The other Friday, I hear a radio call for me to come up to the farmyard. I walk up and see a huge opossum sniffing around in the pine straw. I thought to myself….”gees, that’s a huge opossum and why is it out in the daytime? and why are Aaron and Katy so close to it?” Turns out it was our opossum Sonny, out for a walk. Lightning thought it was VERY interesting and was looking at him the wholeRead more
Posts filed in: Enrichment & Training
Build me a house
Aaron gave me some interesting looking popsicle sticks for lemur enrichment which I immediately had another idea for. Keeper Sarah had some down time as well and decided to take part in my project. So we made a little village for the degus. Read more
“Target” click
One of my favorite duties as an Animal Keeper is training with the Ring Tailed Lemurs. We train many of the animals at the museum using operant conditioning. When I first started here, I was familiar with training, I used positive reinforcement for several animals at my previous job- a Serval, African Crested Porcupine, Binturong, several birds including large Macaws, a Raven, Crow, Hawks and Owls. African Crested Porcupine Even Rats- But it wasn’t until working here at the Museum that I really got intoRead more
Misha’s Perch
If you have never thought about it,ponder for a moment what it might be like to have to stand on one surface forever. You’re probably thinking how uncomfortable that would be. Well, for humans it would be because we aren’t made to stand for hours on end and jump off at a moments notice. We are capable of doing these things but our body wasn’t designed that way. Birds are different, they stand for a majority of their livesRead more
Popsicles
We are always on the look out for new and exciting enrichment. Keeper Marilyn and I are both lemur trainers and work together in Explore the Wild on Wednesdays, so we came up with the idea to make some sort of popsicle for the lemurs. We wanted them to be able to hold the popsicle for the themselves while they ate it. So we froze juice and added green beans, celery, and carrots as the sticks. It didn’t workRead more
QuikPost: Just a little newspaper and flour…
Throughout the year, the animal department has groups of people from different places that want to come volunteer their time with us for a few hours… kind of like community service. Often times these groups (usually anywhere from 6 to 20 people) are from various schools or colleges in the area. The group projects may consist of doing anything from mulching the farmyard to cleaning enrichment toys at the bear house. Our most recent group project was based around makingRead more