Mammals Part 1: Koalas

G'day guys!

I just finished my 6 week internship. I can't believe it. Time goes by so fast.

My last section was MAMMALS!!!

Of course, I was more than pleased with this. Even though I enjoyed the other sections, I always knew in my heart I was a mammal girl. This department is a lot of hard work, but while you are doing the hard work, you can pet a kangaroo or a koala which somehow makes everything so much better.

The basic routine is that you come in start working in the koala enclosures. You first "condense" all the Eucalyptus or gum in the enclosure. So you go to each of the water stands and take out all the branches, if the branches are mostly eaten or look dry/grimy you chuck it in a trash container and if it still looks alright you put it aside and reuse it.

Dirty Enclosure

Then you empty out the water from the container. Once all of the containers have been done, you take all the discarded gum down to a trailer to be recycled and you put back the alright ones.
Then you go to the Gum Room!

Gum Room! Yum Yum

It's actually fun, it's a smaller greenhouse filled with different species of Eucalyptus and you can grab an array of different ones. Each Koala gets 3 branches. At first, I didn't really know which ones they liked or didn't like or what looked "yummy" to them. But as the week went on, I could really pick out the nice ones and it even started looking yummy to me since I know they would be so excited about it. Haha, It was just really hard to get it out of the containers sometimes. They have really small branches and get tangled really easy, and some of them are really bushy so it can be a little bit of a wrestling match in which I lost quite a few times. Sometimes I would think I found a really nice one and spend some time and energy trying to get it out and it ends up being a really small one with not many leaves. Haha a little frustrating.

One Enclosure's Worth Of Gum

Koala Snuffing My Gum Choice

The zoo has quite a few koalas, we have the koala house that houses 4 males and 8 females plus a.... Baby!!!!

I Mustache Ask You A Question c;

His name is Winston (yes like my fish ;D) and he is one of the cutest things I have ever seen. He's painfully adorable. He's about 8 months old now and is starting to eat the some of the leaves like his mommy c': They grow up so quick!

There are a lot of koalas around the zoo in general, I still don't know where all of them are? I felt like every other day I would discover a random new koala, which is a little embarrassing. I think I just took the for granted. All the ones outside are mature males who need to be solitary since they will fight other males to be macho and such ;) The males inside are still pretty young and aren't as keen to fight.

ANYWAY, after picking out all the Eucalyptus branches, you go back to the exhibit and put the new branches in! Yay! Some of the koalas get really excited about the new food and will come right up while others are really indifferent and just stay asleep.

Pleased With Gum Choice.

 On my first day, I was doing one of the male enclosures and he actually climbed down off his branches and came right up to me. It was so cute.
I was all like:

Except, it was my first day and I'm not allowed to pick them up without a zoo keeper present. Koalas have really weak ribs, they are about the size of toothpicks and can break really easy. So if you don't know how to handle them you can really hurt them. Anyway, this male koala is coming right up to me and I go down to pet him and he latches on trying to climb me. They set me up to work on this alone while they did other projects. So I'm like, "oh god." and try to unlatch him off me and walk away. Which is like the hardest thing ever. Is it even legal to walk away from a koala that wants to cuddle you?!?! Then he followed me and tried to climb up my leg. Okay guys, their paw/hands are made to climb trees and they have some intense nails. Also most of their strength comes from their arms for climbing and such. What I'm trying to get at is that it hurt. So once again I had to pry his hands off my legs and try to just walk away from him again. He was NOT about to let that happen. As I walked away, he galloped toward me and would try to climb me again. Guys, do you know how hard it is to say no to a koala? So freaking hard. But I had to keep pushing him away so he wouldn't use my leg as a branch. So I ended up having to run around the enclosure to prevent him from trying to climb me. So I would run by one of the containers and take all the branches out and keep on moving to stay away from him. I'm sure it was quite a sight. I wish I took a video! He was so determined to get me. Full on gallop/sprint. Nakeisha thought it was because he wanted to mate with me.

I was quite flattered ;)
I wasn't actually aware that koalas made any special noises. I thought that they pretty quite animals and I was semi correct. Koalas, for the most part, do not make a lot of noise unless they want to mate. 

When they want to mate, they make this weird guttural blech, hiccup, dry heaving sound. You can hear for your self here: Koala Mating Call 

I believe you can imagine my surprise the first time I heard it. I thought some animal was dying. I couldn't even figure out what type animal. A mammal? Bird? Reptile?? Then I look up and see Nugget, the koala, making that noise. Ah, everything kinda makes sense now ;) Haha so every once in a while you'll hear the males make that call. For the most part, the females seem fairly indifferent toward the mating calls, except Milly. Milly is such a horn dog! I love it. She'll hear some of the males make their mating call, perk up her ears, race down the branch to the ground and try to jump out of the exhibit to get laid. Nice. So you just hear these jumping and scratching sounds and you look down seeing this very determined female trying to get to the males to get laid. You go girl!!

WATCH: Horn Dog Milly Trying To Get To The Boys

Koalas are not the most active animals, they spend up to 20 hours a day just sleeping! Crazy, but they are pretty cute when they are asleep and when they are awake! 

At first, all the koalas looked the same to me, but as I worked with them more I could start to see little differences and start appreciating that some koalas are pretty, handsome, cute, and not so cute haha. I unfortunately can't the differences between all the koalas, there are a few, especially in females that I can pick out like Cuddles, Willow, Kimberly, and of course little Winston. Cuddles is a sweetheart but she's like a pug in a sense that she's ugly cute. Haha I also like that I can tell her apart. She sometimes babysits Winston to give his mom, Kimberly, a break.

Willow is really pretty, she has the fluffiest little ears and she just has a youthful look about her. She is just too cute!

Then there is Snoopy and Jack who I clean in the morning, they are outside koalas but they are always keen for their food in the morning.

Every week, we also weigh all the koalas and give them some vitamin supplements. The scale is pretty cute, I forgot to take a picture of it, but it's a hanging scale like if you want to weight fruit with some branches for the koalas to hang onto. The zoo weighs the koalas every week to make sure that there is large increase or decrease in weight that could signify a medical problem. Some of the koalas hate their supplement paste, some are indifferent, and some actually like it. One koala, Lilly, really really loves her paste. If she sees you walking in with syringes full of paste her ears perk up and she comes toward you. She then grabs your hand while you put the syringe in her mouth and gives you a death grip and bits the syringe to make it go faster. All the guests thought it was really cute, I thought it was a little scary haha.

I have to say guys, I really loved the koalas. I loved them so much, I stole one ;)

Overall really great time!! It's funny, at first I wasn't that into the koalas, I thought they were pretty boring since they spent so much time sleeping and Nakeisha loved them. By the end, she's way over the koalas and I'm obsessed with them :)

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 :(