Turpentine Creek: 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.