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!