Memorial Weekend

Well, the rain is gone but that only means that the heat is here. Today it was 88 but with the humidity it felt like the low 90's. YUCK! It sure is a different feeling here, the air almost feels thick. As soon as you walk out the door in the morning for work you feel sticky and always have this consistent need to dab the sweat off your face. Since my job is 100% outdoors it gets difficult to deal with very quickly, luckily most of the tasks include a hose at some point so running through the stream is a common activity for all the interns. At the end of everyday I feel like I have worked a very hard days work, up and down hills in the habitats, moving and lifting 500lb barrels, construction, feeding, 1/2 mile tours, climbing up habitats to secure shade cloths and so on. I have developed a very close relationship with my water bottle and otter pops! :) Otter pops if you are not familiar with them are those frozen pops of various flavors.
Last week, we moved Loretta out to a habitat. She will be my first cat release into a habitat so I am very exited. We had to put her under to move her because she is terrified of the transfer trailer. She is a 21 year old tiger and anesthesia is a huge risk for her so we had the vets come out to make sure that the proper things were available incase of complication. Well, she is also terrified of Emily, one of my bosses. Emily has to be there for transfers so just when we thought we gave her enough, Emily would walk by and Loretta would somehow lurch to sit up. She had more anesthesia than our male lion needed earlier that day. Every time the vet gave her another cc, they'd check her reflexes and then have Emily walk by. It got to the point where it was too dangerous to give her anymore so we loaded her onto the transfer "blanket" and rushed her off to her new lockdown.  After setting her up with some sub q fluids we locked the door and gave her some piece. She was alert within the hour. She has not been let out into the habitat yet because they usually give the cats a weeks time to get used to their new place, new sounds, new cleaning routine, new feeding routine etc. I can't wait. The vets also put a tiger named Missy under to remove an ingrown claw. After which we needed to move her into her den because it was supposed to storm. We got her loaded onto the transfer "blanket" and went to move her into the den. Well the only was to get her into the den was to crawl in there with her. Our boss looked at Katie and I (who were helping with Missy) and said "...are you comfortable going in the den with her?" We looked at each other and said yes instantly.
Today was BB King and Mack's birthday. They got birthday presents!! Big cardboard boxes with different things inside, each wrapped with birthday paper. If you think you have ever seen cute, well, you haven't yet. Seeing a 600lb tiger grab a birthday present and run around, shred it and then drag it into the pool to further demolish it is probably one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

The past week

Magic

Dad and I at Rockin' Pig

BBQ

Justin, Allison and Me

Justin, Alex, Sarah, Me and Katie O

Tour

Bam Bam and his pool

The past week has been fantastic and I have a lot to share in this blog! To start, Dad’s visit was a jam packed, fantastic 3 day vacation during which we brought Eureka Springs to its knees. The first night, his flight got into XNA airport at 9:30 and after getting his rental car he started the drive to the refuge. It is about an hour drive and from Fayetteville to the refuge and is a big maze of twisty back country roads. No signs to speak of and no lighting. I got a call at about 10:30 from him asking for clarification on directions, well, not having a car really prevents one from knowing the roads very well so that was an interesting series of conversations. But, it all worked out and he got here around 11-11:30. I caught up with him and we headed up to the Safari lodging. We sat on the couch until 2:30AM just talking and catching up. Needless to say the next morning came very quickly. We got up to be at the doctor’s at 8AM. We went to have breakfast after, at one of the little cafes downtown. After breakfast we stopped at the dollar store for a few items. Then on our way back to the refuge to pick Sarah up, Dad found the farmers market. We got some Amish pies and a whole pasture raised chicken for the BBQ. We then decided to tackle the day without a plan, and just see where we ended up. We parked downtown and stopped in the downtown store to say hi to Katie O who was working the store that day. Sarah, Dad and I worked our way down the streets of downtown and stopped in all the art galleries and various shops. We ended up finding a little hole in the wall café for lunch. It was fantastic! They only have outdoor seating, which meant we were sitting on a little covered patio over the creek. Good people, good food and good view… what more could you ask for? After that we decided to go check out the train station. They were essentially closing up for the day but the engineer and dad got to talking. You could tell that the engineer really enjoyed talking to someone who spoke “train”. Sarah and I were walking around all the trains on display when we looked up and Dad and the engineer were walking towards the middle of the depot. The engineer offered to show Dad how to drive the turntable!! It was really neat; I explained to Sarah that Dad must be in 7^th heaven because trains to him are like tigers to us. She understood, haha. After the train depot, Sarah, Dad and I headed back to the refuge to have a cold beverage and sort through pictures. When 6:30 came around we rounded up the rest of the interns and went into town for dinner at the Rockin’ Pig. And even better, after dinner we got ice cream! YUM.

The next morning we got up early and walked around the habitat loop as the cats were being let out. I toured Dad around explaining how the days schedule works and a little about the type of work we are going to be doing as far as construction, etc. At that point it seemed necessary to get the meat marinating for the BBQ that night. We took the whole chicken and the tri tips and seasoned them, set them in the refrigerator and took off downtown to get some lunch. We had noticed the Balcony restaurant the previous day and decided it would be a good place to have lunch and people watch. We had a great time! The Balcony restaurant is on the second story of the Basin Park hotel and sits over the main street. We had a great view and then these three musicians set up right next to us and played some excellent blue grass/ blues etc. After lunch we headed back to the train depot to take the 2:30 train ride. When we got there the engineer found us and said on the way back to come up to the cab and we could ride up front! It was a beautiful ride, so much green and the creek was nice and full. When the train stopped to turn around, the engineer opened the door to invite us up to the front, all the other guests looked a little quizzical as to why we were getting off the train haha. We climbed into the cab and the engineer motioned to the drivers seat!! Dad got to drive the train! It was awesome. The engineer gave Dad directions on how to drive the train as he drove it back to the depot and even got to toot the horn through the intersection!! We thought the turntable was cool!! When we got back we smashed some quarters on the track and got a lesson on how to talk southern from the conductor.  Finally deciding it was time to leave we headed back to the refuge to start up the grill for the BBQ. Most all the staff and interns came to enjoy the tri tip. Everyone loved it. It’s all they could talk about after Dad left was how good the tri tip was.

The next day was an early start again. I worked my normal Saturday so the Dad could come and get a sense of what I do here at the refuge. I cleaned Tiger row, which is on the compound where the public can self-guide themselves. So, Dad could hang out with me while I cleaned. The compound area is temporary housing, the most recent rescues, so the cages are concrete and need to be well cleaned everyday until they get moved out to the permanent housing in the big grassy habitats. During my lunch break I went back with dad to the room to have lunch and returned to work to do my keeper talk. I talked about niches with the leopards, didn’t have too big a crowd because Bam Bam the grizzly’s pool was being put in which is very very cute. As the summer gets closer, the crowds get bigger and the keeper talk yesterday had about 50 people watching. I was covering the 3 o’clock tour and so I was able to take Dad around the habitat loop again and give him the official tour. After the tour it was time for feeding! Since I did the 3 o’clock that meant that I was feeding compound that day so Dad was able to walk around with us as we fed the tigers in tiger row.  After work we snatched Sarah and Katie O and went out for dinner, our last hurrah before Dad had to leave. We went to dinner at the Balcony restaurant and had a fantastic two and a half hour dinner, visiting, eating great food and watching the sun go down. 3:30AM came very quickly the next morning when Dad had to leave. I was contemplating ways to sabotage his leaving so he had to stay, haha. It was a fantastic three days and I was sad to see it over.

Dad definitely missed the worst of the weather. The day after he left we had a three day heat wave. 90 degrees and 80% humidity.

We had a sad day at the refuge a few days ago. We lost Jerry the tiger, who was a favorite of many. He was very ill and needed to go to the vet due to fact that the vets were at a loss for what was wrong with him. Their plan was to do an exploratory surgery because there was too much gas to see anything in the ultrasound. Our supervisor and two staff members came out to his lockdown while we were cleaning habitats. They put him under anesthesia, they didn’t give him the whole dosage because of how weak he was, so he had his eyes open and didn’t seem to mind. I helped carry him to the transfer trailer, I tucked his feet in and tail next to him. The next thing I heard was that they found a blockage in his small intestine and they were going to remove it and thought he’d be fine. They had opened him up from collar bone to tail to do this exploratory surgery and he was under for 5+ hours. When they finally sewed him up and moved him, he never made it out of anesthesia. He was from particularly bad breeding facility before he came to TCWR and because of which had a very bad heart, which couldn’t handle the anesthesia. They brought him back to the refuge for us to say goodbye, and wrapping your arms around such a majestic animal whose passed is one of the saddest experiences I’ve dealt with thus far.

Construction had begun on the new perimeter fence and I am learning all sorts of things! Yesterday I cut a bunch of drive pipe and tomorrow we use the tractor to drive them into the ground, sounds exciting!

The picture of the leopard below--- her name is Magic and I love her. She and I have gotten very attached to each other over the past month. I can be about 50 ft away behind a series of fencing and talking to another intern or guest and she will hear me and start making her happy noises, letting me know that she sees me and wants me to come over. It can even be her day in, which means she is in a brick building in her lockdown and I can be outside talking to another cat and I can hear her through the walls trying to get my attention. Absolutely the most gratifying feeling.