Another semester over already. Although this one ended with relief from most of us that we made it through another semester, but sadly, for a few of my classmates, it ended altogether. Just another reminder of how quick it can all end, how important it is to keep our grades up, and once again the biggest reminder of all: how lucky I am to still be here. More info on zoo life at my other blog here.

It still amazes me how busy life is here, how little time I have to do anything that doesn’t involve animals, zoo stuff or studying. But I love it and I’m happier here than I ever have been.

So…..since I haven’t blogged for almost 3 months (gasp!) there should be lots to say, but I’ll try to just talk about the more interesting stuff. (not that everyday isn’t interesting around here: it’s ALWAYS interesting working with animals on a daily basis, you never know what is going to happen!….like the porcupine getting loose the other day….. um yeah…)

I’ll start with way back to March. For a school project, we had to make a trip to LA Zoo to meet with a zookeeper and learn about a certain animal. My group was assigned to the Hippo, which was totally awesome!! We met with the hippo keeper and learned a ton of stuff, and we even got to get up close and touch the hippo which none of us expected! Totally amazing!!! We also got to touch the Rhino as well as she was in the next exhibit and had the same keeper. It was a fabulous day! For one of our classes this summer semester, we actually get to go do “zoo days” at the LA Zoo and Santa Barbara Zoo. We spend an entire day working with a zookeeper in a certain area of the zoo. My first zoo day at LA Zoo is actually tomorrow and I’ll be in the nursery. I’m really looking forward to it!

Also in March, I adopted 2 adult guinea pig females. One was pregnant already and she had her 3 beautiful babies in April. The dogs love them so much and they’re so good with them. The baby piggies adore the dogs and will actually run to them, it’s quite cute.

Wow, March was a busy month now that I think back to it. That was also the month where we started our turnover process at the zoo on the animals we got assigned to. Turnovers is the process of the animals current trainers, basically training us on how to look after the animals, how to train them, feed them, and also for the animals to get to know us. We had to write papers on the animals, spend hours observing them and documenting it all, plus numerous sessions just watching the current trainers work with the animals and then finally we got to start working with the animals ourselves. It took a lot of time and we were going through mid terms at the time as well. I was thrilled to get all my first choices for animals: Laramie, the Golden Eagle; Savuti, the Hyena; Bennie, the capuchin monkey; James, the donkey; and Rupee, the Indian Crested Porcupine.

Me and Steve at the Zoo’s annual Spring Spectacular: this year’s theme was Western. It was a lot of fun!

Now it’s more than 2 months later, our second years have graduated and we are now on our own running the zoo until August when the new group of 1st years arrive and we officially become 2nd years. Excitement. : )

And now we have all settled into a routine with our animals. There is the morning rush around the Nutrition building as we all try to fight for counter space to get our animal’s diets made before we have to be in a show. The afternoons are a bit more relaxed (sometimes) and walking down the back road is an array of animals going for walks with their trainers. The baboons get walked everyday, but while they are out, no other animals are of course. Servals, the pig, birds, llamas, the emu, they are all out there on a daily basis walking around the zoo. We are now walking the donkeys around the zoo too which is very exciting to us donkey trainers. The donkeys are new to the zoo, in fact we just got them in March a little before our turnovers started. 2 of them are still very young, less than a year old and they were born in the wild. The other, James, which is the donkey I’m assigned to, is about 5 and he’s quite a bit bigger than the younger boys, but more stubborn too! None of them had had any training before they came to the zoo so it was starting with scratch with all of them. They are doing amazingly well though and are even making appearances in some of our animal shows.

My left arm is getting remarkably stronger the more I handle the eagle. It’s both terrifying and exhilarating having an eagle sitting on my arm! Not many people can say that I guess! Laramie is a beautiful bird, and while she is enormous and looks like she’d weigh a ton, she only weighs slightly over 10 pounds. BUT when you have that 10 pounds teetering back and forth on your forearm while you’re walking from one end of the zoo to the other, it gets really heavy!! Not to mention the fact that she is a dangerous animal and we have to be very careful at all times: always wear sunglasses as eagles tend to peck at eyes; always wear a double leather glove as if her talons get your bare skin, they go through to the bone, and the scariest one of all (not that the others weren’t scary enough): the eagles feet are so powerful they can easily break a person’s arm in half if they weren’t wearing the glove. She’s left bruises on my arm from gripping me so hard – and that’s through 2 layers of gloves.

Now onto home life: Zoey and Angus are doing good. They got a haircut yesterday and look very cute, all ready for the summer now! I really haven’t done much outside of the zoo lately, and that is due mostly to not having a day off since….March? Yeah. I don’t anticipate having a day off until my one week of holidays coming up in July – when I will be returning to Canada for the first time in a whole year!! When I’m done at the zoo, I come home, eat dinner and usually fall asleep pretty quick.

One thing I can definitely say though, is that my life is not boring. How many people can say they’ve carried an eagle on their arm, scratched a hyena, walked a porcupine, groomed with a monkey and brushed and walked a donkey – all in the same day? : )

* A gorgeous sunny day after a couple days of rain
* clean puppies!! Both Angus and Zoey had baths today : )
* Finding out that I’ll be training a hyena, a capuchin monkey, a golden eagle and an Indian crested porcupine!
* new animals at the zoo
* getting to touch both a hippo and a rhino at the LA Zoo last weekend
* having a great workout at the gym
* getting emails from my family and friends (even though I’m horrible at writing back right away – I’m sorry!)
* snuggling with my puppies after a long day
* being right where I am, right now
* and of course, being in love : )

Today is my only day off until at least mid-April so I’ve been cleaning, doing laundry and heading off to the gym now. I’ll be back later, hopefully, with a longer post. That is, if I can get all 7 papers that I have to write for school done…..

Happy Sunday!

It’s hard to believe I’ve been here for 7 months now…
Hard to believe I’m in my second semester of Eatm already…
Hard to believe we find out what animals we get to train soon!

I do miss scrapbooking a lot but I’m going to throw myself back in for a bit as I’m going to have a couple mini books featured in an upcoming memory makers book! I need to get them done in the next few months. I also went to CHA in Anaheim last week and did a demo at the F & W booth, it was fun to be in that atmosphere again. One of the things I miss most about it is teaching classes and interacting with everyone.

I haven’t been the best blogger these last few months and there is some stuff I left out mentioning as I wasn’t ready to share certain things.

My relationship with Brent has ended but I will always be grateful to him for the good times and the support he showed me when I wrote my book and also for encouraging me to follow my heart here.

My sweet little guinea pig, Fro, who made the long journey here with me, passed away of old age a couple weeks ago. I miss him, he was definitely one of a kind. A few weeks before he died I got him a little friend to keep him company, I knew his time was coming to an end but I didn’t realize it was going to happen so fast. This new cutie is named Clementine and she and Fro became fast friends, they snuggled in the pigloo  together and I know she misses him now as well.

Goodbye Fro, miss you and love you buddy

A couple weeks before Fro died, all the rodents had fun in the tub together

Bella sitting on Fro

Angus and Zoey are doing well, they are so happy here just like I am. I don’t know what I’d do without my little furry sidekicks. They have a great backyard to play in and Zoey actually plays now which is something she rarely did before. It warms my heart to see them this happy.

Zoey and new baby piggie "Clem"

Now on a sad note, I miss my cats Gracie and Oscar so much. They are back in Canada with Brent but I miss them everyday : (

Several of my close friends back home have just had or are soon having babies, including my best friend who had twins almost 3 months ago. It makes me so sad that I’m not there to see her babies and help her out with them, and even worse: I can’t go home until July and then it will only be for a week.
I have been quite homesick these past few months, of course I miss my family and friends a ton. There are some other little things that I miss about Canada too, the beautiful BC scenery for one, living so close to the ocean, and definitely the medical system!!! I’ve just gotten my medical bills for when I was sick in December and had to go to both Urgent Care and the Hospital – and even with my student insurance, I still have to pay some of it. Medical bills are new to me! I also miss certain stores like London Drugs, Save on Foods, Dollar stores (there are some here but not nearly as many as in Canada and the stuff isn’t as good either), A & W, my old local Sushi place, oh and I can’t find perogies or pizza pops here anywhere!!! Weird eh? (lol, I just had to throw that little Canadian tidbit in there, but really when I speak, I do not ever use the word “eh”. no really.)

Apparently I still have my “Canadian accent” and I say (according to my American friends here) “house”, “out”, “about”, and “couch” funny. *sigh* (oh yeah and they are called “grades” not “marks” and Pasta is pronounced “Paw-sta” not “Paa-sta”….)

I’ve also noticed that Pet Stores are way better back in Canada too, more variety, and cheaper prices believe it or not. I thought it would have been the other way around. A really sad thing too about businesses here is that so many have closed up. There are vacant buildings everywhere, stores going out of business… the economy sucks and it shows.

The best things I’m totally loving (food wise) is this place called Fresh and Easy – it’s a grocery store and it’s great! Cheese here is way way cheaper then in Canada and there are way more varieties too (and lots of low fat ones too – yay!). I am so addicted to both frozen yogurt (there are so many self serve places around here with like a million different toppings you can put on) and Shave Ice. If you’ve been to Hawaii, then you’ve probably tasted the best snow cones on Earth called Shave Ice. In fact, they are so good, they don’t even come close to a snow cone in comparison. I was ecstatic when I heard there was a place locally here that is just all Shave Ice and they claimed to be as good as the ones in Hawaii. WRONG. They are so much BETTER than the ones in Hawaii (and I tried a lot of shave ice when I was in Hawaii a few years ago). They have a huge variety of flavors, plus sugar free flavors and they will mix them all up or you can have ice cream added to them. YUM. Best stuff ever. Oh and Fuddruckers is right across the street… oh my goodness the Ostrich burgers are to die for….

Despite missing my family and friends like crazy, I’m loving it here. I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy.

Zoo life is still great, busy but great. I love it, this is what I was meant to do. Lots of sad stuff the past few months though, we’ve lost so many animals due to either illness or old age. Our goat, 4 sheep, bobcat, oppossum, sea lion, sugar glider, wolf, 2 parrots, raccoon, and then our camel and 3 pigs have gone back to their owners. So sad walking by all the empty enclosures every day. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, we will be getting some new animals, hopefully soon.
It’s been raining here lately and I have to admit (even being used to it from living in Vancouver for a few years) it downright SUCKS having to work outside in it.
Wet, cold, shoveling animal poop around, hauling wheel barrels full of stuff, slipping and sliding in mud, all kinds of nastiness (like sticking my finger into monkey poop this morning by accident!). Not fun at all. Then being cold and usually wet for the remainer of the day. bleh. However I still love it here. ( I just updated my Zoo blog today too.)

Being from Canada, you’d think I would be accustomed to colder weather (even though I am from the milder west coast), however, oddly enough I don’t seem to be. As soon as the temperature dips below 50 degrees here (10-12 celcius), I show up at the zoo wearing at least one t-shirt (often with a long sleeved shirt underneath, my hoodie and my big winter/rain coat all zipped up. And I’m usually still cold. I know, I am a disgrace to Canadians. lol
Everyone is always saying to me “how can you be COLD? you’re from CANADA!!!”

Never before have I been so busy, never been so exhausted, never been so happy :)

There is another reason for my happiness lately, his name is Steve.
All I’m going to say right now is that we were really good friends for quite awhile, he’s in my class and I haven’t laughed this often or smiled this much in a long time :)

So yeah there have been some sad endings recently, but here’s to the sweet beginnings : )

Happy New Year!! Yes I’m still here, even though I haven’t blogged for well over 2 months – where does the time go??

I just don’t seem to have as much time on the computer as I used to in my pre-EATM days, hence the lack of blog updates. Lots has happened over the last couple months though, now I just have to try to remember it all!

Rewind back to November….I got to do my first care-taking week at the zoo with a hyena, a wolf and a serval. Totally cool and so much fun. In December I did another week care taking on the same animals. It was great cause I was allowed to talk to them, feed them and touch them. I am so in love with Savuti, the hyena – he is so incredibly intelligent not to mention adorable!

I got really sick mid November for a couple weeks – I think I had the H1N1 virus thing. It was nasty and I was pretty out of it for awhile. Not fun at all, and when I was finally mostly recovered from it, I was right in final exam week! Totally stressful and chaotic time! I was so stressed and so worried I’d screw up one of my finals and get lower than a C in the class – and then I’d get dismissed from the program and I’d be moving back to Canada. So many sleepless nights over this. Luckily, everything turned out great and I got straight A’s in every class, and just 1 B. Whew!!! Finals were over Dec 16 and then we had a bit of a break for a few weeks during Winter intercession at the college. No classes, but we still had zoo duties. I got sick again a few days before Christmas and was still at the zoo every day. It got worse and I ended up spending a few hours at the hospital on Christmas day between my 2 zoo shifts. It was definitely a different Christmas this year for sure – for many reasons. First Christmas that I haven’t been with my parents, that was tough. We had a big dinner at our house on Christmas night for any students in our program that wanted to come, those that couldn’t go home either. Everyone brought food and it was amazing. My friends were so great and understanding while I was sick: staying at the hospital with me, taking me to the nearest 24 hour pharmacy Christmas night, helping with the dogs, etc. And I did get to do a few fun things during the holidays too: Went to see the special holiday celebrations at both Disneyland and Universal Studios, and went to Las Vegas for New Years! A quick trip but lots of fun!

California Adventure Park

Whoville at Universal Studios Hollywood

Our group in Vegas : )

Last week my parents came for a visit! yay!! I haven’t seen them since July and this is the longest I’ve ever been away from them ever. It was so great to see them, I wish I could see them more often. It’s hard being this far away from everyone and not being able to go home.

I did manage to get a bit of scrapbooking done recently! I made a mini book (of course!) for my parents on my life here at the zoo.

So, life here is pretty good, hectic but good. The next semester starts tomorrow so that’s pretty exciting and a little stressful at the same time. Weather has been beautiful – not a winter like I am used to at all! Today I wore a sleeveless top and capris to the zoo!

“Happy” the Alligator

“Peggy” the opossum

Anyway, I’m so very sorry for not posting sooner – but the winner for the last giveaway is:

Cathy Wirt Says:
November 1st, 2009 at 1:14 pm edit

Really? Oct 9 was the last time I did an update? It feels like it was a couple days ago. Things here are going well, but even busier which I didn’t think was possible.

Last week was crazy but also very cool for all of us “first years” at the zoo. The second year students all went away for a week to go on field trips throughout Northern California, sooooo that meant we were left to look after the animals at the zoo!!! EXCITEMENT!!!! We were all assigned different animals, anywhere from 2-4 people on each animal. I was in the Primates area for the week so I was care-taking for Samantha the Gibbon and the three Spider Monkeys (Indy, Maya and Cindy Lou). Unfortunately with the primates (or at least these particular ones) there isn’t a whole lot we can do with them directly, so it was mainly just feeding and creating some cool BE (Behavior Enrichment)  to keep them busy. Depending on the animal, there were some care-takers that were able to take their animals for walks and do training sessions with them. I was envious of them.

here is Samantha, she’s awesome – I just love her! She makes the coolest happy monkey sounds : )

Here she is going through the box of goodies I gave her.

I updated my Animal training blog with more zoo details on what’s been going on, if you’re interested, you can read about it here

So, some other things that have been going on since I last posted on here:

I recently found out that I’m allergic to Soy which really sucks. It was a huge part of my diet and I couldn’t understand why I was getting so sick all the time. I had been totally addicted to Edamame and was eating a ton of it everyday, plus soy milk every morning, and soy protein shakes and bars, etc. I cut all of it out of my diet last week and have been fine ever since! (I did test it out one day and ate something with soy – sure enough within the hour I was sick). ugh, its amazing how much stuff has soy in it too, I’ve been checking labels like crazy. Diary products don’t do so well with me either but I have discovered a really tasty Almond milk so that’s one good thing.

I did get an afternoon off a couple weeks ago and got to go to Disneyland with some of my friends from school (we are all annual Disney passholders). We wanted to see the special Halloween stuff they had there and the Haunted Mansion with the Nightmare Before Christmas in it was awesome!! Space Mountain’s new “Ghost Galaxy” was a huge disappointment, especially considering we waited almost 3 hours to get in. The Halloween fireworks show was amazing though. We had fun, even though the park was INSANELY BUSY – it was the busiest I’ve ever seen it, it was so hard just walking around there were so many people (and strollers…).

Oh, something funny did happen though. We got stuck on the Indian Jones ride, it literally broke down right when we were in front of the big rolling ball near the end of the ride!! The anamatronic Indiana Jones was dangling directly above our heads, it was a little unnerving! All the lights came on so we were able to see all their secret hallways back there and stuff and the big ball kept rolling in front of us but we were able to see how they do it. The secret has been revealed! haha! It took them half an hour to come get us out of the jeep, we had to climb down on a little ladder and then follow the cast member through the hallways to the front of the ride. The good thing was we got fast passes for whatever ride we wanted to go on next.

right above our heads!

Oh – I’m totally into pomegranates right now – it helps that we have a huge tree full of them in our backyard! I picked these a couple days ago:

But my most exciting news actually began this week. The second year students are going away again – next week so we get to care-take on all the animals again – this time different ones! I am in Carns this week (Carnivores) so the animals that I’m assigned to are: the Hyena (Savuti), the Wolf (Lengend) and the Serval (Spitz). I’m SO EXCITED!!! I got to hand feed the serval yesterday and go on a walk with him, and today I got to meet Savuti and pet him through the fence (He is a protective contact animal). I haven’t yet met Legend close up but hopefully I will tomorrow (I’ll also get some photos of her then).

Savuti on his back waiting for more scratches – he was loving the attention!

Just a quick reminder that the Techinques 101 class has started – so if you signed up and you didn’t just get an email from me with the class lessons, please let me know. It’s not too late if you still want to sign up : )

How are those mini book challenges coming for this month? If you’ve completed the challenge and you’d like me to post pictures of your mini album, please email them to me this week sometime. Also if you’d like to be entered in this month’s prize drawing, leave a comment here by November 1 at 11:59 pm.

Since we’re smack in the middle of Fall, I thought I’d share a Fall mini I made that was featured in the last issue of Memory Makers Magazine last month. Fall really is my favorite time of year and this little book means a lot to me. I actually made it about 8 months ago and it’s with photos from last year (obviously, haha). But it is full of all my favorite Fall things, and all things that I had back home in BC, none of which I have here in Southern California. It’s a very different Fall here – it’s still very green, and warm! It’s been in the 90’s all week, and it’s almost November!

As I was walking across campus today it suddenly hit me that it’ll be mid October next week. Here we are in Fall already and today really was the perfect Fall day. Blue skies, not a single cloud to be seen anywhere. Warm but not hot, just right for a tshirt but too warm for a sweatshirt. A slight cool breeze in the air that made me think of Fall, however the grass and trees are still green, and there are no leaves on the ground. A Fall like I have never experienced it before, but I like it.

I’ve mentioned this before, how things get really overwhelming – there are good days and bad. Yesterday was one of the not so great days, was just feeling really tired, worn out, missing home, overwhelmed with tests and projects. When I look at my daytimer and see how many things I have coming up, it makes my head spin. Occasionally those questions do pop up such as “why am I here? why did I give up my whole life and what I had to come here? Was it worth it?” And then this morning I got my answers. Watching the sun come up while walking around the zoo with a miniature horse, feeding a gibbon, going on a walk with a wolf and having the 1500 pound water buffalo lick pellets out of my hand. It’s just these little things that can make an entire day and remind me why I’m doing this. And this is just the beginning.

Walter the Water Buffalo

Walking with Nick the miniature horse

with Coraline the California King Snake

Walking Max, the Black and White Tegu

Weezer, the Opossum

2 very cool Tim Holtz Idea-ology products!!!! Adage stickers and Adage tickets!

To be entered, just leave a comment here (or on any post in October), remember you get 2 entries if you complete this months mini album challenge : )

My question for you this month is: have you started working on any holiday projects? (Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas). If so, I’d love to see them to get some inspiration! Please leave me a link!

So much has happened here the last couple weeks…it’s a little overwhelming trying to remember everything!

A couple weeks ago we had the chaos of the wildfires burning here in Ventura County. My very first experience with them and I’ll admit, it was a little scary! One fire came within a mile from the college/zoo so we were all prepared to evacuate the animals from the zoo. Luckily, it didn’t come to that. Another fire was over not too far from my neighborhood and we were right on the border of evacuations. I had stuff packed up just in case but thankfully once again, we didn’t have to evacuate.

Right in the middle of the fire situation, I came down with a bad cold and was really sick for days. I still went to school and did my regular zoo duties but each minute I had off, I was sleeping. It paid off though and I was all better in a week which is fast for me! I usually get sick for weeks and weeks!

School is going good and I cannot believe it’s half way through the semester already! Excitement is coming up for all of us first years as the second year class is going away on field trips for a week coming up mid October so we all get to be caretakers on the animals while they’re away! This means getting to feed them and getting closer to them than we normally do! I’m going to be in the Primates area and I’ll be caretaking on the 3 Spider Monkey’s and a Gibbon. : )

We also just got our “Handler” status at the zoo which means we can take out certain animals now – any of the reptiles, the rabbit, the chinchilla, the opossom, the emu…  it might not sound like much, but its a big deal to us – when we haven’t been able to touch any of the animals and now we can finally touch at least some of them – this makes us very happy! haha

with Sally the Snapping Turtle

I got to pet this giraffe at a Wildlife Education Center fundraiser

On the home front, the pets are doing great. We have added a new baby to the mix – another little rat. I thought Bella needed a friend so I got a little dark colored rattie from one of my classmates whose rat had babies. Her name is Pip and she is the sweetest little thing. The rats both actually adore Fro so much – its pretty stinkin’ cute! They climb on him and try to snuggle up underneath his chin, and he’s really good with them. I think he’s just happy to have their attention.

I got this cute picture of Zoey a few days ago – I found her in bed like this with her 2 favorite stuffies all tucked in under her chin and arm. : )

Besides school, zoo duties and studying (I’ve never had so much homework and studying before in my LIFE), that’s pretty much all I do. I did make it out on the weekend to go to Knotts Scary Farm with a group of friends from school. (Knotts Berry Farm gets transformed into a haunted park). It was fun – there were some scary mazes, and yeah I did scream quite a bit. My throat was sore the next day because of it!

Part of our EATM group at Knotts : )

the winner is:

jpscraps Says:
September 15th, 2009 at 3:00 pm edit