Zip a dee do daaa

Adam whistles that song ALL the time. It always makes me want to go to Disneyland real bad. He also whistles Yankee Doodle a lot.. No idea why.

Monday:

So it’s really freaking cold in our house in the morning, it makes it extremely difficult to find motivation to get out form underneath the cozy comforter.. Today I found it extra difficult and did not want to even go to work. I’m really glad I did though. I had a pretty exceptional day.

First of all, let me start of by saying that last night Rob left the hose on in the tank for our water, so he text Justine and told her she had to go turn it off. It was already really dark outside, so Justine goes and gets this thing out of one of her drawers. It was this little head lamp thing. Baha. She said, “I’m really afraid of the dark, like outside in the wild..” That’s not that weird. It’s pretty scary outside in the bush in the dark. Anyway, so she goes outside. Two seconds later I hear a noise that sounded like it could be a scream, but could also just be an animal. I waited a bit for her to come back inside and if she didn’t come back inside in a reasonable amount of time I was going to be worried and go look for her. She came back in and was like, “There was this crazy bird in the little thing above our door. It flew out from above me when I went outside the door.. So I screamed..” Hehe.

Okay okay. So I didn’t want to go to work, but I forced myself to get up and put on my work clothes, etc. I didn’t really want to brush my teeth or do anything involving the water because when the tank is first filled up, it makes the water really dirty and brown looking.. It’s not exactly what I like to see when I’m trying to make my teeths clean.. It also didn’t help when I took a shower and turned the water off to see a bunch of dirt on the bathroom floor. Yeesh. Anyway. Got to work, did the usual morning stuff. We found out that Rob was not coming in to work. He got suuuuuuper wasted Sunday night and therefore decided since his mum and dad own the zoo, he did not need to care about whether or not he showed up to work. He was even drunk texting Justine at like three thirty in the morning. He’s kind of a skeez sometimes. Oh well. Justine was going on about how Rob offered her a job if she ever lived in Tassie. I don’t ever work with Rob, and she works with him every Sunday just the two of them. Obviously he sees her working a heck of a lot more than he sees me working because he never does any work during the week. Not that I care, because I wouldn’t really want to work there for more than my internship. Not because it’s a bad place to work. I actually really adore this zoo, but because you can tell Rob doesn’t really care about the animals. I’ve heard stories from Erin, and she said that she has told Rob a few times that she would call some sort of place that has initials for a name and would get Rob and the zoo in trouble. Hah. I wouldn’t want to deal with a place like that. So yeah. Rob wasn’t at work today. Fine by me.

We did the morning feedings, and then the groceries. After groceries and smoko, Adam said that I could go feed the baby roo! Yes! We have a little baby girl eastern grey kangaroo! She is absolutely precious. So I made up a bottle for her and went to find her in the chook yard. She let me pick her up and set her up on my lap. She was relatively easy to feed. She kept skitzing out and throwing her head around though. So whenever she did that, she got milk all over me. My poor jacket was covered by the time she was done eating. She’s really soft and snuggly. She does have really strong legs though. This was by far theeee best part of my day. Probably of my whole time here. Haha. It was awesome!! I got to feed her again later. It was time to go home, but I asked Adam if someone needed to feed the baby kangaroo. I told him I would do it on my way home if I needed to. So I got to feed her again and cuddle her. It was fantastic. I’m planning on monopolizing all things having to do with the baby roo. Bwaha. I was imagining being able to bring her home and having this little baby kangaroo living with me and growing up to be this big roo that is my special pet. Awesomeeee.

I went with Adam to clip some birds wings. He had me try doing the first one. I really don’t enjoy the feeling of cutting a bird’s feathers.. It displeases me immensely, in fact. So I told him he needed to do it. We clipped the wings of the corellas with their massive scary pointy beaks and Sweet pea (I dunno what kind of bird she is, but there is another one just like her in there), and four cockys (cockatoos, which are actually rather freaking huge). The cockys gave us the hardest time. They absolutely did not want to be touched. One of the birds had been fighting with another one I think, because when we caught it, one of it’s blood feathers was freely bleeding. Poor little birdy. Some of the birds had feather mites? I dunno what that is. Adam just told me they had it.

We moved some steel sheets today. Aaron, Adam, and I. They are pretty freaking heavy. We had to move like six sheets. It’s really annoying because they are really long, so it takes all three of us for one sheet, and whoever is in front doesn’t realize that they drag the other people through things. I was led through trees and rocks and poles. I had to keep moving and holding the sheet in an awkward way to get past it all. Annoying. When we left I called Aaron, Azza. I had never actually called him that to his face because I always think I sound silly saying it, but he was like, “Haha cool. I like it.” Everyone else calls him that, but I guess I didn’t sound silly saying it and he was glad I called him that or something. It’s easier to say than pronouncing his name the proper Aussie way.

I had to go with Adam to clean the pig pen. Bleechhhhhh. SUCH AN AWFUL SMELLLLLLL. Seriously, disgusting.

For the devil feeds, they put the baby devil in this little bag that helps keep her calm because it’s like being in a pouch. They let us hold the bag and stuff, but never actually handle her. Today when we took her back to her enclosure, Adam was like, “How brave do you feel today?” and he let me take her out of the bag to put her back in her area. Eek! So cool! She didn’t even scratch me or anything! It was awesomeeee.

Adam also let me drive the zute! Hurray! It’s manual, so he was doing the shifting while I did the steering and clutch stuffs. I didn’t stall once! Huzzah! I just need to learn how to do the whole shifting and clutching at the same time thing.. Hmm. One day. We got a new little vehicle, which would’ve been awesome because all the other vehicles keep breaking down, but this one doesn’t work either.. Ugh. On the bright side, it was really funny because I noticed that the steering wheel was on the left side! Cool! I told everyone and they hadn’t even noticed that. So Aaron went over and sat in it and was like, “Man this is weird.” It was cool.

Erin got fired today.. She isn’t actually finishing up working there until like four days before we finish up. So she will still be around, except that she won’t because she’s taking a two week holiday to finish up some schooling stuff.. So I probably won’t be seeing much of her in the near future. However, she is having a farewell thing. So that should be fun.

That’s about all that’s happened on Monday. I did finish another book. Airman by Eoin Coiffer or whatever. He wrote all the Artemis Fowl books, which by the way I only have one left to read and they are really fantastic books. I enjoy the later ones better than the first ones. Anyway, I really enjoyed Airman! Really fun read. I couldn’t help but think about The Count of Monte Cristo the whole time though, which actually I have on my Kindle and will probably be reading soon! I’ve read quite a few books since I’ve been here. Firelight (Dragon people? Yes please. However, it was a bit more Twilightesque than I wanted it to be..), Matched (Enjoyed it. Want to know what happens. Reminded me a lot of The Uglies, which I never actually finished that series.. I will need to do that soon..), most of the Artemis Fowl books (Awesomeeee.), Airman (Also awesomeeeeeee.), The Thief (It was alright. There were some really awesome parts and some really lame boring parts. The main character thief guy is a pretty fun character.), most of Pegasus (which is actually turning out to be a more dull book than I was hoping for.. Sighhh), The Apothecary’s Daughter (Surprisingly fun read, very much like a Jane Austeny type thing), and I started reading Pride and Prejudice (Sadly, I’m not having much fun with it.. It’s a bit more boring in book form to me than the movie. I don’t think I like her writing style very much..). So I’ve read about ten ish books here so far?

I bought two movies the other day because there was a Disney two for one movie thing. I got Beauty and the Beast and Princess and the Frog. When I got back and tried watching them on my computer because, as usual, the tv was occupied. I don’t actually care that the tv is always occupied because I don’t care much for the stuff that is always constantly on. Anyway, so I put the disc in my compy and it was like, “Sucker you just bought these movies and you have to change your region on the computer and you can only do that four more times so even if you wanted to take these movies back home with you, you will never be able to watch them! HA!” I was so sad! I changed the region and watched both movies. I’m so sad that I can’t take these back with me. I love these movies and when I got them it was because I was like, “Saweeet I’ll be able to bring these back with me and I get one of them for free! Awesome!” I was tricked. Curse you world for making it impossible for me to keep these movies forever!! Maybe they would still work in dvd players though? Maybe it’s just on my compy? Further investigation is necessary obviously.

Today was March 7th. That means that my last day of work at the zoo is exactly one month away. Weeeeiiirrrddd.

Tuesday:

Miserable day.

I did not feel well at all when I woke up. I think it was a mixture of gross water and the cold and stuff. Anyway, so I didn’t feel well and I woke up later than I wanted to. So I thought I would take a quick shower and maybe that would make me feel better. It didn’t. So I text Rob and told him I wouldn’t be coming in, but I would work Friday or Saturday instead. It’s not like I have better things to do. Hah. So I went back to sleep and slept for like three more hours. I ate soup and moped around and watched a zillion movies, including Beauty and the Beast for a second time. Haha. I also started and finished the most recent Artemis Fowl. I thought it was the last one, but if that’s the last book in the series.. I’m seriously questioning this author’s idea of a series wrap up. It was a good one though. Just as stressful as the others. I think next I’ll start Garth Nix’s Seven Keys to the Kingdom series. I can’t wait until Rick Riordan’s second Kane Chronicles book comes out!! Eek! So yeah.. it was a very uneventful day, unless you count the events that occurred in the book because then it would be the most eventful day ever. I was also extremely homesick. So I tried really hard to pretend that I wasn’t. It didn’t work very well.

I have a zillion mosquito/spider bites. I’m not sure what kind of bites they actually are.. I just know that they are bothersome and I don’t want them. I have a few on my hand and fingers. Sooo random. We have to go outside to use the internet now, and I have to stand to get the signal, so I probably got them one of the times I was outside.

I had a really horrible time trying to fall asleep since I had slept through a chunk of the day. However, when I woke up this morning (Wednesday) I felt way good. So I’m glad that I stayed home and didn’t go work. Plus it was raining pretty hard yesterday, so I would’ve felt worse after work probably.

Wednesday-Sunday:

I haven’t typed anything in ages, sooo I’m not sure what stuff happened which days and what not since I have a slippery grasp on memory and what not.

Notable things that happened.. Hmmmmm.. Well there wasn’t much really.. Hah.

I did lots of feedings by myself. Go me. So now I can tell people that I have fed: a large amount of different species of birds, lion tail macaques, cotton eared marmosets, black tufted capuchins, debrazza’s monkeys, red neck wallabies, pademelons, eastern grey kangaroos (adult and baby), emus, koala, tasmanian devils (adult and baby), australian dogs (I’m not supposed to say that they are actually dingoes.. sooo I’m secretly putting dingoes on my list), wombats (adult and baby), brush tail possums, ringtail possum (adult and baby), rabbits (...not exotic.. but technically still cool because they are australian rabbits!... yeeeahhh.. it’s a stretch.. I know..), curlews and kookaburras (which are birds.. but they are cooler than most of the other parroty and cockatooesque birds that everything else we have are. Plus.. they both eat meat! That makes them special and worthy of their own spot on the list. Speaking of meat eating birds, we had to have the curlews in the round house with a duck among a bunch of other birds. So we put the curlews meat in there, and the duck started eating the meat... Hahah. Meat eating duck!), alpacas, a pony named popcorn, cows, goats, a sheep that the goats bully, tassie wedge tailed eagles (they are on this little island in the lakes behind the zoo, so we have to throw big chunks of wallaby to the island. It’s a bit far, but I managed to just barely get my first time toss on the edge! Wheee! One time after that, there were some asians watching us toss the food to the eagles and they clapped when my throw made it to the island. It was awesome.), blue tongues, quolls (eastern and spotted tails). I think that’s all.. That’s a fantastically long list! I’m freaking awesome! So pretty much the only ones that I haven’t fed are all the dangerous snakes (tiger snakes, copperhead, carpet python, red tailed boa, scrub python) and some of the monkeys (mandrills, celebes black crested macaques, long tailed macaques). Wow, I’ve done a lot more than I realized! That’s so coooooool!!! I would never have been able to feed any of those in the states! Well unless I was working at another zoo, but I think I probably wouldn’t have fed any of those as soon as I have because working at another zoo with stricter rules (which any other zoo anywhere would have stricter rules than tassie zoo.. Hah) would lead to me not getting any cool experience like I am here. Thank you Tassie Zoo. You have been kind to me.

I’ve been hogging feeding the baby eastern grey. She is such a doll! I love her! She always curls up in a little ball in my lap and when she finishes drinking her bottle, she is all sleepy and just lays there in my arms. It’s the best, basically. Harrison the little wallaby misses drinking out of bottles apparently. He hounds me every time that I’m in there! He seriously came over and grabbed onto the baby roo and was trying to pull her off my lap to get to the bottle! Crazy Harrison. Sometimes he will stand there and grab my hand trying to get my attention or something, but grabbing means that his little claws scratch my hands to death. It doesn’t hurt or anything. It just looks funny, I’ll have all these little white lines on the top of my hand for a while.

One of the devils had a lump! Eek! Devils in captivity have never contracted the devil facial tumor disease, because it isn’t genetic. So after one of the feeds, Erin came up to me and was like, “One of them has a lump... alaksjdf;lkajs” Then one of the visitors came up and mentioned it to us. So we were worried. If devils started contracting the disease within captivity, there would be absolutely no hope for them.. Luckily it was not the disease. The devil in question had some weird fluid build up in it’s lymphatic something or other. I went with Adam to catch it and move it somewhere off display. It was leaking all it’s lymphatic grossness everywhere. Sickk.

I started and finished the first Seven Keys to the Kingdom book, Mister Monday, by Garth Nix. It was fun. I enjoyed it thoroughly, in fact. I’m near halfway through the second one, Grim Tuesday, and yes, there are seven of them, one for each day. The days are all people. They can only do things in the Secondary Realm (Earth being a part of that) on their specific day. So the whole series occurs in one week, I assume. It’s pretty cooooool. I recently found out that the author of the Fablehaven series has started a new series! The first one is coming out soon!! Eek!!!

Thursday branch daayyy. I went into more of the bird enclosures than I have before because just Azza and I were doing branches. There are so many demon birds here!! Mostly the cockatoos, but there are these pink birds that I don’t know what they are called and they almost got out. I was about to go in and they were sitting next to the door, sneaky buggers. I tossed their branch in there before I went in, but then I didn’t want to go in because they were trying to bite me. So then Azza walked by and I was like, “Could you please do this branch because these birds are evil.” So he tried going in, but one of them dove for the door and Azza had to slam the door shut real quick. So we left it for Adam to do later.. Haha. One of the other birds hopped on Erin’s back later and bit her real hard. Stupid birds. The cockatoos all know how to talk, so when they hear us opening their doors they will say Hello and stuff, but they sound real creepy like they are waiting for you and want to eat your face off.. Scawy birds.

I worked Friday because I didn’t work on Tuesday. Alicia the volunteer works on Fridays, so I worked with her for the first time ever. She stole the key, so I had no key. I had to follow Adam around like a little puppy all day. Mm, I also had to pick up rubbish all over the zoo because Saturday was a big day for the zoo so the whole week we had to get it presentable.

Friday night was another night out with Erin. She took us to where she lives, Georgetown. It’s about an hour away. I don’t know how she gets up every morning early enough to get to the zoo by eight. She’s tropo. Tropo is a new word I learned. Adam called me tropo. When I asked him what that meant, the only thing he said was, “You know, like tropical, like crazy. Tropo.” I didn’t know tropical meant crazy.. Oh wells. I like the word. Tropo. So yeah, we headed to Georgetown. Erin dropped Alicia off on the way because one of Alicia’s cats had kittens. They are two weeks old!! We went in and saw them! They are quite possibly the most adorable thing that I have ever seen that is cat related. Sooo tiny. They were real noisy though. Alicia’s family is a crazy cat family. They have TWELVE cats! Sheesshhh. PLUS the three little kittens that one of them just had. PLUS a few dogs. They have this gorgeous black and white dog that has one really light blue eye and one really dark brown eye. So beautiful. After that we headed to Erin’s house.

On the way to Erin’s house, we stopped and got some foooood. We got chips (fries) and gravy. I thought it sounded weird, but it’s just like eating mashed potatoes and gravy, but not mashed.. It was real tasty. We got ready to go out and stuff then. Erin has a real cute dog. He is deaf I guess. He is tall and scrawny like a grey hound or whatever. I love him. One of Erin’s friends was having people over for pre-drinking and he lives down the street from her, so when we were ready we just headed over there. There were four boys there playing some drinking game called waterfall. When we got there they were saying that all of us had to play, so one of them got me a glass of coke. Hahah. They were cool about my not drinking so that was nice. The game itself was really funny. There was this glass full of nasty looking alcohol in the middle with a deck of cards around the bottom. You had to pick a card and each card meant something. There was lots of funny stuff going on. One boy kept having to take a drink and do push ups every time someone drew a red card and another boy wasn’t allowed to talk or else he had to talk a drink and no one was allowed to swear or they had to take a drink. It was surprisingly hilarious. After we finished the game, we headed to a bar in town.

Before we had gotten to Georgetown, Erin had told me about some weird things about people who live there and stuff. She was like, “You will see these certain things by the end of the night, and if you don’t I will be shocked.” So she said that I would defo see a fight in the bar, hear people say “Yeah boy!” but they say it weird there and I can’t quite spell it out but it sounds more like buoy than boy, and that people would drop their glasses and everyone shouts “TAXI!!!!” All of those things happened and it was so funny. There were a few more, but I don’t remember them. It wasn’t all that super fun, but it was alright. I was just dancing and stuff with everyone. This boy Ross kept buying all of us drinks, he bought me some cokes. Apparently he is super loaded. He bought Justine a few too many drinks because he was hoping to get her home with him. Haha. She was SOOOOOO drunk. She could barely walk, so we took her home real early. She spewed. We went back out cause it was still early, but when we came back she was in bed with a traffic cone next to her. She had tried to spew in it... it has a hole in both sides so it didn’t really help. Haha. Next morning she didn’t remember anything. Bahaha. I had to fill her in on the night. We also met Erin’s boyfriend. His name is Adam. I’m pretty sure that Aussies only name their boys Adam or Aaron. I met like twelve of each that night. Anyway, it was so weird because we got to the bar and Erin was like, “See that guy over there, that’s my boyfriend.” Then they proceeded to not hang out with each other except for like two seconds when she introduced us to him. They didn’t spend any time together the whole night until after we took Justine home, then he was hanging out with us most of the time and he was actually real cool. It was so weird though. If she didn’t tell me that he was her boyfriend, I would never have believed that they had been dating for two years. Hah.

The next day, we got up and Erin’s mom came in and was like, “Are either of you from California? The salami just hit some parts of California!” Bahahaha. She meant to say Tsunami.. So we’ve been saying salami instead. So funny. Not the tsunami thing though. Everything going on in Japan is so sad! I can’t believe the earthquake caused a tsunami that reaches California. That’s insane. Anyway, Erin drove us home. The zoo was having it’s 8th birthday party on Saturday. There was a bbq and balloons and stuff. Justine went in to work when we got home. I didn’t want to work. I wanted to actually enjoy my day off and get away from the zoo for once. Ha. So Erin dropped me off in town when she left. I walked around, went and saw Rango in the theaters by myself (...Yeahhhh.. I know. Sad. Also, movie tickets are like sixteen bucks here.. I’m never complaining about prices in America ever again. Ha. It’s way more expensive living in Australia. Gas here I think is around four ish dollars a gallon. I don’t really know though because they go by liter.. litre I guess.. Hah. Jess’ dad and I were trying to figure out what it would be in gallons.. basically it’s just crazy expensive.). I went to Target and got some stuff. I needed to go to the grocery store, but I wasn’t sure where the closest one was. I knew that there was one on this certain road, but I didn’t know exactly where this road was.. I started meandering to where I thought the road was. I finally found it and started walking down it.. It was WAAAAY longer than I thought it was. I walked for like an hour until I finally found the grocery store. I guess I could have stopped and asked for directions to a closer grocery store.. Mm. I enjoyed walking though. I caught a cab home, and relaxed. Justine got sent home from the zoo because they didn’t need her and they thought she should get more rest since she was barely just getting over being drunk since she had so much alcohol that she was still a bit buzzed in the morning and started feeling way sick once we got home. Haa. Sucker.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve gained any and all weight back that I previously lost. I’m a chubbo again.. Hurray..

I have to write a 2,000 word paper about the internship.. but it has to have references and stuff. I don’t want to write papers. Lammeeeeeeeee.