Sorry it’s been a while.

I would like to begin this post by apologising for the length of time since my last post. Unfortunately life sometimes gets in the way of volunteering fun. I won’t bore you with the details of working full time. It’s nowhere near as fun as being pecked by a Rhea (Zazu you cheeky devil).

Turns out a lot happens in three months at a zoo. Since my last day there, there has been quite a turnover in animals! Alongside many other changes, a male Lion has been welcomed to the family, after the passing away of Taz the Tiger (the terrifying aunt to the two giant housecats). The long term aim is to introduce him to Josie the female. They are currently in enclosures next to each other, so they can see each other. Apparently Josie is petrified of him at the moment, which is surprising as he seems so calm and lovely, whereas she is a angry madam.

My first day back consisted of a lot of physical work! If you need to lose a few pounds after Christmas (no comments please), I would recommend zookeeping for a great full body workout! I am quite stiff today after a day of cleaning different houses, removing dirty bedding from the gazelle (wet straw is really quite heavy), scrubbing an otter pond (it’s never looked so clean) and chopping up Christmas trees! Many people have donated their old trees to the zoo to use for animal enrichment. So yesterday we chopped the branches of one side of a few, to use as a nice screen in the aviaries. It looked lovely.

Unfortunately I don’t think I have any “what did Tash do this time” stories for this post! Short of being pecked by Zazu. Didn’t hurt, but it did surprise me. I also had to pretend that picking up crickets didn’t freak me out, whilst I collected 45 for the Meerkats. I chickened out of using my hands and opted for tweezers. Then there’s the classic meat delivery “I hate it but I can’t look away” moment. A normal meat delivery would consist of some boxes of steaks and mince meat. Not at a zoo. The meat delivery is a room of whole animals. Hung up. I’ll stop there in case you decided to read this whilst you ate dinner. I’m sure your imagination can fill in the rest.

So actually, having said there weren’t any entertaining stories, I have just come up with three. Zoos are non-stop entertainment.

Animal of the week – the Rhea (Rhea Americana or Rhea Pennata)

This is Zazu, the little devil that pecked me. Actually it’s not, but I’m trusting that none of you can identify these particular Rhea and will just believe what I tell you.

 

Rhea are large, flightless birds. Similar to ostrich but smaller and much less threatening (unless it’s called Zazu). They are from South America, and even within this continent are limited to a few countries of: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. With the exception of the small colony in Germany that has developed after a few escaped from a farm! They are grassland animals and live in flocks of between 20 and 25 birds. They are usually herbivorous, eating leafy plants, but will also occasionally eat fruits, insects and even small rodents and reptiles!

Rhea of polygamous and a male might try and mate with up to 12 females. He will try and impress the ladies with a loud booming call, the sort of noise you would not expect to come from a bird. He will then make a funny run, using his wings alternating with his legs (it’s hilarious to see). If he is successful, the female will lay up to 60 eggs. The male will incubate these, and will sacrifice some outside the nest to act as a decoy for predators. When incubating, the male will charge at any threat to the eggs, and may also use a subordinate male to incubate the eggs instead. Once the eggs have hatched, it takes 6 months for a Rhea to become fully grown, but they will not mate until they are 2 years old.

My 6 Month Probation

Ok I know what you’re thinking: “you had a 6 month probation period? It’s a VOLUNTARY job!!”. Well, no, I didn’t. But now I’ve been there for a good 6 months, I thought it was about time for a nice little self-reflection, a “what have I learnt?” sort of post. So I’ve come up with 10 things I’ve learnt in the last 6 months that I definitely didn’t know before:

1. I’m not as girly and squeamish as I thought I was – if you had told me one year ago today that I would be gutting things and chopping up mice, I would have told you that you were drunk. Long gone is the little girl who refused to go into the butchers with her mum because it smelt. So if you think you can’t be a zookeeper because you don’t even like chopping up chicken, maybe you’re wrong. However, if my posts make you feel sick just reading about it, maybe zookeeping isn’t for you…
2. NEVER let your guard down. I speak from experience when I say that it will be the day you think “NOTHING will phase me today, I’m a pro now” that you will walk into the freezer room and see a horse’s head in a crate. THEN you will think “it’s ok, I’m expecting it now, I’m still a pro, nothing will phase me now” and you will pick up a crate to find ANOTHER horse’s head below it. If you hadn’t guessed, this happened to me last week. NEVER LET YOUR GUARD DOWN.
3. Turmeric is good for arthritis. Well it is for tigers anyway.
4. It is possible to train a jaguar. Almost everything at the zoo is trained to do something or other. Sovereign the jag was probably one of the most wild, “I want to eat you” type of cats, yet he was trained to lie down, get up on his platform and leave his house. Just incredible.
5. BLAG IT (but not too much). This is phrase I once told my mum and she uses it all the time. It’s great for when you are really grossed out by something or don’t quite have the confidence for something. Just don’t show people that you are screaming inside and they will never know. I used this for the horse’s head incident I mentioned earlier. HOWEVER. If you are unsure of something, ie. What to feed an animal, how to lock the gate… NEVER blag it. ALWAYS ask. All the horror stories I’ve heard about a crane being poisoned or a jaguar escaping resulted from someone trying to prove they could do something by themselves when they didn’t really know how.
6. Tapirs LOVE a belly rub.
7. Unfortunately, everything dies. I know this is quite a morbid thing to say, but it is true. There have been quite a few sad situations since I’ve started including the passing away of Roger the tapir, Sovereign the jaguar, and now I hate to say Blotch the tiger. Blotch passed away this week, another victim of feline cancer. By the end there was only a tiny amount of her lungs still working, and the specialists were amazed she lived so long. Such a gorgeous tiger and I’m really sad to see her go. She will be missed.
8. Supermarkets throw away A LOT of produce that are still perfectly useable. The fruit and veg used at the zoo are donated by local supermarkets, and it’s the stock that’s gone out of date and can no longer be sold. A lot of it, is to be fair, gone off and disgusting. There is also a huge amount that is perfectly edible and it’s such a crying shame that most supermarkets will just throw it away. Feeding it to monkeys is a much better use.
9. Cheetah poo REALLY smells. And as a zookeeper it’s important to not be disgusted by poo (and to wear rubber gloves!). The zoo is not a cute and fluffy place, it just happens to have cute and fluffy things living there.
10. Then there are the obvious skills. I’ve learnt the rounds, the systems, what animals eat what, which animals you can go in with, which you can’t and just the general “workings of the zoo”. These aren’t skills that I can put into a list, as there are so many little bits and bobs that I’ve strung together. But in general, I now feel pretty competent getting on with tasks and what has to be done when.

 

Animal of the week – The Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus)

Cheetahs are the fastest mammals on land and have acceleration of 0-60 miles per hour in just 3 seconds. This is only just slower than the rollercoaster “Rita Queen of Speed” at Alton Towers!! (0-60 in 2.5 secs). They use this immense speed to hunt their prey on the African grasslands. They hunt fast prey such as antelope and hares, and use their exceptional eyesight to spot they prey then move stealthily in the long grass until they are close enough to start to chase.

Female cheetahs will have litters of up to 3 cubs and will stay with them until they are 1 to 2 years old. The male cheetahs live alone or in groups with their siblings from the litter. There are only roughly 7,000 cheetahs left in the wild and numbers are suffering as a result of human destruction of their habitat.

Sita the Cheetah enjoying her dinner 🙂

Wild Cheetah

The Circle Of Trust

After a few more weeks of zoo-ing, I seem to find myself within the Zookeeper circle of trust. This means that I am finally being trained up to complete one of the rounds by myself, so would no longer need to be supervised 100% of the time!

So obviously I am not being trained to go in with the tigers by myself… I am doing the birds! The majority of this round is fairly easy going, involving chopping up fruit for the pheasants, feeding peanuts to the parrots, picking up owl pellets and scrubbing the duck pond. The only tricky bit is being able to pluck up the courage to go in with Hector the grumpy Bengal Eagle Owl alone, when he is hissing and lunging at you. That takes courage (and a bucket as a shield) that I am still very much working on! The only other thing that really concerns me is what if I miss someone? No water for that owl that day. I guess the answer to that concern is to not forget anyone. Problem solved.

The other new piece of news that I would like to share with you all is that it’s that time of year when there are baby animals EVERYWHERE. We have another litter of meerkats (that female is a baby machine), wallaby joeys, dove chicks and there are eggs everywhere I look. Last week I went into the staff room and there was a little pen with two pheasant chicks and 2 ducklings that were just so gorgeous. Which makes what happened next quite unfortunate… The ducklings and chicks were put into a pen in the pony field overnight and when they came back the next day, neither of the chicks had heads. It’s like something from a horror movie. No-one really knows what happened! Then, the next day, one of the ducklings got taken by a magpie. Which means that now, we don’t let Pip, the last duckling, out of our sight! One of my jobs this week was to take him down to the field and keep an eye on him for an hour. I can definitely think of worse jobs than playing with a duckling in the sunshine.

I’ve also discovered that Tapir absolutely love having their bellies rubbed. If you rub them hard enough and in the right places, they will roll over onto their backs with their legs in the air, just like a dog. It kind of makes you forget that they are technically classed in the dangerous animal category and have the same classification as a tiger. I took the opportunity this week of taking some rather glorious animal selfies.

Animal Selfies with Pip the duckling and Shana the Tapir

 

Animal of the week – the Bengal Eagle Owl (Bubo bengalensis)

The Bengal Eagle Owl (also known as the Indian Eagle Owl) is a large species of horned owl,  that is light beige in colour with brown marks over the feathers. It also has a white patch on the upper chest and a tuft on the head. They are mainly found on the Indian sub-continent and up to the Himalayas.

They are usually found in pairs (which is true at Dartmoor zoo!) and inhabit areas of hilly and rocky scrub and light forests. They mainly feed on rodents, but will also consume small birds towards winter. They are mostly nocturnal and will usually hunt from a perch, but will also often make low foraging flights. When they catch their prey, they will tend to tear it up into smaller pieces rather than swallow it whole.

The breeding season takes place from February to April, and they will have a nest of a shallow scrape on the floor, usually on a cliff, rock ledge or river bank.  The female will lay 2-4 small, white eggs and will incubate them for roughly a month before they hatch.

Hector the grumpy Eagle Owl

A Tale of Two Halves

Over the last few weeks there have definitely been some high moments and low moments at the zoo. As anyone working with animals would know, anything can happen. I think especially at a small zoo like this, where all the staff work with all the animals, every week is different. People keep asking me what my favourite bit is, and I honestly don’t know the answer. There are so many great things! Although there have been quite a few high moments some of my favourites have to include:

1)      Being nibbled by Pickles the fallow deer as I tried my hardest to do some fence checks of her paddock. Checking posts and making notes are extremely difficult when a deer is tugging at your zip and eating your clipboard.

2)      Rescuing a little injured chaffinch after it flew into a window, and then watching it perch on Colin’s shoulder for the next half hour, whilst we put a new house is the raccoon enclosure. It was definitely well enough to fly off, but it just seemed to enjoy the ride!

3)      Watching Sovereign the Jaguar be released for his dinner, when he seemed more interested in being angry at us than he was in his food. Then continuing to watch him get so angry his nose got zapped by the electric fence (I felt terrible, but it was also hilarious). And catching the whole moment on camera.

4)      The meerkats have had babies. They are TINY. SO CUTE. Enough said.

From Left: The rescued chaffinch, the raccoon with their new house (if you look very closely you can see the chaffinch on Colin’s left shoulder), the meerkat’s babies

Unfortunately at the same time there have been some very testing moments, mostly including encountering unexpected maggots, and learning how to gut a rabbit. I will leave those stories to your imagination – feel free to imagine me as a wimp, as it would probably be quite accurate.

However, the lowest moment of the last few weeks has to be finding out that Roger my favourite tapir had to be sent to sleep. After weeks of suffering with bad back legs, in the end it had gotten so bad he couldn’t even stand up without falling and injuring himself. He was covered in scrapes, bruises, and had broken parts of his face. Keeping him alive wouldn’t have been fair, and even the specialist vets just could not figure out how to make him better. The post mortem discovered that he also had various infections, bronchitis and a clot in his back that effectively meant it was broken. Had he been kept alive, he wouldn’t have made it for many more weeks regardless. For me, this news came as a bit of a shock as I didn’t find out for a week after it had happened.  RIP Roger, your cheeky face, endearing squeals and loving nature will be sorely missed.

Me and Roger – he will be sorely missed

Animal of the week – Common Raccoon (Procyon lotor)

Trying to encourage the Raccoon’s to use their new house.

Raccoon’s are commonly found mammals that occur in a range of habitats from southern Canada down to Central America. They make their dens in trees and will sleep heavily over the winter but do not hibernate fully. They are omnivorous animals and will eat a range of foods including berries, fish, birds, small mammals and fruit. Although they are usually solitary, they will gather in areas that have plentiful food supplies. Active in both day and night, raccoon’s have large home ranges that span from between 1 to 4 km. The female matures at just one year old and can give birth of litters up to 7 young.

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!