Reptiles!!~~

G'day!!

So I just finished my two weeks with reptiles! It's a totally different vibe in reptiles versus birds. Everything is a bit more relaxed and slower. Just let the reptiles themselves ;)
The reptile people are really nice. They are a little bit more standoffish it at first, but they are really open to you asking questions and explaining different things.

Reptiles was a little bit more of a challenge for me. I haven't really worked with reptiles all that much, besides just holding friendly ones at various zoos and such. Also, it's hard to know really what to do in this department. Reptiles are not as high maintenance as the endotherms (warm-blooded animals). You don't need to feed them everyday and you don't need to clean them everyday. Charlie explained it well. With birds, everyday has a routine, in reptiles every month has a routine. So it was harder to pick up what to do at first. After a while, I could keep myself busy for the morning with cleaning of the reptiles house (sweeping, cleaning glass), spraying down some of the reptiles, cleaning different exhibits, ect,. Then I would be totally lost in the afternoon since every reptiles was on a different feeding schedule and a lot the reptiles were venomous :c

MAGNIFICENT Tree Frogs

Coastal Taipan

The reptile house is a little trippy at first, it's almost like a fun house. When you are behind the scenes, you can hear the public talking. When you are in the display area, you can hear the reptile keepers talking. So I was starting for feel a little schizophrenic because I would think I was alone sweeping and I would hear voices and couldn't place where it was coming from. Haha

All the reptiles were really cool. I love how intricate reptiles look, with each scale in its place and all the unique color combinations that can occur. I don't understand how people find them so creepy, they are all pretty stunning when you take time to look and appreciate them.

Zen Frog... on a toliet?

He's a ham when people are around

There was this one lizard that reminds me of my mom since it had bright red lips that looks like lipstick. I feel like the lizards are always posing, always ready for a picture.

Robin Lizard Haha

 I don't think snakes like their photo taken as much, they are always all curled up or moving too fast for pictures. The frogs don't move too much so it's not too bad taking pictures of them. It's more that they might be hiding.

So most of my days consisted of feeding/watering/cleaning the rats and the guinea pigs. So I just need to fill the rat's water and food trough and sweep the room. Every Tuesday they do a complete bedding change and clean the whole room. Bleh. It's pretty yucky, but alas, the reptiles have to eat. As we clean the bedding we have to cull some of the young which is sad, but once again, the reptiles have to eat! Then I make the food for the guinea pigs c: They can hear me cut the vegetables and they get so excited I can hear them squeal with anticipation. c: So, of course, I have to go and sit with them for a while and chat with Da Boos. Nakeisha makes fun of me, but they are so cute!!!

Next, I go into the reptile house and sweep and clean all the glass. Very fun work :P I realized I'm really weird about sweeping. I don't like sweeping when I feel like I'm not making a difference (reptile house) and I don't like sweeping when there's so much stuff I will have to be there for an hour to get it all (rat room).  I need the happy medium... of sweeping? Yeah, I know. Random.
ANYWAY. Yes I clean all the glasses. On the first day I was cleaning one of the exhibits in the behind the scenes rooms. So I open up the door to the enclosure and see these children touching all the glass I just cleaned. I was very aggravated. Rubbing their grubby hands and nose all over my glass. I feel sorry for the reptiles having to look at that all day :P I'm pretty sure I was glaring at them and the kids can totally see me. Haha, Oh well. They shouldn't be touching my glass yo!

Next, I spray down some geckos, Boyds, and tree pythons. My first day, they just gave me a little spray bottle and told me to get it very wet. So I did, but my hand was very tired and it took me a very long time. I had to think "Spray Spray Spray, Spray Spray Spray Spray" in the Mandark voice in order to get through it. 

 THEN I realized I can use the hardcore water sprayer and it made it a lot smoother. It's really cute, the Boyd dragons will just lay on their sticks while I spray them and then they lick the water of the sticks. They always look so content when licking the sticks c: The geckos are shy, and they are kinda high up so I don't have much to say about them.

Boyd

The tree pythons aren't really a fan of being sprayed... They curl up and hid when they get sprayed, they aren't cute about licking it off :( Apparently that's how they get their water, but I guess they aren't a fan of being sprayed. Whatever Tree Python! I Don't Care! :( Haha.

It was kinda funny, there are a lot of volunteers that come in for reptiles. They have a chores sheet, but some people don't sign off on what they have done so some chores might be repeated, or it might just me being overzealous about spraying down some of the reptiles. But Andrew, the reptile supervisor, was like, "Uhh, do you need something to do right now?"
I was like, "Why yes I do!"
He's like, "Well you can squeeze all the excess water out of the substrates of the Boyd's and the Geckos. They are way too wet." and he gave me an example and sqeezed the substrate and sooo much water came out!
I was like, "Omg!! I'm so sorry! I'm drowning the poor geckos and Boyd's!"
Haha he was really nice about it, but I was pretty embarrassed. I guess I just daydreamed too much while spraying them down. Sorry guys!

There is this old grandma Iguana that I really like. She was confiscated from customs once upon a time and they have no idea how old she is. Recently she had trouble with her eye so it had to be removed so she has to be in the reptile room to recover. It takes reptiles a really long time to heal due to their slower metabolism and just probably how their skin regenerates.

She's really sweet and she doesn't try to bite or scratch you. She hates being in her cage though. She's always just clawing at the door begging to be let out. The keepers usually let her out during the day and she can wander around the back area or chill with some of the off display lizards in "The Pit". It's just nice to see her outside enjoying the weather and warmth.

I saw the Croc show a fair amount of times. I have some really cool pictures/videos. It's funny, they can either be really fearsome or they won't leave their pond. Phil, one of the keepers, jokes when they don't come out, "oh look, yeah this our apex predator. Real fearsome." as the crocodile slowly pulls its body out of the body. I feel like I can hear it grunting as it raises itself out. These guys are pretty huge. The largest they I have think is 4.7 meters or ~15.5 feet for you Americans. Freaking huge guys! They are really incredible creatures. They are so strong. You would be so screwed if it had its eye on you. They are really stealth, you can hardly see them in their ponds unless they move.

Freshies

Gummy

To the left is a picture of Gummy, a saltwater crocodile with a twisted snout. This mutation occurred from his incubation temperature being too high while developing during the early years of Croc captive breeding. He can eat fine, it impairs his self defense from other males more than food intake if he was in the wild

 I also got to witness some real crocodile wrestling! In one pond there is a male/female pairing. Apparently the female hasn't been coming up to feed as much as she normally would so they were afraid there might be something wrong with her stomach or maybe the male attacked her and hurt her somewhere. So Alex (supervisor) and Hirani (keeper) and Greg (maintenance) had to distract the male in order to get the female out.

Apparently, the time I saw was a huge fiasco. I guess it normally only takes 15 minutes to do all that but it took almost 45 minutes. Haha of course I don't know any better :P The male wasn't taking the bait like he normally would, they couldn't find the female, they would find the female then lose her, ect. Apparently she kept going under the male and that was the biggest problem. It was funny, to distract the male, they tied a rope with a ball of cloth dipped in chicken/fishes juices.

They tied the rope to a palm tree and teased the male to grab the ball. Once the mall grabbed on it started to pull with all its might to get it in the water. It was like watching a dog lose a tug a war. I even saw some death rolls... oohhhh haha So they finally got the male distracted, so they try to find the female, and as soon as they find the female and almost get her, the male comes over. It was quite a sight! I got a lot of videos of them trying to get her out. But as soon as they got her out, my camera dies!! So typical. But I got a couple of pictures...barely. After all that, there weren't any visible injuries to her. The keepers were pretty exhausted after that.

Similar to birds, I am pretend to be an interior designer. I cleaned out a few exhibits. I really enjoy that I can set up the exhibits however I want. I did a rock formation for the skinks and I made sure there were a lot of places to hide since they are shyer creatures.

I strategically placed some cowboy gear in the Carpet Snake exhibit. Haha I was taking a while to place everything, and Hirani was like, "Are you almost done? " I was like, "I think so, how does it look!? :D " She's like, "Umm yeah, it looks alright?" Haha I was a little excited about placing these boots and such :P

Yee-Haw!

I ALSO picked up some coconuts from the surround palm trees for the fijian crested iguana. Oh yeah those are my coconuts that I picked all by myself!!

I helped with some feeding with the froggies, snakes, and lizards. I helped prepare the lizard mix of some yummy veggies and such. They are easy, you just put it on a plate then they eat like none of it haha. We feed the frogs mostly crickets which is fun. I fed some beautiful cave dwelling frogs that basically look like opals some crickets. They will be totally still and then they'll see the cricket and just like freak out with their tongues and NOM NOM NOM!! It made me laugh. I had 3 on my hand at one point and I kept feeding them and they would sit there. I was dying. I wanted to take one home so it could just sit on my shoulder/hand all day and be my constant beautiful companion. ;)

 I also fed some of the smaller snakes some "pinkies" or basically newborn mice that were culled. Some of the snakes wouldn't eat at all and others would grab and wrapped itself around the pinkie really fast. It was cool to watch their jaws unhinge and fit a rat/mouse/pinkie that looks way too big for it.

Corn Snake Shed Skin

The zoo does a snake show every morning. I saw it a couple times with different people It's always fun to watch and learn new things about different snakes. Each keeper has their favorites so each show has different snakes and such. Some keepers like working with the big pythons, some like the venomous snakes, and some like the smaller, more flighty snakes. The one annoying thing about it, like usual, is the kids. Someone is always screaming or wandering about. I JUST WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT DEATH ADDLERS DAMN IT! Haha I don't think I'm going to be a good mom :P

Death Adder

The zoo has a lot of these black-headed pythons. These guys are really cool. They literally look like someone dipped their head into black paint; I almost asked that the first day. I'm pretty sure they would have deported me if I asked that ;P They are popular since they get pretty big, look "scary/venomous" and they can be pretty nice and easy to handle. We use these snakes for pictures with the guests. I enjoyed them. 

 Another volunteer and I decided to exercise some of them on the grass. It was lovely and some the guests get so nervous. Haha. Since we would totally set lose dangerous snakes into the zoo. I guess it is Australia and they are not as keen to sue, so I guess the possibilities are endless. Here's something that kinda surprised/freaked me out a little. While I was exercising the snake, it had to use the restroom and eliminated feces onto the ground. Not a big deal. But what did surprise me was how much it looked like dog poop. Just like a little chihuahua or a Maltese or even a Gigi. It really made me reevaluate all of the "dog" poop I've seen in my life. Maybe a couple of those scats were really snakes! It was a little unnerving.

One of the young Keepers, Locky, who is only 16! 16! I couldn't believe it. You have to be 18 to even look at animals in America haha. He's a really nice guy. He brought in his pet, a pretty small python. It was about 2 ft long and 5 cm diameter-ish. It was really skinny and not intimating looking at all. So I asked him, oh how old is it? He's like, "Oh it's still really young, just a baby basically." I was like, "Oh cool, it's so cute. How big is it going to get." He's like, "Well, it can get up toe 6-7 meters."
HOLY SHIT PEOPLE. THAT'S HUGE!!! My jaw dropped to the floor. I was like, "uhhh, can you even house a snake that big?" He's like, "Well, I'll be out of my parents house by then. I'll figure it out." Haha I was like, "Yeah, you can get a 2 bedroom apartment and give one room to your snake. Then you can scare people who come over. You could bring your date home and be like, 'Oh, you want to meet my roommate? He's kinda a recluse' and scare the hell out of them" I thought it was pretty funny. Crazy-ness.

Not Locky's snake, but near the same size of his

Reptile people are interesting, they have such a fascination with the more dangerous aspect of the job. They love the venomous snakes and the big crocs. I guess they like the sense of danger. While I enjoy them, I don't have that same fascination. I would rather cuddle something then wrangle it into a bin.

Phil with "Zac" the Croc

One last thing! Haha Sooooo, there was this large and in charge reticulated python that was brought in.... it's like maybe 3-4 meters. Soooo apparently, this snake ate a little dog and someone brought it in because they didn't know what to do with it! So to my favorite slut, Gigi probably cannot make a visit to Auntie Ho in Australia because she might get eaten :(