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.

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.

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!