Thursday, May 22, 2008

Zoo Adventure

So, I work at Willow Park Zoo, which is pretty awesome, but I totally got my butt kicked working there last weekend. One of the first animals I feed are the Pronghorn Antelope. Until recently they were really nice, but now the male has his horns, and he tried to gore me! It was seriously intense, I had to put a coffee can between me and his horns and walk backwards out of the enclosure. The next day I brought a cattle prod with me, but knew that I would actually use it, so I ended up fending him off with a shovel.
He looks pretty innocent in this photo, but I was seriously shaking by the time I got out of there. Later in the day I had to spray out one of our ponds and I fell in twice. It was absolutely lame! Plus, both times I slipped there were people watching. It was unfortunate because now I totally hate that pond, which has one of my favorite birds there, the Hooded Merganser.

Darling, right? Eventually I got around to helping feed the tropical birds we keep inside. One of the birds is this crazy Sulfur-crested Cockatoo named Madge. We've had a bit of a love/hate relationship since I started, I call her Garry because she reminds me of one of my friends. Anyways, one of my co-workers was helping feed the animals with Madge/Garry on her shoulder and the crazy birds reached out and bit me on the side of the face! I admit I was pretty startled by it, usually she just nips at me, but this was freaking intense! Later, after she was back in her enclosure, I went to feed her and she totally latched on to my thumb. It got super infected and hurt quite a bit. Now I terrified of that birds, which is silly because I'm bigger than her.
Here's a picture of Madge before she was all rabid and bitey.
However, I should note that not all the animals at the zoo are out to get me. One of my favorites in Nova, our albino porcupine. She's totally friendly and absolutely adorable.
I'm also a huge fan of Ruddy Ducks. They don't do much, but they have a blue bill, which is about the coolest thing I've ever seen, they make me happy just seeing them.
Anyways, I have to go in to work tomorrow, and I'm hoping that it won't storm and that I won't be bitten or gored by anything.

1 comment:

Lovely Lizzy said...

We're going to come to the zoo and see all the crazy animals. I'm curious as to how Tyler will react. He's afraid of all dogs. Well not Lightning. Fun blog though. It took me forever to find. Your comments didn't show up on my blog. Neither did LMs. Anyway, we'll come up soon.