It's Official

I am back. I have said farewell to my new friends and all the incredible animals that I was fortunate enough to spend time with.
Being in Toledo was a fantastic experience and I'm so glad that I was able to take advantage of such a great opportunity.

One Week to Go

Well I spent all week jumping around from area to area, helping around wherever I was needed at the time. It was pretty busy this week with several of the keepers being on vacation or off for the day. All the same it was a very good week in terms of weather. Much better than the week before.
Unfortunately, my unlimited month of yoga was finished so I have to pick and choose my favorite classes to drop in on this week.
As it is I have only one week of my internship left. Thursday is my last day and my mom is coming up to help me move out on Thursday and Friday. I am so grateful to have had this summer. I learned so much and I have loved working with the keepers and getting to know all the animals. I have made new friends and have overall just had a really good time this summer.
Come Friday, I will be back to Rochester and back to trying to figure out what to do with my future.

Post-Heat Wave

My excuse this time is that I spent the weekend recovering from the heat and humidity induced coma.
I spent a week of 90+ degree heat and at least 80% humidity with the orangutans again. They are particularly funny because the family that grew up here (Boomer, Kutai, Bajik, and Khali) love playing in the water. They play in their pools and we sprayed them with hose misters at some of the roof feeds everyday. It was hilarious to watch them enjoy their little shower. Kutai has what the keepers call a "water dance." When she gets very excited about playing in the water, she taps her feet on whatever she's standing on and everyone likes to rub up against the mesh to get your attention saying their turn now please! They also found it very amusing to hold onto the end of the mister with their lips and then squirt us back.

Over the weekend I found a cute little coffee shop to hang out in and spent some time on our balcony once the storms cooled the weather somewhat.

Now this week I'm starting to float to whatever section wants my help for the day.

I can't believe there is only two weeks left!

Orangutans Part 1

This week was my first week in with the orangutans. We have 7.
The first is Jay. He is considered retired because he is quite old and has some medical issues with his spine, hips, arthritis... We tend to pamper and spoil him a lot.
In the next exhibit are Bajik and Leela. They are quite young (9 & 10) and Bajik is full of mischief. He was partially hand raised so he likes to have attention especially by female staff members and apparently I lucked out because he seems to like redheads. I've had a lot of fun training with him so that the other keeper can work with Leela without Bajik interrupting.
In the last exhibit is Boomerang aka Boomer and his "family" including Kutai and Yaz, two females, and Kutai and Boomer's daughter Khali. Boomer is a little angsty and Khaki is just leaving the age where she was able to get away with pretty much anything so they tend to be very exciting to work with.
Here are some quick facts I learned about ourangs:
The sexual dimorphism that exists with the males' air sacs and cheek flaps is an adaptation to project their vocalizations and territory calls while living solitarily in the forests.
They can understand spoken language. Many animals can learn cues like our dogs learn sit or walk but orangs can actually follow speech rather than just learning specific cue words.
I'm very excited for another week with them coming up!

Another Late Weekly Update

Last week was my second week in the catch all section of my department. I was overjoyed to spend more time receiving dingo love, slogged my way through camel cleaning, practiced meat preparation for the cheetahs, bonded with our naked mole rat colony, and was delighted to receive a lovely one of a kind painting made especially for me by our two otter "babies". 

Over the weekend I found the mall which left me feeling very happy because I first found a yoga block and strap combo pack on sale at Dick's, got an ear cuff earring that I have been looking for since I got the one piercing almost four years ago but haven't been able to find, and then I found really awesome ninja turtle socks. My day was rounded out with the discovery of a Disney store where I found a cool brave journal and one of the sale's girls fangirled a little about how I look so much like Merida and insisted that I should try to work for Disney as a character look a like. Then I went to teavana, got a delicious ice tea and more Merida hair love. Overall, it was a great week and I'm very excited to start this new one because I am now in the orangutan section for the next two weeks.

Late Update

After a rather busy weekend here is my (late) update of last week's adventures.
Last Saturday, I went with my roommate to a park called Oak Openings Preserve. It was really beautiful and we went on a great hiking trail.

This week I started in the M&M section of my area of the zoo. It's basically where all the extra animals are put. We take care of two geriatric Jamaican fruit bats, a colony of mole rats, four spotted-necked otters, three borrowed camels, two cheetahs, and two dingos.
Although I really enjoy all of the animals, it's very hard not to be biased toward the dingos. They have been trained to be taken to a show for the education center and so out interactions with them are a lot like they are regular dogs. We can go in with them, pet them, (get licked by them... on the face,) and take them for walks. Of course I'm sure not too many dogs get chopped up mouse bits as treats for doing a good job walking.
So it was already a very good week. I had lots of firsts: first time feeding a cheetah with tongs, first time gutting and skinning a rabbit (for the cheetahs) first time walking a dingo, first time getting sloppy dingo kisses, first time brushing a camel,... I'm sure the list could go on forever.

Anyway, on Friday, my parents came up to visit. They took me out to dinner, then on Saturday morning we went to the zoo and then out to lunch. It was a lot of fun and it was nice to have different food for once.

That's all for now.

Science Lessony Post

Apart from the noteworthyness that is the fact that I was working closely with wild animals all week, nothing new happened that was noteworthy. I finished my fourth week (how have I already been here for a month!?) which was my second week in primate forest. I realized that I don't really know too much about the specific species of these primates (just more generalized knowledge about higher taxonomic clades in which they are included) so I did some research. In leu of new and noteworthy I will be sharing sciency things that I found cool, interesting, or vaguely informative. I also attempted to take a few pictures of them from the outside so that I could share them but unfortunately it was nap time so the pictures are not very good. I included those pictures as well as better pictures of these species that I found online.

First up:
Allen's Swamp Monkeys (Allenopithecus nigroviridis)

This is one of our two swamps (the boy). They are old world monkeys, closely related to Guenons. Naturally, they live in Congo (in Africa). They are a brown color but their fur has a greenish yellow tint when hit by the sunlight helping them blend into their swampy background. They have slightly webbed feet due to the fact that they have a partially aquatic lifestyle. Very few primates can swim and the keepers were telling me that some of their past swamp monkeys used to swim laps in water features in their exhibits. They are diurnal so they are awake during the day. They are omnivorous eating fruit, leaves, beetles, and worms. However, they are primarily frugivores. They hunt for most of the food on the ground or in water though they are also good climbers. They live in large (multi-male and multi-female) social groups (and little is known about their mating habits) of approximately 40 members. These groups are called tribes, barrels, troops, or cartloads. Weaning takes place at 3 months and they mature at 3 to 5 years. They live into the high teens or early twenties. It's natural predators are snakes, raptors, and humans. Humans hunt them for meat and catch them for pets. They are listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List. Also they get all poofy when they eat because they have cheek pouches.

Look at the sweet faces! (These pictures don't belong to me.)

Next:
Black and White Colobus: Mantled Colobus (Colobus guereza)

This is one of three of our colobuses which are old world monkeys. Their natural range is in the forested areas in a band across central Africa. Their white capes and tails help them navigate the trees. They are diurnal and primarily folivores (leaf-eaters) however they do supplement their diets with unripe fruit. It's eaten unripe to prevent competition from other fruit eating species. They have a sacculated stomach like cows to help them digest their diets. Like the swamp monkeys they move quadrupedally, however unlike the swamps, they are primarily arboreal. They live in groups of 6-10 individuals made up of 1 male and 3-4 reproducing females and their children. They become sexually mature by 4-6 years and males disperse. They are primarily preyed upon by eagles and are listed as least concern on the IUCN Red List.

Fun fact: the name colobus is derived from the greek word that means mutilated due to the fact that their thumbs have been reduced to small stubs that allow them to easily travel along the tops of branched quadrupedally. They are the only old world monkey to have this adaptation.

(These pictures also don't belong to me.)

Third:
Francois Langur (Trachypithecus francoisi)

You can't really see them in this picture but there are three in there. I promise.

These diurnal old world monkeys are naturally occurring in southern China surrounding areas- into Vietnam. They are arboreal and live in tropical (and related) areas utilizing forests and cave formations in inclement weather spending most of their time in trees using a form of semi-brachiation (hand swinging, but with support from legs). They are primarily folivorous.
They live in small groups of 3-12 individuals consisting of a male, his female partners and their not yet mature offspring. They reach sexual maturity at 4-5 years. This species tends toward male dispersion.
They are active and noisy species in the wild (as well as the group at the zoo) with much playing, grooming, resting and feeding.
They are listed as endangered due to hunting and habitat fragmentation from human expansion.

Fun fact: I noticed that their cheek patches extend to a very very thin line of white mustache hairs that are only visible from close up and looks adorable.

(More pictures that don't belong to me so that you can actually see more than their shadows.)

 

White-cheeked Gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys)

 
Please ignore the mess they made. They had a lot of fun making it. We have two more not pictured because they were hiding behind logs and I did not want to take pictures of gibbon butts. 

Gibbons are lesser apes, and as apes they have no tails. They are the smallest of the apes (why they are known as lesser) and are arboreal traversing the trees with brachiation. This is why they have such long arms and very flexible shoulders. It also makes them look very funny when they walk on the ground. In the wild they don't leave the trees very often though. They have natural habitat in the evergreen tropical forests of Southeastern Asia in Laos, Vietnam, and southern China. 
They are considered omnivores because they supplement their diets with invertebrates, however they mostly eat ripe fruit and leaves. 
They live in family groups of a mated pair and their sexually immature offspring (usually up to four of them at a time). They leave the group at 7-9 years. They have a social hierarchy with the female adult dominant, followed by female offspring, then male offspring, and finally the adult male. 
Their vocalizations include a unique sort of calling in which the male and female "sing" together in alternating sequences while performing very exciting acrobatics. It is very high pitched and we have several pairs of ear muff ear plugs to wear when they get going.
Something cool about this species is the coloring. It is sexually dimorphic for adults with the beige females and black males. However, all newborns are born beige so they can blend in with they mother's abdomen. At about 1 1/2 years they have turned black. At this time they've started weaning and spend more time with their fathers. At sexual maturity, females turn colors again back to the beige coat.

Fun fact: Like the langurs, the black furred gibbons' white cheek patches connect to a thin white mustache that is only visible from close up. It is also adorable.

(More pictures I don't own!)

Last but not least:

Ring-tailed Lemur (Lemur catta)

Lemur Cuddle Puddle! This is legit how they take their naps. It's adorable.

Like all lemurs, they are prosimians (Like the gibbons, they are also not monkeys.) from Madagascar. However they are unique with scent glands on the inside the upper arms as well as those at the base of the tail and chest. The males have calloused spurs and scent glands on their wrists that they use to gouge tree branches while they scent mark. They also use their arm glands to scent mark their tail and wave it at a competitor.

They are also omnivorous supplementing their primarily fruit, leaf, and plant based diet with occasional insects and small mammals. When they eat they tip their heads way back to make sure nothing falls out of their mouths like fruit juice.

Unlike other lemur species, they use the ground for travel as well as trees. Other species are often exclusively or almost exclusively arboreal. These lemurs can tolerate less forested habitat. They are diurnal and often perform a behavior called sunning where they sit upright and rest their front legs outstretched on their back legs while sitting in a patch of sun.

They live in social groups anywhere from 3 to 25 individuals. The groups are matriarchal with females dominant and males disperse at sexual maturity. Their hands are not as dexterous as other primates so they utilize comb shaped bottom teeth to groom each other. They are very vocal with clicking location calls and they often mew and sounds exactly like cats.

They are listed as Near Threatened due to habitat degradation from annual burning practices to create pasture for livestock, human exploitation for food and pets, and predation by fossas and civets (introduced) as well as raptors and snakes.

(Some super adorable pictures that I don't own.)

 Baby! Because we have two!

Also this is what they look like when they sun. 

Entrance to Primate Forest

This week I was moved into primate forest. This is where the smaller primates are housed. There are groups of White-Cheeked Gibbons, Langurs, Colobus, Swamp Monkeys, and Lemurs. As much as I'd like to say that they are the monkey house in contrast to the ape house where the gorillas and orangs are, the science nerd in me won't let it happen because gibbons are lesser apes not monkeys and lemurs are prosimians not monkeys. This is a much more active and exiting place to work compared to the very low key and laid back area that is the gorilla holding. It probably helps that there are four gorillas compared to 8 lemurs (including 2 babies), 5 gibbons (1 baby), 3 colobus, 2 swamps, and 4 langurs. If it've done my math right that means there are 22 animals in this area, and smaller more active primates tend to be much messier and harder to clean up after than large ones. The cleaning difficulty is only increased by all the logs and climbing structures in the exhibits that always spray the water back in your face when trying to hose them off and are very difficult to maneuver around. Despite this I really love being in this area. All the activity means there is always something to do which I like and all the babies are super adorable. The lemur babies were only recently introduced to the three outside exhibits (there are three outdoor and two indoor and all the animals are rotated depending on the weather). They are really fun to watch exploring the new areas. They run around like crazy for a few hours and then are tired and curl up into a lemur ball to sun, nap, and snuggle. It's lovely.

Due to some crazy circumstances I also ended up helping out with the orangutans on Friday afternoon. I hadn't worked with the orangs at this zoo yet and so it was very cool to be able to do a fruit and a chow roof feed.

Overall, super awesome week.

Two Weeks

Crazily enough, over the past week dealing with 300-500lb gorillas on a daily basis has become routine. I got to do all sorts of cool things like helping with training and getting to see ultrasound training, taking their weights...
It was a very fun week.
I'm supposed to be going to a new area next week. That will be exciting.

Riveting story of the week: Finding the laundromat.
I went to find a laundromat yesterday. After an hour in the car with my GPS and an obnoxious amount of traffic and construction I found 3 dry cleaners, and two abandoned buildings that used to be laundromats, as well as the sketchy part of town.
When my roommate got back she showed me where she goes to do her laundry. Funnily enough each of the buildings in the apartment complex has a laundry room.
Yup.

One Week Update

The creative title of this post is something artsy and elegant like "The Swift Wings of Time" or possibly something more silly. However the point is that I am still struggling to accept that one week from yesterday was the day that I left my home and moved here for the summer. Time has gone so fast although I have been very busy.

My daily routine is something like this:
Get up absurdly early because I'm paranoid about being late.
7:30 - 4:30 spend day at an amazing zoo (in my opinion - doing one of the best jobs in existence) currently with the gorillas.
5:30 yoga class
Return to apartment
Fall into bed declaring that I have never slept in a place more comfortable and I shall never move from it henceforth.

Repeat.

Probably the weirdest thing for me is how at home I feel already. I left knowing absolutely no one here and I already feel like I have so many people here that I know. My roommate and I get along very well. All of the people I have met at the zoo are incredibly nice. There are several people that I eat lunch with most days that are just a few years older than me and we get along very well. I also got to know a few of the other interns. At yoga, most of the other students are middle aged or older women, however, there are a few who were closer to my age as well as a few older gentlemen. Maybe it's something about the kind of people who are drawn to yoga, but all of them have been incredibly nice and welcoming.

Speaking of yoga, joining this studio has to be the best idea I have ever come up with and the best money I have ever spent. As someone who has never taken a formal yoga class, being in a class has been one of the most calming experiences of my life. I leave feeling refreshed and yet I also feel the exercise. Having the hands on instruction is also wonderful; both instructors are incredibly nice and helpful. This way I can be sure that I am actually doing it properly, although according to them I have very good alignment and just a few things that I have to work on. Everything else is just a matter of building up strength, endurance, and flexibility through practice which I will definitely be doing a lot of over this summer.

I can already tell that this summer will be one that I will never forget and cherish forever.

Four Days In...

... and the verdict is that I'm completely certain the rest of my adventure is going to be fantastic.

Over the weekend, I got to know my roommate a lot better. She is very nice, and we get along well despite the fact that she is more extroverted and party prone than I am. She is Persian so we have a bit of a language barrier sometimes, but she is very good at English so we get on alright. Over the weekend she took me to a gathering (at a wonderful and really close by park) with some of her Persian friends who also go to school here and we did a lot of picture taking and sports like frisbee and fake volleyball. One game that they taught we was a Persian variation of dodgeball. There are two teams, one of which breaks into two parallel lines and the other team is in the middle. With one (soccer) ball, the outer team passes the ball back and forth and the inner team tries to dodge. If you're hit you're out and if you catch the ball, one of your out teammates can come back in. When all the people are out the teams switch.

My roommate and I also found out that the park has some lovely bike paths that are great for jogging. Unfortunately we also discovered that if you stay after dark, which apparently you aren't supposed to, a police car drives down the path to look for you and give you a stern warning. Oops.

I also LOVE the Toledo Zoo. Every exhibit I have seen so far has been roomy, well-built and well-designed for the animals that they are holding. I was told that they are really well funded because they receive money from the taxes of people living in Lucas county, so on Mondays anyone who lives there gets free admission.

As a primate intern I will be working in the four subsections of the "Primate" section. Primate is in quotation marks there because it includes primates and other random animals that didn't really fit with any other animals. I am working for about two weeks in a section then being switched to a new section. I started in with the gorillas; the other sections are orangutans, primate forest (which includes several different species of primate: lemur, gibbon, colobus, langur... I think there might be one more but I'm not sure off the top of my head), and M&M (This section is mole rates and more, or the miscellaneous mammals that are supposedly the small mammals tacked on to the Primates and Small Mammals group:naked mole rats, fruit bats, spotted-necked otters, dingos, cheetahs, and today we added camels).

There are four gorillas: the silverback is Kwisha, and the three females are Nia, Jo(hari), and Kitani. They have such fantastic personalities and I've really enjoyed the past two days working with them, despite their tendency to bang loudly on things when they get excited or just because. I've done quite a bit of cleaning of course, but I've also gotten to help with diet prep and distribution, enrichment, and all sorts of other exciting zoo keepery things.

Today was super exciting. I got to hand feed Kwesha some chow (he is 435 lbs. no big deal) so that we could separate them to clean part of the stalls before they went outside. Then I went to go watch a procedure when one of the animals was put under to get x-rays on his healing surgery to fix his torn acl. To finish off this very cool day I also got to watch some training for the baby lemurs. There are currently two babies and they will soon need their vaccinations and so they need to be trained to separate from their mothers and go with a keeper without them or their mother getting too upset.

Then I went to a place called Lotus Yoga and signed up for classes. The atmosphere of the little place was lovely and I can't wait to start tomorrow.

My Summer Adventure

Just like that, I've graduated. It doesn't seem like it took enough time but there it is. The future looms before me and I still have no idea "what I want to be when I grow up."

However, this summer I am staying in Toledo. I have an internship at the zoo as I primate keeper. I figured that I should restart blogging because I want to have a chronicle of my travels with hopefully many more to come.

So far of note on my world map I can say that I have been to a few Caribbean Islands, Spain, Hawaii, and Italy. I am hoping that this summer is the start of my plans for traveling between now and whenever I figure out what I want to continue studying.

I moved in today. I drove whatever I could fit in my car and brought it to a small apartment complex right near the University. The items that crowded my room at my school house and my room at home barely fill the corners of this room. It's not the biggest room I've ever had if you count the semester I had a Dugan room to myself but my sparse possessions that seemed like a lot when I was perpetually packing over the past two weeks make it look barren. I have more space than I know what to do with.

In addition to this lovely room I have my own bathroom. My roommate seems nice, although when I came in today the apartment was hot and dark rather like a cave.

The only downside is that there is no Wegman's here. I already miss it.