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Do you see Nala? She is stalking me...

Can I have a kiss??

Thank you!

 I love Bear kisses

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Lately

Hi all, sorry it has been a little while since my last update. Life has sped away from me here in Arkansas. The days fly by and then there always seems to be something planned in the evening when I get back to the house. Which is great because I don’t want to miss anything, I want to experience everything I can while I am here. So needless to say, I haven’t had a lot of time at home to catch up on reading, writing and my other hobby type things.

Today was my first ‘Keeper talk’. Basically we pick a subject to speak on and pick a enclosure to give it in front of and give the half hour presentation. It is advertised before hand so people can choose which they may want to come out for. I was the first of the new interns to go so it was a little nerve racking not knowing what to expect or how it has been going for the other interns. The topic I picked was Cat Behavior, the most interesting aspect of the job to me and is something I have always been involved with in some way. I did my talk in front of the Ligers because for one, they respond to enrichment and are quite young and active. I started of talking about enrichment and why we do it and I gave both the Ligers and egg and a heavy duty cardboard roll sprayed with coconut. As expected they went crazy for it and did exactly what I wanted them to do. They grabbed it carried it off and sniffed the coconut. They made what we call a ‘stink face’, where they open their mouth and stick their tongues out to take in the scent. They have a scent organ on the roof of their mouth called the Jacob’s Organ.  So I talked about it for a little and then the background of ligers, about how they are a man made species and have many different genetic risks. Also, how they have a curious mix of behaviors from both species. They chuff like tigers and they are just learning to carol with the lions. I talked about why tigers chuff, it is a greeting to each other to basically say I come in peace. A friendly greeting that if given to them, even by people, they usually respond. I had a little girl ask me to demonstrate, so I chuffed at the female liger and she chuffed back. The little girl spent the rest of the time practicing so she could go try it on all of the other tigers. I steered her towards the friendly tigers that would most likely respond. I moved on to caroling and why/when they do it in captivity and in the wild. I talked about lion mane and the reason for them, I talked about Leopard niches and what that means. I talked about Lion prides, parental care and sexual maturity. Question time and then it was off to the tour.

I am working on a few bio’s of some of the cats here to share with you all and will post tomorrow….

Day off

I woke up yesterday to the house phone ringing. Since I was only half way conscious Sarah ran past me to answer it and it ended up being our boss. She shares our day off and asked if we wanted to go fishing because she had heard I like to fish. So an hour later we were loaded up with fishing poles, snacks, one of her dogs and headed into town to buy a fishing license.  We fished the White river and it was beautiful. There was no one around, you couldn't hear any horns and fishing off a river bank is a first for me. There were little peninsulas of rocks that stuck out into the river so I laid on the rocks listening to the sounds of the river with Eli (Emily's dog) curled up at my side. It was just what the doctor ordered. It was so relaxing and I caught a fish! Emily caught about 4 but her dog got to two of them before she could. We stopped in the grocery store on the way back to the refuge and Emily did a little shopping while Sarah and I putzed around. Between the three of us we decided that smores sounded good and that we should have a bonfire. Later last night, everyone came over for the aforementioned bonfire. It lasted into the wee hours of the morning but all interns and staff alike had a lot of fun.

Today after work I was itching to get out of the house, so a couple of the girls suggested going to town to get some dinner. There was a place I noticed in town that I thought my dad needed a Tshirt from so I asked if we could check it out. BEST BBQ by far (besides dads home bbq) I've ever had. Pulled pork sandwich and a sweet tea really hit the spot. I am now lulling into a food coma, after having stuffed myself with delicious bbq I can't find the will to do anything but lay here on my back. So, here I will lay until something is more motivating! :)

Great Day

I have come to the conclusion that today is one of the best days of my life. Today I pet a tiger. ... and a Grizzly Bear... three cougars and a lion. Yesterday we got the go ahead to start having unrestricted contact with the cats so naturally I could barely sleep last night. I had decided a couple weeks ago that I really wanted Sierra to be my first tiger, but today I was on cougars so I justified petting all of those (the friendly ones anyway) by deciding that cougars, bears and lions aren't tigers so its ok. :) I visited with Sierra for a long time and she just rolled around on her back for me so I could scratch her belly. Tsavo the lion kept giving me his shoulder but I had a really hard time getting through the mane. It is incredibly thick! And quite oily, lions produce an oil from their skin for water proofing so it was a bit like scratching an oily shag carpet. Cougar fur is soft like fleece and grizzly fur is thick and course. I am about to head back from lunch at this point, so I can continue the day I have been waiting for since...well...ever.

Mardi Gras Parade

       Yesterday was a wonderful day off. One day off never seems like enough, it can't come soon enough and is over before I know it. I went into town with a staff member who has the same day off and Sarah, the other intern who shares my day off. When we got back in the early afternoon, Sarah and I went exploring again on the refuge's 450 acres. We hiked to the bottom of the mountain and found a really neat creek. It was almost like 2 inches of water rushing over concrete. It was not concrete of course but it was a 10 ft wide creek with a smooth stone bottom. There was nothing for it, the surrounding brush was too thick so we took our shoes off and set off down the creek.  After lots of rock turning and salamander discovery we discovered a part of the creek where the water pooled and made a considerably deep and crystal clear pond. It is still rather chilly here and the water was even colder, so we resided in waiting for the heat of the summer before going in. When we made it back to where we had begun we sat on the bank, talking and waiting for our feet to dry. She was in the middle of a long story when I heard crashing and crunching from the woods behind us and immediately my thoughts jumped to wild boar. The staff has been warning us about the aggressive wild boars on the property and insists we hike with knives and machetes. I held up a hand to Sarah, but she didn't understand the hint and kept on with her story. It didn't matter though because regardless of her onward chatting the little animal popped out of the underbrush. It was an armadillo!! It was SO COOL! I've never seen such a strange animal. They are a lot bigger than I thought they would be, but I had no idea they were even common in the area. It came all the way down to the waters edge and then all of sudden, as if a light turned on in the little animals mind, it froze and scuttled off into the brush. I just barely got a picture of it running away.
       Tomorrow is going to be a fun day. Tomorrow is the Eureka Springs Mardi Gras parade and Turpentine Creek is to be a part of it. Every year, two interns dress up in tiger costumes and dance along the parade with the float. They were looking for volunteers and I thought... why not?! Sounds fun! So Katie D and I are going to dress up as tigers and play in the parade tomorrow!

Cougars

Rayn

Brody

Mack

          Yesterday I went on the meat run. It's a chore everyone has to do once in a while, or apparently most people think its a chore. I thought it was awesome! I had so much fun. Clif is the founder's son and Presidents brother, he does the maintenance around here and drives all the meat runs. Basically, you go to work an hour early and go with one other intern and Clif to all the Walmarts in the area. Walmart is THE store around here. There are like six of them! One was on the border of Missouri so I have now been to two southern states! There are usually 8-10 barrels of meat per Walmart so we spend the whole day collecting the donated barrels of meat. Clif said that a tightly packed barrel can weigh up to 500 lbs. Thats a lot of meat! After collecting all 40 barrels, the refuge pays for us to get lunch. Pretty good deal if you ask me. Clif loves to play punch buggy nut he said most interns don't play when doing the meat run. I asked why and he said it is because he hits really hard and no one has to guts to play. So I said "eh...I grew up with older brothers. It's on." Sarah had one too many cups of coffee so she just stared around at the roads all days with her fist held up. I was definatly not ready for how hard Clif hits but I think Sarah and I got our revenge in the end. It was very fun. When we got back, we sorted the meat we picked up. In a few of the barrels there were like 30 or so 20 lb briskets, they were huge! Lucky cats.
         Today I was on Cougars and had to tackle the task of cleaning out Bam Bam's lockdown. Doesn't really sound that bad at first but it really gets old very quick. He is a two year old Grizzly Bear and is still in the height of his childhood shenanigans. I was trying to hose out his three gigantic piles of poo (which oddly looked JUST like pumpkin pie) and he kept getting in the way of the stream. He would bite it, paw at it and rub up against it for a makeshift back scratch. Sound cute? The first 5 minutes are but then when you are trying to get Cougars done in a timely manner, having your water stream blocked the whole time doesn't make it very easy. I am just on lunch now and am getting ready to head back.