and stuff. So the greatest part of the night... There was this midget there. Erin saw him and was like, “Hehe I want to go dance with him!” She didn’t. Anyway that’s not the great part. Right before the bar closed, he walked right by me and he stopped in front of me and like play punched me in the stomach and moved on. Bahahaha. It was the weirdest thing ever! Justine saw it and she thought it was the funniest thing. She was laughing about it like half an hour later. She kept being like, “Haha I’m never going to stop laughing about that midget.. Hahhahaha” It was pretty fantastic. Around three thirty, the bar closed so we all went outside. No one could decide what they wanted to do, so we ended up all standing around on the sidewalk in the freezing cold (Summer is basically non existent here, by the way. It’s pretty much mostly cold.) waiting for taxis. The streets were super dead and there would be a taxi every now and then, but none of us knew what we wanted to do, so they kept leaving. Finally, us four girls hopped in a cab and went to Krista’s house and fell asleep immediately. Krista came out the next morning and had her purse on her still and was like, “I seriously fell asleep with my purse on still..” Hah. She lives in like a house house, but she has some house mates that she doesn’t really know. One of them got up really early, like seven in the morning early and made sure to make extra amounts of noise. Also, I have my alarm on my phone set to like six thirty every day, but I turn it off during the weekends. I forgot to do that so I woke up at six thirty to an incessant vibrating noise and I was so pissed and I was about to be like, “OHMYGOSHH what is that! Turn it off, will ya??!” Until I realized it was my phone. Then I was mad at myself for not turning the stupid thing off. Ha.

Why is it on a Saturday night, a Saturday night you had to go and bring me down? It’s always on a Saturday niiiigghhhtttttt. Saturday by We Are The Fury. Finding songs by certain categories is quite fun.

Saturday has been uneventful. Laundry. Playtime with the wombat outside. Subway with Erin and Justine after we went to the grocery store. I bought nutella. I’m really digging the hazelnut flavor right now. It’s fantastic. Sherwin texted me today. Sherwin is the boy that asked for my number. Apparently, him and his friends are going to come to the zoo sometime soon. Every time we tell people that we work at the Tassie Zoo, they are like, “...We have a zoo here..?” Ha. So yeah, I’m making friends and I’m enjoying it. I didn’t do much else today. I made hawaiian haystack. Singular. I like cooking. I want to learn more about cooking and baking and stuff. Also, I’ve decided that I want to learn more about photography. I don’t have enough hobbies. I choose photography as a hobby! Maybe.

Ooohhh we dance in disarray, and we dance on and we dance on. Dancing Through Sunday by AFI.

Sunday has been good. Nothing unusual, except that we ran out of water today. That wouldn’t be THAT big of a deal because Rob will just fill up the big water tank later today. It went out at the worst time possible. Yes, it went out when I was in the shower. Greeeaaaaat. Luckily, I had washed everything except my hair.. So I have not had a chance to wash my hair. I feel like a bum. Other than that, it’s been a pretty normal Sunday. Went to church with Jess. We had to leave early though because she is n five basketball teams and one has practice today. FIVE teams! How crazy is that! It was Fast Sunday.. I forgot to fast. Sighh. I did get invited to a “floro” print themed church dance in two weeks. Haha. I assume it means floral.. I dunno though.. Ha. So I’m excited. Jess says there isn’t many people at those dances though.. Oh well. Some is better than none, especially for people like me with like three friends.