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!!