April is Volunteer Appreciation Month, and the Animal Department would like to shout a huge THANK YOU to all our volunteers who help us to take care of the animals.

We COULD NOT  care for our animals as well as we do without them!!   Besides the “usual” jobs they do  (scooping poop, scrubbing cages, making food, sweeping, mopping, etc), our spectacular volunteers cover a wide range of other tasks large and small.  Here’s a sampling of other things they help us with:

-Mowing the lemur yard
-sorting mealworms
-bathing the steer
-applying lotion to turtle shells
-analyzing poop consistency and color
-measuring out dead mice
-weighing chinchillas
-stringing cheerios on mop heads for the lemurs
-supervising snakes exercising outside of their cages
-making papier mache fake sheep for the wolves
-dusting shelves and deep cleaning the animal rooms
-walking the donkey
-participating in emergency training
-brushing ferret teeth
-making peanut butter pinecones for the bears
-cleaning refrigerators
-moving the “furniture”  (logs, tree trunks, etc) around yards
-creating enrichment devices

Our volunteers also make us laugh,  eat with us,  come in early for special projects,  educate  visitors,  and make life here in the animal department much better.  We love our volunteers!!!!  Thanks everyone!!