1 Comment

Junior keepers

I had a good time showing a group of six youth around the animal department last Sunday during our Junior Keeper program. This program is a chance for kids to come learn what it’s like to be a keeper. We had one junior keeper who returned after participating last year, and one who drove 4 hours all the way from the NC coast! They showed up at 9:00am, and we started off by raking the goat yard and brushing RockyRead more

EnrichBits: A game!

EnrichBits: A monthly (ahem)- ok, quarterly, look at animal enrichment. Sherry found this a long time ago, and it’s a really interesting way to think about enrichment. This is a game to help experiment with what goes into creating an enrichment program. Below is the scenario; what kind of enrichment plan would you come up with? Leave your suggestions in the comments section and try to remember all your categories of enrichment! The zoo recently acquired 1.0 Humans (Homo sapiens)Read more

Nimbus update

Thought you guys might like an update about Nimbus, our farmyard rabbit, who is still hanging out in the building (further explanation). She has up days and down days, and we plan to keep her inside for the winter, and possibly permanently. We are assessing her daily quality of life by watching how much she eats, if her feces look normal, and how she’s sitting most of the day–legs under her or splayed out. We also try to notice ifRead more

Opossums, vultures, and me.

The 3rd floor of the museum, where almost every department had a ton of stuff in storage, is going to be redone and turned into offices. This means all the stuff had to move, prompting departments to do big clean ups and sorting and such. Many items that hadn’t been used in a long time were up for grabs, and I, who love to scavenge, was able to fill a couple of cartloads of things for the animal department! (OthersRead more

thanks

Thanks everyone for all your nice thoughts about Pig. I’ve worked out in the farmyard twice now since last Thursday, and it’s been weird without him there. One of my favorite stories about Pig happened around this time a few years ago, when we got a huge truckload of pumpkins donated to us. We didn’t have much room to store them, so kept them right behind our fence in the farmyard where we keep all of our tools. We knewRead more