Thursday, November 3, 2011

Past Due

I didn't even realize that I hadn't posted in a month. Time has been going by so fast. Even faster than I thought, it turns out.

I'm in a really happy place right now and that's had a lot to do with why I haven't been posting. There hasn't been much changing. Every day is a day at work and when I get home I'm exhausted and ready to change into my pajamas and get ready for bed.

I love being at the zoo. I have no idea what I'll do when I can't go work there five days a week. I'm hoping to extend my internship so I can stay longer than the three months I was initially taken on for. I love the zoo, the animals, the people I work with, the city I get to live in. I'm not ready to leave.

So I'm not going to. I'm going to stay as an intern as long as they'll let me, or until I run out of money. And then I'll go to the zoo less days and go to paying work more days, until the day comes when I get a full-time zoo job somewhere. Or until I have enough money saved up to do another internship somewhere else. That's the plan I'm going with for the moment.

Maybe I'll start posting about my days at the zoo. They're exciting for me, but I never know how exciting my stories will be for everyone else.

A short story or two for right now.

There's a horn bill in our section of the zoo, but birds are in a separate department so we don't take care of him. The bird people take care of him. Anyway, the bird people asked us to include him in our snacktivities (when we throw food to the animals in the afternoon) because he always gets forgotten because he's the only bird in our section. So me and this horn bill have started to bond. I throw him grapes and he catches them! And he recognizes me now so when I walk by he hops over to a nearer branch to see if he's going to get any grapes. He's really cool and I like him a lot because I like moments when you feel like you get to connect with an animal.

I had an otter bite my shoe today. But they're so cute it's hard to be scared of or mad at them.

We got a large donation of pumpkins yesterday, mostly the really small ones, and now we have to try to use as many as possible before they rot. We put a bunch in a box full of hay the elephants had peed on to get them really smelly and then put them in the leopard exhibit. The leopards really like smelly things and the young female still has a lot of play in her, so she'll chase things. I set her pumpkins on ledges so they'd be likely to fall and she'd chase after them. She carried one around by the stem and set it down on a platform. She swatted it a few times before it rolled off and she jumped off the platform after it. She's a lot of fun to watch.

I'm still hoping to come home for Christmas but as of yet have no concrete plans to do so, because I have to get time off at the job that pays me and it's a process.

I'll try to keep this updated a little bit more!

2 comments:

  1. Pictures please Nichole!? More zoo stories too!!
    Love
    Corianne

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  2. Great blog! I am a zookeeper in Chicago and it is absolutely worth everything I had to do to get here. Look forward to reading more about your journey!

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