Lots of yard work got done today, with the help of some new folks on campus. Ranger Brooke joined our team yesterday and will be with us a couple days each week all month.

We, with the help of our entire OLE Team, (DeCario, David, Terrence, Alex, and Savannah) got the lemur/tortoise yard mowed, trees cut and pruned back from the lemur fence, bear cliff weed-eated, bear yard mowed, yard poop-scooped, and the pool skimmed.

All the bears are in the house when we work in the yard. Mimi spent time in a water trough, playing with another water bucket (so sad that I cannot share what she was doing since it was super-silly).

In the photos below, notice Mimi’s two white lines on her chest? And if you look closely on the left, you can see a shadow and blue outline of the water bucket she was tossing around.

What’s making me smile today? A few different things. First, as you can imagine from what was written above, we got a lot done, had a lot of help, and I spent time watching Mimi in a trough. Really, I couldn’t ask for more… but there is more!

What’s making me laugh is we’ve come up with Team names. As mentioned in March, we divided into two non-overlapping teams. I’ve been saying the “Saturday” team and the “Sunday” team for over two months now. In the past couple weeks we’ve taken on new names:

The Sunday-Wednesday morning crew took on the name “Team Copperhead“, since we were literally dealing with copperheads. The Wednesday afternoon-Saturday crew took a more philosophical approach, and are now known as “Team Quokka“. Here’s what Aaron said when sharing why:

Its an Australian mammal that has a fixed “smile” on its face.  We have made this purposeful choice because we felt like no matter what the climate or challenge, we feel like it is important to have a positive attitude and mindset

I am so fortunate to be with people making the most of things and finding humor and joy in the work that has to be done.