Day 3: Flyspray, Mice and Vet Visit!

Today was quite interesting... Started my day with fly spraying the tigers. That's right, fly spraying. Flies apparently love to eat the tiger's (and lions) ears, so every day someone has to go out and tempt them over to the fence and then fly spray their ears. So I walk out to the food prep building (a little smelly dinky shack with a cooler, some tables and knives) and grab a hunk of rancid pork, chop it up and throw it in a bag (they love any meat, but the smellier the better). I then went in search of the fly spray and was surprised to find that they use bronco- the same stuff I put on my horses. So then I got to get up close and personal with each and every one of the tigers, feeding them off of treat sticks and spraying their ears while they are distracted. They don't really mind but won't come up to the fence without some tempting tidbits. My favorite couple of tigers are Rajiji, Kizmet and Mona- Rajiji can be very temperamental but he just has these very deep eyes and always talks to you. Kizmet and Mona both always come up to the fence and rub and chuff at you affectionately. Here is Kizmet:

In the den house behind her you can see one of her enclosure mates- Max, who was one of the few tigers who would not come out. I pride myself in that I got all but three of the big cats today, which is a lot more than usually refuse to come out- I'm sure that was more due to the rancid pork than me...but I can still pretend they like me. :)

So after the flyspraying was done, I got to do some enrichment with all of the small cats. This was tying a dead mouse (donated from one of the local laboratories) to the end of a string attached to a bamboo pole- a fishing pole if you will. I then dangled it outside of their enclosures, trying to tempt them into running, jumping and attacking it as they would in the wild. Interestingly, only one of the caracals was even slightly interested in it, while almost all of the servals and ocelots LOVED it. I had some really excited cats, including Renee, the three legged ocelot,who chased me around the enclosure and did a fantastic job getting the mice off the string. One ocelot, Magoo,was more interested in the string than the mouse- he would get the mouse off, drop it safely inside the enclosure, and continue to grab the string and play tug of war with me until he lost his grip. Too cute!

Unfortunately, dead mice smell kind of funny, and after spending a couple hours with them, including occasionally tearing them into bits for the cats and tying them onto strings, my lunch meat sandwhich was just not appetizing... all I could smell was mice, and kept imagining that my turkey was mouse meat... yum. Needless to say, I am starting to understand why the keepers are vegetarians! About lunch time I realized how badly my poison ivy had gotten... both my arms are covered, though my right arm is super swollen and rashy. It started to creep farther up my arms as the day went on, and it also showed up on my face.

So I am pretty itchy! If you look on my wrist you can see these two really nasty bug bites I have which are pus-y- the other interns looked at it and thought that it might have been fire ants. After talking about these, of course we jinxed someone. Unfortunately that someone was Geoff (the guy whose couch I am staying on). He got attacked while on a tour near the end of the day and went into mild anaphylactic shock, had to go to the hospital, etc. Poor guy... I ended up driving him home.

After lunch, the vet came out! Every Wednesday the vet comes out, drops a couple of animals and does physicals if there isn't any sort of emergency to be checked on. Today they did physicals on Mary Stewart (a caracal) and Oliver (an ocelot-Renee's enclosure mate). Knowing that most of the interns/externs are pre-vet or very interested in exotics, they make sure we all got to at least watch some part of the process, whether it was the dropping of the animal or the physical itself. Luckily, they called the interns: Josh, Kristen, Rachel and Melanie, and myself to come watch, and help with, the physical on Oliver. This was incredibly cool. Since they don't have any fancy medical equipment, they take heart rate, respiration rate and temperature every 5 minutes to monitor his process- the interns and I got to do this, which was awesome. For anyone who is interested, the temperature was right around 100, heart rate between 90 and 100, respiration rate around 35/40. The vet used a combination of 3 drugs to dart him and put him under, though I missed the exact names.  They then inserted a needle into his bladder to try and get some urine, took a blood sample, checked for any stiffness in the joints or unnatural growths, took the weight, checked his ears and teeth, gave him advantix (for large cats (LOL)), a rabies shot (the cat version- nothing has been studied or tested for exotics so this is the best there is), and a second vaccine whose name I unfortunately missed. On a side note, the vet did tell me that they gave ferret distemper shot to the tigers, because the ferret version of the vaccine is more stable than the dog version- all three species get canine distemper. Anyway, she then gave him another drug to bring him out of anasthesia, and they popped him back in the dog crate before he woke up.

We are all feeling how soft his coat is, and pulling out fleas (ew!).

More flee catching. The vet is in the back, and the three upfront are Rachel, Melanie and Kristen.

They let us take temperatures, heart rates and respiration rates. Josh is taking the heart rate. Lenore (a keeper) can be seen on the right, as well as the vet (blond).

Needless to say, this was probably the coolest experience of my life. I got to pet and feel an ocelot! The rest of my day was much less exciting- I climbed up on top of one of the enclosures and cut down as many branches as I could get from the two HUGE tree limbs which had fallen on top of a servals cage. This was the serval I had a picture of yesterday- Santana. He was pretty wigged about me being up there, but behaved himself well. Unfortunately the two big limbs were embedded in the chain link and without a chain saw, they were not coming out! But we did get all the rest of the weight off of the cage, which made the enclosure much safer.

We cleaned up everything, I drove Geoff back, made him some dinner (he is still feeling pretty bad from all the drugs they gave him), and am now relaxing! Going to call my sun and stars ASAP. :)

~Rich With Life~