Angry Birds

I would like to start by apologising for the lateness of this entry but I have had severe writers’ block this week. I didn’t think there was anything particularly special to write about, which made me think it wouldn’t make for an interesting read. However, I’ve now thought that it is these “ordinary” days that are the most “real” and an account of these could help if you are thinking about becoming a zookeeper! So here we go…

This week I was on the birds round! The food for the birds gets made up first thing in the morning, so the first half hour or so was spent cutting up berries into small enough pieces. The main part of the rounds are the row of enclosures that house pheasants, doves and touraco (small-ish, African, colourful birds).  Jobs here involve cleaning out and filling up the food and water pots, picking up waste (leftovers and poo), cleaning out the pond, and taking care that Andy the overly friendly touraco doesn’t get too close to your face (she has been known to make someone bleed!)

Other birds on the round include Buzz and Tallulah the Macaws. My job on this round was to feed Buzz peanuts through the bars to try and keep him calm whilst the other keeper went in to clean his enclosure. Despite being moved over to Tallulah’s side, Buzz tends to be a little dramatic when people are in his area, and squawks angrily and annoys Tallulah. Then when he’s let back into his side, he throws all his food on the floor. It’s like looking after a moody toddler.

The last job is cleaning the owl enclosures. A large part of this is avoiding Hector the grumpy Eagle Owl who likes to hang out next to the gate. This week it was especially important as his lady friend had just laid some eggs and he was feeling especially aggressive towards intruders. Using the other keeper with a bucket as a shield, I just about managed to get in to change the water and escape again.

Photos above (left to right): Hector the grumpy Eagle Owl, Me with a Java Dove, Buzz the moody Macaw

 

The large majority of my day involved chopping vegetables into pieces for the Rhea (birds similar to ostrich).  As Rhea are quite large, but have reasonably small mouths, this takes quite a long time. Two crates of rhea food are required every day, with food needing to be cut into pieces the size of carrot slices. By the time I had finished for the day, my daydreams were full of vegetables being sliced and I had a big blister from holding the knife.

The highlight of my day came right at the end on final round, where I helped feed the tapir and capybara. At the moment, Roger the male tapir is hobbling around on really poorly back legs so  hasn’t been allowed out in the paddock where he can roll around in the mud and puddles. This meant his skin had dried out a bit and needed to have a sponge bath to keep him moisturised. Therefore, I got to spend the last few minutes of my day chasing around tapir and capybara with a sponge. Turns out, they loved it and kept nudging my arm as if to say “my turn!” So despite this being a more ordinary week, I can now say I have given a tapir a sponge bath. I don’t know many other people that can say that.

Animal of the Week – The White-Cheeked Touraco

The white-cheeked touraco can be found in forested highland in Sudan and Ethiopia and can be recognised by the distinctive black plumage on the top of the head, with red eye rings and white marks on the cheek. In the wild, it lives in flocks of about 12 birds. The birds spend the night in their roosts within dense vegetation, which is also where they would lay their two eggs during the breeding season. They spend the daytime jumping from branch to branch in pursuit of fruit to eat, and will also eat the occasional insect or small lizard. 

Dartmoor zoo have two White Cheeked Touraco (photo taken from google), including Andy,who is overly friendly and loves to appear in your face when you are least expecting her to.

The Big Cat Keeper Experience

This week was the second week I was put onto the Big Cat round but there was much less blood and guts than previously. The reason for this is that there was a couple paying to tag along on a “Big Cat Keeper” experience. Which basically means that I also got to have a “Big Cat Keeper” experience! Having only done this round once, I was still learning, and probably ended up asking more questions than the couple we were with.  The idea of this experience is that they can be a zookeeper for the day so got to come around with us behind the scenes, checking the enclosures, feeding the animals, even have a free lunch (am I selling it to you yet?). I took this opportunity to act like a tourist and managed to capture some pretty great photos including this excellent selfie of me and Stripe:

As the couple seemed to be pretty fond of the tigers, we thought it would be great to create some enrichment that the tigers could enjoy. This involved putting some chunks of meat into a paper sack and then filling it with straw. Many of the big cats really enjoy objects with unusual scents that they can rub over themselves and make their own. The zoo often uses herbs, spices, pepper or in this case perfume. So, we sprayed these sacks with Dior. I hope they didn’t mind too much, apparently Coco Chanel is their favourite… These sacks got thrown over the wall, and this is what happened next…

Stripe, the Siberian Tiger seemed to really enjoy this enrichment, and spent a long time licking the sack and rubbing her face in it, before eventually ripping it open and finding the tasty snacks inside.

Another form of enrichment commonly used is to put their food out in different ways. This week we put Josie’s (the African Lioness) food up a tree, which forces her to track down and climb the tree to get her food. What took us a while using a large ladder to put up, it took Josie a matter of seconds to get down…

Josie was extremely hungry (and terrifyingly angry), so watched us closely through her hatch when we were putting the food up the tree.

Sovereign (the jaguar) also had his food put out differently, in the form of a scatter feed. His food got chopped into smaller chunks and scattered around his enclosure which forces him to sniff out and track down all the separate pieces.

Other tasks for the day involved feeding otters, bears, lynx, cheetah and fox and also checking their enclosures and cleaning out poo. Oh and of course, as soon as the paying couple left, there were the chores of chopping up a horse’s leg, de-yolking day old chicks and chopping up mice into smaller pieces. You know, the usual. I’m a pro now.

Animal of the Day – The Jaguar

The Jaguar (Panthera onca) is the third largest big cat and can be found naturally in South America. It can occupy a large range of habitats including deciduous forest, rainforest, swamps, grassland and mountain scrub. They are solitary animals and tend to live and hunt alone, with the exception of the mating season. Jaguars hunt by pouncing upon their prey and using their immensely powerful jaws to puncture and crush the skull. They eat a range of animals, including the tapir who have very strong skulls, which shows the power that these animals possess. Other prey includes monkeys, crocodile, deer, sloths and fish.

Dartmoor zoo has one Jaguar called Sovereign. He is a very angry cat who does not like humans to get too close or take photos. He will often lunge at people from behind the fence and stalk you by hiding behind the vegetation. He is also infamous for escaping years ago and luckily he jumped into the tiger enclosure and could not then escape again. Don’t worry, this was years ago and now there is no chance of him escaping!

My Day in the Meat Room – WARNING Not for the Faint Hearted!

This week begins with a warning – please do not read this entry if you are squeamish, under the weather or eating dinner. You will not enjoy it. However, for those that love a bit of gore – then this entry is for you! I thought it was important to include the gory details, as these are the bits that can make or break you in your ambition to become a zookeeper.

This week was the real test of my zookeeper prowess and the week that I had both been excited about and dreading all at the same time. One of my favourite animals is the tiger (ask people I know, I’m a bit obsessed), and this week I was on the big cat round! This is full of the best animals in the zoo (tigers, lion, jaguar, cheetah, lynx, bears, wolves, fox and otters), which means I got to get up close and personal with the big carnivores! However, carnivores eat meat. Which also meant I got to spend a large amount of my day in the meat prep room…

My determined aim for the day was not to seem like a weak, squeamish girl. (Especially having lied in my interview to get the voluntary position. “Noo I’m not at all squeamish and I definitely don’t get my boyfriend to chop raw chicken for dinner because it grosses me out…”). This proved to be extremely difficult. My first task of the day was to remove the egg sack from the chicks that get fed to the otters as they are too high in cholesterol. This is done by slicing down the belly of the chick and squeezing it until all the egg comes out. Sometimes however, it wasn’t quite that simple and the inner organs came out in my finger, which then involved distinguishing what was egg and what was intestines.  I then had to physically pull the legs off each one, so the legs could be fed to the male to stop him stealing all the food off the female. So this was a pleasant first task.

My next task was to chop up a hunk of meat into smaller pieces that could be used for the tiger training. Sounds simple. Except this was not a steak I was cutting up, it was a chunk of horse – hair, bone and all. Having spent a while in the freezer, the chunk of meat was quite disfigured, and after a while of trying my best not to look too closely at it, I realised there seemed to be an eye attached to it. And a tongue. And an ear. Oh my goodness. It was a head. I WAS CHOPPING UP A HORSE’S HEAD. I mean, this is a scene from the godfather or something (well, not exactly, but I’m being dramatic). Fortunately for me, as soon as I realised it was time for break, so I could have my big freak out away from prying eyes. I seriously considered quitting there and then. I finally got my courage up, decided to face my fears. This was a task that had to be completed. When I got back to the meat room, I realised that I was just being ridiculous. This was not a head. The “eye” was in fact the ball end of a bone, the “tongue” was just a flap of meat and the “ear” was just a tuft of fur. I have never felt like a bigger idiot. After this realisation, I found that chopping up meat is a strangely satisfying job. I’m not saying my new career ambition is to become a butcher, but it’s pretty good anger management!  All in all, I think I coped pretty well with my first meaty experience. I know I had a crisis inside my head, but I think I hid it well from the staff. The little 8 year old version of me, who refused to even enter a butcher’s with my mum, would be proud.

The rest of the day was probably the best day of my life. I got to go round each of these animals and help trick them into their houses so we could enter the enclosure with their food. I was within a few meters of lions and tigers, which is not something everyone can say. I also got to witness the training of the bears and the jaguar, which was incredible. I never knew a jaguar could be trained to lie down, stand up, go to bed etc. It turns out it can! I got to go into an enclosure with a lynx (I was terrified, but it was very cool). I got to feed some very yappy but very cute otters by throwing them some beautifully dissected chicks. I got to experience the very real wrath of a very angry tiger (ok, from behind bars, but every roar made me jump out of my skin).

So would I say that my meat crisis was worth the reward? 100000% yes.

 

Animal of the week: The Siberian Tiger

There are 4 Siberian tigers at Dartmoor Zoo, 3 siblings: Blotch, Stripe and Vlad (these were hand raised and are gentle giants) and their aunt Taz (the angry tiger, who lives separately from the others as apparently she might kill them!). Siberian Tigers are the largest of the tiger sub-species and are mostly found in Russia, with some in China and Korea. Although they are still classed as endangered, their numbers of now supposedly stable at around 500.

Tigers are solitary animals and hunt using their incredible stealth. Their stripes provide amazing camouflage, and no two tigers have the same stripe pattern. In order to hunt, they lie low in wait until their prey comes close enough to fatally spring and pounce. Tigers have litters of two to six cubs, and the young cannot hunt until they are 18 months old, so the cubs will tend to stay with the mother for up to 3 years before going further afield to find their own territory.

This is Vlad the largest of the three siblings, in his fave chill out spot!