As winter slowly turns to spring, it's becoming more bearable to be outside! When you live in a rainy city like I do a little bit of sun can do wonders for your mood. At my zoo, your work load changes with the seasons. My workload is really heavy in the summer, while the winter leaves me with much more "project time." The opposite is true for my friend that handles the North American animals. He's most busy in the winter and summer lets him relax a little. Warmer weather usually means the animals start perking up as well. The lions love sun bathing. Even if it's still chilly outside the lions will lay  right in the middle of the only patch of sun in their enclosure.

            People often ask me how the animals deal with cold weather. Where our zoo is located the winter temperatures average about -1 Celsius but can drop down to -20 Celsius. Animals that are either native or live in cold climates do just fine. This includes our black bears, grizzly, arctic wolves, fox and Siberian tigers. These animals have thick winter coats that insulate them against the cold and all our animals have shelters to seek cover under when it rains.

            For the animals that are accustomed to a warmer climate, we provide them with heated barns. We always leave a door open for them to venture outdoors if they choose, but when they come inside their barns are heated and they are given a nice straw bed to curl up on. If temperatures drop below -15 Celsius we will lock the animals inside for the day. They won't want to venture outside anyways and closing all the gates to the outdoor part of the enclosure reduces cold air in the barn. During one of our “lock down” days I tried to pad all the cracks between the gate and the floor with straw so that the cold air would hardly get through, but my baboons and big cats just played with the straw, pulling it out from under the door and rendering it useless as insulation - at least they had fun with it.

            Visitors often ask me if the tropical or desert animals seem bothered by the cold. I personally don't think they are. A lot of the animals spend time outside even when it's cold. The lions seem a bit perturbed though.

Duma seems to love the snow

Sweetie's not going to let a little snow disrupt her lunch

The baboons are hilarious in the snow. They don't like it when their hands get wet.

This is a rare sight. The ever elusive snow lion!

Alaska blends right in.

OJ looks so beautiful. The snow really brings out his colour.

Ocean and Papa are right at home.

     Some of you may have seen some funny zoo signs during your Internet travels. I think they're pretty hilarious but, as a keeper, I can see that zoos are using humor out of desperation to get their point across. There are so many people who break the rules as zoos and they don't think twice about what the consequence may be for the animals.

     I personally don't care if you lose an arm or your life if you're stupid enough to enter a dangerous animals enclosure, but I DO care that you have sealed the fate of one of my animals. It's common for animals to be put down if they killed or injured a person. It shouldn't be a surprise that lions are dangerous but to some people this is new information. I spend my entire day hyper aware of my movements. I never lean on fences and I'm always aware of where an animal is when I'm inside or standing next to an enclosure. This may appear effortless to you and you might think, “hey, I can do that,” but no, no you can't. You will not be careful and you don't know the animals like their keepers do. The comical signs about “oh noes, you fell in,” or “you will be sent to the after life if you enter this enclosure” are our attempt to say “seriously guys, don't do this,” because we know what the consequences are for your actions and we've tried telling you a million other ways. 

Note: If you truly want to see the fury zoo keeper, then jump a fence. I've only lost my temper twice during my career and both times were because some idiot decided they wanted a closer look at my lion. 

And if you doubt what can happen to you if you jump barriers, then watch this. Warning: graphic content. This video annoys me because they spin it like the bear is some savage that wants to eat people. That's not the case, if you disregard barriers and get in an animal's space then be prepared to get treated like a intruder. It wouldn't have mattered if she was 5 or 6 feet away and nothing had happened, you still do not jump barrier fences.

      The two signs below are our way of saying “don't throw your shit into our animal's home.” If there are any parents out there, think about how you would feel if someone threw a foreign object into your backyard and your child become ill because they ate it or chewed on it - either costing you time and money to nurse them back to health or resulting in their death. I don't think you would be too happy and neither would we. So seriously, don't throw your shit into animal enclosures ever. I'm tired of picking up wrappers and chewed on soothers in my animal enclosures.

      Signs like the one below mean “stop complaining that the zoo smells like a zoo.” Animals are stinky, that's nature for you. In fact, ring-tailed lemurs have stink glands in their arm pits that the males use to stinkify (technical term) their tails so that they can have stink wars against one another to compete for mates. The worst smelling poo I've worked with is bear poo. That stuff is nasty, but I've heard from many keepers who have had the pleasure of working with fish eating birds that they are by far the smelliest animal. So before you stick you note in the complaint box, remember that captive animals are still animals and they come with their adorable looks and their smelliness – it's a package deal.

      The sign below sign is very funny but also very serious. The whole sign reads “Splatter zone.” Hippos spread their poo around by fanning their tale – it's a mating behaviour. So once you're done snickering at the funny sign, take a few steps back.

       When our animals develop health issues, it's our job to fix them. I'm going to share with you a story about just how hard it can be to to cut a tiger`s claws. This story involves Sweetie, a Siberian tiger. She hates people. She growls at everyone, including her keepers and she will get up from laying in the middle of her enclosure perfectly peaceful, and move to sit right by the fence, just to growl at people when they stop to look at her. Sweetie is very old. She's 16. A very general life span for big cats is about 9 years in the wild and they can live to be around 20 years old in captivity. One of the things that happens to older animals is that they, of course, develop problems relating to their age. The zoo we don't doesn't euthanize with age, which is something I'm very happy about. That means we pay for the vet bills, keeper time and all the other expenses that comes with taking care of an animal that's old – some zoo don't, unfortunately. With tigers, it's common for them to develop problems with their nails as they get older. Sweetie has a stiff back end and even though she has logs to scratch in her enclosure the motions might have started to hurt her hips so she probably stopped maintaining them. Or she just got lazy, who really knows the motivations of a tiger. So what happened is they started to curl around and dig into her pads. Eventually she started to limp and that's when we knew something was wrong, but it's really hard to diagnose a problem when your patient won't come within five feet of you. After hours of video taping her and watching her walk we finally realized what the problem was. There is a time when Sweetie is very sweet and that is when she's in heat. She walks around her enclosure and makes calling noises, she also chuffs at her keepers and she'll even lay down and roll around showing us her belly. One day she happened to roll onto her belly when our vet tech was right next to the fence and she got a really good look at Sweetie's feet. That's when we saw how much her nails were digging into her pads.

       So we made arrangements for our vet to come our and dart her so that we could cut her nails and give her a good once over to make sure she was healthy overall. Darting an animal is very stressful. For any of you that have been under anesthetic, you would know that there are risks. Those same risks apply with animals and those risks increase with age. It's actually fairly common for older tigers to have seizures under anesthetic. Darting an animal is also stressful because the drugs we use can kill you. There are drugs that are safe for humans and we use those for our primates but the drugs used for big cats and other large animals are deadly. There are two kinds, I don't know the names of them but I classify them as the drug that will kill you instantly and the drug that will kill you slower so you may have time to get to the hospital before you actually die.

       Our vet arrived on a Friday, which is my day off so I came in to help out. We devised a plan where the vet and I would sneak up on Sweetie in `disguise` in order to try and dart her. We hopped out of our vet tech's van, I was dressed in my black skinny jeans, rubber boots and an ugly mustard yellow sweater I stole from the staff room on my way to the barn. Our vet is in a jeans, collared shirt and sweater vest that nicely compliments his dart gun. We begin walking towards sweetie, who is sitting on a hill in the perfect spot, and our vet is barking orders at me to walk fast or slower so that my body will block the dart gun from Sweetie's view. The whole time I'm praying she doesn't recognize us. Animals know their keepers, so I'm pretending to look my cougars like I've never seen them before. At one point Sweetie looked right at me and I remember holding my breath and hoping she wouldn't take off. Luckily she simply looked away and stayed where she was. We make it all the way around the fence and Sweetie is none the wiser - which makes me feel a little bit like a ninja or James Bond. Luck is on our side because there's only one member of the public around and she's unfortunately got her sketch book out and is drawing Sweetie. And I feel bad because I know we're about to ruin her picture. Our vet puts his gun through the mesh, and for those of you that are imagining some hard core rifle - stop, it's a metal tube. You can blow through it to dart animals in close range and pump it up with pressure to hit targets farther away. Our vet has his shot all lined up and I look like this: O.O. I get very nervous when animals are being darted. I don't like it when the gun goes off because it makes a noise and I always jump; I don't like it when the dart hits the animal because I'm sure it hurts something feirc; I don't like it when the animals goes down because they stumble around and fall over their own feet and it makes me feel worse when I can't stop laughing ta them; and I don't like it when our vet misses. I know that if he misses the shot we'll have to wait for months until Sweetie forgets about our attempt to shoot before we can try again.

       So he shoots and hits Sweetie right in the back of the neck. Sweetie takes off and goes down on the far side of her enclosure. We had to hit Sweetie with three more darts until she was completely out. When you're dealing with animals that are sedated, there's always this moment when you have to approach the animal and you're not totally sure if they're completely out. It's always a little dicey. When we sedate big cats out in the field we use a Kubota with doors so that we can drive in and remain protected. Well that's what we usually do expect once we opened the gate to let our head Keeper drive the Kubota in, our vet just goes sauntering into the enclosure like it's a tea party. And we're all looking at him like he's insane with our months hanging open, wondering if he has a death wish. After our vet approaches Sweetie and we don't see his body being ripped to sheds we decide it's safe to follow him. When an animal is down you work really fast so we were all hovering over Sweetie, our vet tech, the vet, Phil, two other keepers and I, cutting her nails and giving injections, when Sweetie's body starts to shake. Now, the zoo keeper part of my brain said ``it looks like she's having a seizure. That's common with older tigers. Hopefully she's OK,`` and the much larger portion of my brain that has been responsible for keeping me alive for over 20 years said ``She's waking up!! Run for your life!!” and that's exactly what I did. I took off and I could see out of the corner of my eye that the two other keepers were running too. And I'm thinking that maybe we can all fit in the Kubota and drive away as long as we leave the vet and vet tech and head keeper behind. Once I get about 15 feet away the zoo keeper part of my brain takes over and I stop running. Sweetie is my cat after all so I should make sure she's OK, plus my animal brain logic tells me that fifteen feet is a safe distance away from a angry awake tiger – not. By this time too, I realize that the three that we've left for dead are still very much alive. Our vet is already barking orders at us, not the least bit concerned about the tiger. I try to pretend that ``oh yeah I was just grabbing an extra towels, not running away,`` and get back to work. Sweetie didn't have anymore seizures for the rest of the procedure. We cut all of her claws so that her pad was clean and she wouldn't be in anymore pain once she healed. We also took blood samples and gave her a good feel to make sure she was healthy. And as it turned out she's was in amazing shape. She's also very soft.

       We moved her inside the cat house and locked her into one of the stalls. I had to keep her inside for 24 hours to make sure she came out of the anesthetic well. While she was initially waking up she pawed at her face and since her pads were bleeding a bit, she got little blood streaks down her face. It was a ``aw muffin``moment for me because I love my animals and it's really hard to put them through something like that without being able to tell them it's for their own good. The next day, before we let her our, our vet came to check on her. He gave me the OK and I opened the door. Instead of running for dear life like I thought she would, Sweetie strutted out of the cat house stopping to give us a glare over her shoulder as she went. She walked slowly to the far side so that she was as far away from us as possible. She spent the next month glaring at me and making my life as her keeper as difficult as possibly, but when you work with animals that's often the only “thank you” you can hope for.

So much love. It's all about the eyes and they say "I want to kill you."

But she's so beautiful

 

Uh oh! Monday was the first ever BC Family day holiday and I spent it with my family, not updating my blog :P So for this week I'll leave you with a cheetah pic and a wildlife tip!

Wild life tip:

Do not feed bread to wild ducks! Armed with old white bread, many families flock to lakes to feed the ducks. Bread fills a duck's stomach very quickly but doesn't provide it with enough energy to sustain flight. Bread is also very high in sugar. Refined sugar is very detrimental to all animals and can be harmful to their health or fatal. If you want to feed the ducks then bring some fish food instead and stay away from the bread!

If you're a geek, you're a geek where ever you go. Is it bad that animals with names from video games automatically became my favorite??

       I'm back from vacation! I love visiting zoos or aquariums when I'm in other countries because they are all so different. When my husband and I were in Japan we visited Nagoya Aquarium. The aquarium itself is huge, though not all of it is filled with displays. They had 2 species of dolphin, killer whales, belugas and penguins, amongst other little critters. I only caught the tail end of the beluga show, but the part I saw was full of play between the trainers and the belugas. There were three baby belugas as well. One of them was constantly trying to steal the show.

What a ham :D

       Their dolphin show was amazing. I work at a zoo with a fairly limited budget so I'm easily impressed, but this show was something else. They have several dolphins preforming tricks at one time – there is always something to look at! One of the dolphins caught a Frisbee in mid air while others jumped nearly four stories high to reach an orange ball suspended above the pool and there was a huge monitor that displayed an instant reply of tricks you just watched!

Mid air frisbee catch!!

Crazy dolphin jumps with live  replay on the screen!

      

      One thing I've never seen before, but it apparently very common throughout Japan, is descriptions next to fish enclosures detailing how one would go about preparing the fish that you are currently looking at. The cooking instructions at Nagoya aquarium aren't as prevalent as other aquariums, but the fact that this is considered common practice blew my mind. At least they had a conversation sign about tuna – even if it started with “It's delicious... but.” Another thing I found peculiar is that Japanese guests will often exclaim “that looks delicious” while standing in front of a fish enclosure. It's the equivalent of north Americans standing in front of a grazing cow and having our mouths start to water. I just don't understand it.

It's delicious... but

Top right corner shows the prepared version of this fish

      The aquarium was really cool. I would recommend it if you're very in Nagoya. I've heard the Kyoto aquarium is fantastic as well and the Osaka aquarium is home to the world's largest fish tank. It houses two whale sharks! Hopefully I'll have a chance to visit Japan again and see more of their enclosures. (Uh oh, my zookeeper nerd is showing).

  

“I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
No crocodiles, no rhinoceroses
I only like hippopotamuses
And hippopotamuses like me too

Mom says the hippo would eat me up, but then
Teacher says a hippo is a vegetarian

There's lots of room for him in our two-car garage
I'd feed him there and wash him there and give him his massage”

     Most of us have heard the novelty song “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas” by John Coctoasten. It's hilarious and young boy that preforms it is priceless – especially when he only likes hippopotamuses. I don't want to take a song that was made purely for fun too seriously but keeping wild animals as pets is actually a very real problem. It would be hypocritical to act appalled by this song since my zoo's hippo is feature in a Telus commercial with this song playing in the background.

     

    

    Side note: I like Telus because they give back to the environment and they support zoos financially for their contribution to their commercials – with the parameters that anything the zoos use the money on has to be a “green” project. Telus says: “Since 2000, we have collectively contributed $245 million to charitable and not-for-profit organizations and volunteered 4.1 million hours of service to local communities.” Their volunteers have been out at our zoo to help us as well and their contribution is invaluable.

     The reality is that far too many wild animals are kept as pets. There are more tigers kept as house pets than there are tigers in the wild (whaaat?) At my zoo, my lynx, caracal, coyotes and male lion were rescued from people who had kept them as pets. People are often shocked to hear this, but it's true and very legal in several states and Canadian provinces. I can't even count the number of children who I speak to during the year that try to convince me that they should be allowed to have an exotic animal as a pet. I spoke to a boy in the 8^th grade that worked really hard to convince me that he should be allowed to have a pet tiger. He told me that he would keep it in his back yard and that would be plenty of space for it. I countered by explaining that tigers need much more space than that. I also told him that animals never loose their instincts and he said that he would raise it from a “baby” and that would make the tiger love him. I told him gently that even if you have the animal from day one, those wild instincts never leave them and they can turn on you at any time. Several keepers have been killed on the job, it's a risk that we are all aware of. It's a huge misconception that animals in captivity aren't wild. I don't trust any of my cats, I love them but I don't trust them.

     The part of the song that says “Mom says the hippo would eat me up, but then Teacher says a hippo is a vegetarian,” is both comical and sad. Hippos are in fact vegetarians but they kill almost 3000 people a year in Africa. They are aggressive, unpredictable and have no fear of humans. This is true whether you attempt to raise them from infancy or not.

     I think children want exotic animals as pets because they want a connection with nature. They most likely get this fantasy from movies. I think it's good for children to foster a connection with nature and animals, but I try to teach all the children that I meet that the best thing they can do for animals is to respect them and leave them in the wild where they belong. It's a misconception that “there's lots of room for him in our two-car garage.” Animals need space and the freedom to change their location when ever they like, especially migratory animals. 

     Another thing to keep in mind is that it's common around the holiday season to see articles in the paper about animal shelters in your area being over run by homeless dogs, cats and bunnies. Don't forget about your local community. No animals should be given as a gift, but if you and your family gave decided to get a pet this season make sure you head to your local shelter and adopt one. You can also help them out by making a donation or volunteering!

I wish you all a safe and happy holidays. I'll be back from vacation after January 21^st. I'll post another entry then :D