Volunteering at the national zoo!

So today was my 2nd day of volunteering at the national zoo in dc.  Last week I started out by learning how to prep the diets for the 3 sloth bears named Kahli, Francois, and Hana.  Then I helped clean 1 inside enclosure, and then cleaned another by myself.  I also helped out at the sloth bear demonstration and then was finished for the day.  

This week I started by preparing the morning enrichment, which is made of their morning food inside boxes, bags, firehose pieces, and other items for the 2 bears that went outside in 2 different yards.  Then we took the enrichment with us to the yards.  But before putting out enrichment we first checked the yard for anything wrong such as broken hotwire or downed limbs.  Then we went around and hid the enrichment in treelimbs and behind rocks...we also left some out in the open so the bears wouldnt give up.  After that the keeper shifted the bears around so that only one was inside, then we began cleaning the inside enclosures.  We cleaned one together and then I cleaned 2 by myself and she cleaned one.  I also prepared the inside enrichment with their dinner inside and put it in the enclosures.  We then took the food for the otters, cats, and red pandas down the hill.  That is where I met mook the clouded leopard who chuffed at me....and they said she was shy...lol.  For those who arent cat talk aficionados chuffing is a happy greeting some cats give, such as tigers.  After meeting lovely mook the keeper wanted to take a meatball to the visitor area of the clouded leopards and feed it to ty the male clouded leopard.  The meatball was on a extremely long pole with a skewer on the end.  This is what resulted:

After this we went back up to the sloth bears and because we had 30 minutes left until the demo we measured out the next days meals for the bears.  Then I went to help with the demonstration, well Hana in yard 1 did not cooperate so we did the demo with Francois in yard 2.  I held mealworms in my hand and put a tube up to my hand that was connected to the inside of the yard.   Francois is an insectivore and they specialize in sucking termites out of termite mounds so to show this he sucks on a hole on the inside of the yard to which the tube is connected.  This is a really cool way to show the power they have...its like a mini vacuum.  After that we came back and I ate lunch and waited for the unit meeting. The unit meeting is where all the keepers are there and the curator comes where they talk about issues or possible changes to the animals and their habitats.  After the meeting we went to the cheetah area and  picked up some giant meat bones that nutrition gave to them.  The cheetahs are too delicate to eat them, but apparently the clouded leopards will tear them apart.  We put them into the cat house and then went to start shifting the sloth bears back to the nighttime areas.  I put the dinner enrichment in Kahli's cage and then the keeper shifted her over, then we prepared francois' cage with enrichment items and I logged all the enrichment items in the log.  I also learned the laundry tasks and where to put away the enrichment items after they are dry.

So that was my day....it was long...and I took a cat nap with my cat when I got home.