Sunday

I feel that there is a rhythm beginning to take place. My day has begun to feel less like a chaotic scramble and more like a smooth day of work. The work is beginning to feel much more satisfying as I get to know the cats and who to say hi to in the morning. The cats are beginning to recognize us and I am quickly learning their quirks and personality traits. There are so many personalities here, like this morning Kitty (the cougar) and I had a long conversation! When you talk to her or say her name she will squawk back at you most every time. Or Spyke the leopard will pretend like he doesn't see you or could care less that you are around but the moment you turn your back he lunges, pounces and runs away.  Ruby will walk along side you down the habitat and f you start running she will take off and beat you to the other side.
The weather was crazy today! Hot and muggy yet overcast, windy and black clouds. The forecast tonight says thunder and lightening with chances of tornadoes. Yikes!
I felt success today because I finally convince Alex the macaw to let me hold him. The staff have given up because he bites but after several hours of bribing him with peanuts he got onto my arm!
Today was a big day as far as construction goes. All sorts of welding, concrete sawing and sledge hammering. ( Building our monkey's new habitat)
Also, I found wild onions today! They grow everywhere! As soon as I figure out how to cook with them I am going to go onion hunting.
Last thought of the day, I lived the cutest experience this afternoon. As I was feeding the hoofstock and as Faith, the sheep, was beazling me for the food, Precious, the deer, nuzzled my shoulder. So I thought to myself "hm.. maybe he wants a schmooch...", and leaned in a little, not actually thinking he'd respond. He licked me square on the lips!

Vet visit

Today has been a pretty exciting day so far. We have had several cats in need of veterinary attention over the past few days and today I was lucky enough to be on habitats to see and help with the process.  Tubby, CJ, Lisa Dawn and Husky all had to be put under and looked at. Lisa Dawn went down without a hitch, she didn't seem to mind the giant pole syringe coming at her. CJ is another story all together. He is one of the more aggressive lions here to begin with and severely distrusts our supervisor, so she had a heck of a time getting the chance to inject him. I had meat as a distraction but he could really care less, he was more intent on trying to attack us. Sarah couldn't even get him to think he was getting the chance to go outside but that didn't work either. Two hours later, he is out and there are doing his surgery in his lockdown. They are currently amputating his tail, it is a huge ordeal because they have a shovel in front of his face because cats have been known to randomly wake up even with three time the dosage they need to be knocked out. The front legs get tied and so do the back, with a tourniquet around the tail. Really fascinating stuff. Tubby had a biopsy of the tumor last month and it came back benign so he is having it removed. Lisa Dawn has been the big scare of the day. She has had blood in her mouth for the past week and her brother died young of mouth cancer so we were all dreading the radio call that she might be put down. But, the vet took a sample and said it looked more like a cyst than a tumor! We will get the results next week to be sure. By the end I was feeling quite proud of myself because I could keep up with and join in with the 'vet talk' thanks to Malcolm and Erin and their willingness to share their animal medicine knowledge! :)
I am on lunch now and have to go scarf some food but will continue the update tonight.

Magic being adorable

Spyke barreling at me

Angel

Tsavo

Bam Bam the Grizzly

Bam Bam

Zeus

Thunder (favorite!!)

Brody

Brody, " mmm food is coming"

SO HUNGRY!

Brody pouting

Brody still pouting

Brady the Liger

Tiger rows dinner

Tomorrow!

These past few days have been absolutely crazy. Training is officially over and today was my day off. Tomorrow I start! I feel as well I did really well on training, we haven't been told our grades yet but we have been told our schedules already. I have been put on all the sections I was hoping for so I must have done something right! Yesterday I got to feed for the first time and I think the staff member who was training me aged ten years. He said training is nerve wrecking enough because its dangerous for new people that are not used to being around big cats but feeding is the most dangerous time to be around them. He says the new interns are usually nervous and the cats pick up on that... but I was so excited. He said I did really well, it wasn't as stressful as it usually is and he thinks I'm a natural so I feel very reassured at this point. :) Half of us trained in gift shop two days ago and after being explained how to run it and seeing a couple customers come through out boss started making hints that she wanted us to do the next customers. I really wanted to do gift shop so I decided to suck it up and go for it. I offered to go first and was successful! My schedule is as follows; Sunday- house, Monday- front habitats, Tuesday- cougars, Wednesday- back habitats, Thursday- day off, Friday- gift shop, Saturday- Tiger row. The only thing that I did not get scheduled for is front. Which is fine with me because it is the smallest section, (everyone has to miss out on at least one-three sections.) House is several big cats, bobcats, servals, caracals and the hoof stock. Front habitats are the tigers, cougars and lion is habitats. Tuesday are the cougars still in the compound area waiting to be moved out to habitats. Back habitats are leapords and other big cats. Tiger row are tigers and lions in the compound waiting to go out to habitats. AND I get to do tours!!! 

All the snow has melted so I went for a hike this morning on my day off. I hikes down the mountain and found a little waterfall and saw my sixth bald eagle. I was very upset I didn't bring my camera! We then went into to town and to the Cosmic Caverns. It was awesome! I was amazed that there are so many caves in the Ozarks. This particular cave was beautiful, we saw a lot of bats, cave salamanders and several lakes inside. 

Elvis: coolest bobcat

Carrie the caracal

Lucci and Wyoming: Lucci is blind

Thunder the black bear

Magic

Chuff

Frozen waterfall

caves

cave straws

Tomorrow I start my first day all by myself. Back habitats!! Wish me luck.

The past few days...

Sorry it has been a little while, things have really picked up the pace here. Monday was my first day behind the rails and it went very well. I never got corrected so I am hoping that means I got a good score. I got sprayed for the first time by Thunder the GIANT tiger. Oddly enough, it smells like buttered popcorn...not sure how that works out. But he got me right on the shoulder, good thing I was wearing water proof layers.
At one point, we needed to scrape some bones from one of the enclosures. Apparently Zeus does not like his food messed with. He jumped up onto the den where we were scraping and grabbed onto the hoe and snarled/ roared at us so loudly I felt it in my chest. It was incredible. Needless to say, we didn't get the bones out of the enclosure so he won that one. After we finished Tiger row we went over to offer help to the girls training on cougars.  One of the enclosures, Buttons and Little Bud, was at least three inches deep in ice and desperately needed shoveling. After forty five minutes of muscle intense ice picking and shoveling we got the enclosure  cleared and let the two cougars back out into their enclosure. Before we did this, I asked if I could find some enrichment since we were already in the enclosure. I dug out some scents to spray on their toys and logs. The overall favorite was coconut, although Little Bud didn't mind the peppermint. He rolled around the enclosure for a long time rubbing his face against his bowling ball with the peppermint scent on it. Little Bud and Buttons came from a private owner who had bred their mother but she rejected both of them and bit off Buttons tail. Hence why is name is Buttons, his tail is short like a button. The man brought the cougars in shortly after the incident , finally realizing the stupidity behind trying to own and breed big cats. After lunch we all went down to the food prep area and sorted through the Wal Mart meat. Wal Mart donates food three times a week, about 30 barrels of food a day. We have to sort through the meat we can and cannot use. Things we can use are uncooked large pieces of beef and pork, chicken (boneless and boned) and cooked unseasoned lunch meat for the bears. For some reason Wal Mart thinks it is ok to give us crab legs, bacon, salami and the like. Admittedly, sticking your arms up to your elbows in meat is quite fun. We don't get to feed the cats yet but next week we will. The cats are mostly all very food aggressive and because of which very dangerous.
Yesterday was my day off. I went to town to explore and grocery shop with Katie. The main roads were plowed but those who were not were covered in thick layers of ice. She and I were trying to get to the library and the GPS directions told us to go up a hill and make a U turn. Well we came to the peak of this hill and looked down to see a steep decline with a U turn and beyond the U turn was a drop off. I looked at her and we agreed... " I really think we shouldn't go down this hill...it's covered in ice and if we don't  make the U turn we are going to go off the drop off." She started to back up and we slid forward a little. So I jumped out and told her to turn her wheels and put it into reverse while I pushed. She started to fish tail because the ice was so bad but after nearly missing two cars, me and a pole we decided to skip the library. Scary stuff.
Today, Katie and I were on house. Which are the few tigers that have been here a long time, the servals, bobcats and caracal. Since we got two feet of snow today, all we could hope to do was to change waters. So nothing to exciting today, except for the huge tackle, snowball fight we had after work. Katy and I decided that we wanted to try sledding down the hill by our house. I got going too fast and decided to bail last minute off the side of the sled. We apparently there is a bunch of metal pieces under the snow at the bottom of the hill. I slid on some of the pieces and because my legs we so cold, didn't realize the damage I had actually done until I got home to change. There is a beautiful four inch gash in my thigh that hurts like crazy and it preventing me from sitting comfortably or walking correctly. I cleaned it and dressed it and now have hot pink vet wrap around my leg to keep it clean and dry. Things certainly don't get boring around here!!

Pictures

India

Ringo

Zeus

BB King

BB King

Brady and Karma playing

Zena

BB King

Tsavo

Bam Bam the Grizzly

I lost track of the day...

Yesterday we trained on back habitats and got to see the leopards, the bobcats and learn more stories of the other cats. So far we have been trained on Front, Cougars, House, Front Habitats and now Back Habitats. Tomorrow we are doing tiger row! :) I think I have a handle on most of the cats names and how to tell them apart. I was helping everyone record names and how to tell them apart last night at the house. I felt very proud of my "cat knowing" abilities! I went back to the compound during my lunch yesterday to try and learn the stories of the compound cats and witnessed some very ferocious love making. Haha!! Zena is in heat and Zeus took full advantage, I have never heard such loud noises in my life. Zeus was trying to be as impressive as he could and kept throwing his head back and roaring. Meanwhile, Jesse was on the prowl. I think he was just in the mood because Keesha definitely was not in heat. She wanted nothing to do with it, while he kept biting her tail and back. Pretty incredible teeth. While walking around we saw Detroit drag his toy tire up the hill, release it and chase it back down. That tire had to weigh like 100 lbs!! The next most amusing thing I saw was Brody the lion, putting the moves on his girlfriend...the 50 lb ball (4ft by 4ft at least). He didn't seem to mind that she is plastic.  Today we are training on house and got to meet and learn to care for the cats that only get to be accessible to the lodging guests. We also took care of Cheyenne the coyote, the caracal and the servals. I am on my lunch now and am trying to relax before having to go back down to the food prep area to prepare about 1,000 pounds of meet. Next week, we clean and medicate everything by ourselves! Yikes..because everything is snow covered and all we have been doing is having hypothetical explanations thrown at us. Hard to learn procedure without actually seeing it. And tours start Wednesday. I am glad I am a little ahead being able to identify all the cats and know their stories because our first day actually working we are graded by our supervisors and then placed in a permanent weekly schedule based on our performance. I really want to be able to give tours, work habitats and compound, do enrichment and training so cross your fingers for me! Hopefully my first tour goes well. And hopefully my ideas for training and enrichment are up to scratch so I can be able to do a lot of that as well. I think a lot of enrichment that I did at Woods can be modified and applied so cross your fingers!!!

I'll post more pictures tonight

Third day

This is Jane, I was picking the icicles off her eyelashes

Zeus

Brady

Zena

The morning started out just as the past two have. 6:45, up before everyone else to make coffee and get in the shower before the 5 other girls. I am the only one in this house that drinks coffee! Shocking. We trained on Cougars today. We couldn't actually train because there is still about 9 inches of snow and a lot of ice so she explained to us how we will eventually take care of them, clean, medicate and water. We shoveled some more, the muscles between my thumb and my hand are sore! Didn't know that was possible. We then went down to the food prep area. Basically, big warehouses at the bottom of the grounds where the freezers are. We sorted and talked about what each animal gets and eventually pulled out about 700 lbs of meat. This is a smaller amount than normal because the Lions didn't get their full amount today, they apparently won't come out of their den when there is snow on the ground. Duh! They are probably thinking, "Where are the miles of grassland, 100 degree heat and my skillfully attained zebra!? What the heck is this white stuff?" We can feed up to 1,000 lbs of meet a day. Hercules (Tiger) gets ground beef because he can't digest well, Kitty(couger) gets her meat cut up because she is severely inbreed and has very little atomically correct body parts(legs and GI track too short), Lucky(Tiger) gets his cut up because of a deformed pelvis, Sadie  (Couger) gets hers cut up or else she throws it up and...well you get the drift, there are about 5 other special diets. The black bears and  grizzley get meet and 8 lbs of fruit, and the coyote gets dog food and a pound of meet. Everyone else gets fed normally, today it was chicken. Cougers got 2-3 half chickens, most tigers 6-8, lions 6-8 and bobcats 1-2. The Coati got a quarter chicken and the monkey got a half. Leopards and black leopards got 4-5 and the caracals got 1. It was incredible to watch them eat. The cougars would launch themselves up the cage to catch the food and some tigers got a bit testy over us being so near their food. The amount of power and sound behind some of the more wild ones is amazing. To see them haunch down and stretch their mouths open, exposing all of their teeth and snarling made all my arm hairs stand on end. Some of them will talk to you and chuff waiting for their food. Or wanted their ears scratched before they would even consider the food. Many different personalities and stories behind each animal. I'm just started to figure them all out. Pretty awesome!

Second Day

Hi all,
Well, I got my first experience with an ice storm. Not too bad, no trees were knocked over but it feels a little like painful rain. It was pouring I guess you could say, but little ice balls. After work started it started snowing, it looks like a white haze it is snowing so hard. Very beautiful but quite cold when it flys into your eyes. We are taking an extra long lunch now since there is no point in using the hoses to clean. I am about to head out to take pictures of some snow covered cats.

I found the cat that lives here. Didn't take him long to figure out that I would let him sleep with me in my bed.

This face cover-er thing is the best investment ever.

Pictures of snow covered cats to come.