Babies. They're so good at being distractions.

I didn't get to do anything interesting at the zoo this week, but the zoo itself had some interesting things happen. First, a baby giraffe was born (yay!), but then, it's mom had to be euthanized (no!). From what I gathered, she was suffering from heart failure (along with some other things that I didn't quite get the details about), and the stress of labor was too much for her. It's pretty sad. I was really hoping I would get to see the baby giraffe that the zoo is bottle feeding now, but no such luck. Maybe next week?

Speaking of next week..... AHHHHHHHHHH! MY VET SCHOOL INTERVIEW!!!! It's on Wednesday. Just a few more days. It's all I can do to not freak out every time I think about it. Which is a lot, by the way. I'll be in the middle of class, and it will cross my mind, and I will start frantically quizzing myself in my head. Or start quivering with fear and nervousness. Or panicking. Yeah, that happens, too. 

It shouldn't be this bad, I know. Honestly, I'm fairly prepared for it. I just don't feel that way sometimes (okay, a lot of times). Sometimes, I'm like, "Dude, it's just an interview. You've got this. And if you choke, there's always next year." But other times I'm like, "Oh my god. This is the biggest, most important interview of my life. I can't screw this up. I've worked too hard. I'll be so devastated if I don't get in this year that I'll probably be too depressed to even apply next year. This is going to be bad. So, so bad."

So to distract myself, I'm going to tell you about babies. Babies are cute and cool and happy, right? In general? I mean, I think so. Especially the animal kind. Buuut, I'll warn you now; not everyone thinks that about these particular babies...

Meet Loopy:

Oh god. Yeah... sometimes I forget how ugly he was...

Loop is a starling that was brought to me over the summer by some kids at camp. I tried to put him back in his nest, but I'm pretty sure he had some brain damage (hence the name) because his balance was a little off, and he couldn't quite stay where he was supposed to. So we (myself, the camp's nurse, and some of my bird loving friends) adopted him.

Getting prettier. This was during his awkward teenager phase. He was a little butt-heavy.

I made him some special baby starling food (a mixture of cat food, baby food, avian vitamins, bugs, eggs, and applesauce... yumm), and he thrived on the stuff. Much better than any of us expected (this was mostly due to the awesomeness of the camp's nurse.. she has a way with birds). He even started to become a little less loopy after he learned to fly (though he did enjoy pooping on people's head every chance he got).

And now look at him! He's beautiful! And living the most spoiled bird life possible with the camp's nurse.

I also helped raise quite a few of these guys:

Wow.. I'm starting to wonder how I loved those things...

Unfortunately, their eggs were mistakenly put in the incubator, so we raised them from the day they hatched, which was no easy task. Normally, they are left with their mom's for two weeks, and then we pull them from the nest to make them friendlier.

What are they?

Cockatiels. Who would have thought that mutant-looking creature above could turn into this?

And then there was Meningi, my favorite Silky Chicken chick (short for Meningicoccal.. that's my favorite word):

Isn't he adorable? His brothers were: Meningitis, Ecoli, Salmonella, and Streptococcus.

I'm going to stop there. If I were to post a picture of every baby bird I hatched out/raised last summer, I would be up all night. Seriously. It was close to (if not over) 200 birds. Probably half of which were guinea fowl. We also hatched out quite a few peafowl, a couple turkeys, and some other chicken varieties. And an awesome Red Rump Parakeet that was one of my favorites, but I couldn't find a picture of him. :( We used to cuddle. He was sweet.

And now I have this love/appreciation for birds that I never had before. I get super nostalgic about it all the time. Especially when I'm sitting in the Walmart parking lot, and all those adorable birds are flitting about, eating people's pollution sludge. It almost makes me want to take them home so they can eat and poop on everything in the safety of my apartment. Almost.

Well. I hope you've enjoyed my adorably ugly baby birds. Now I think I'll go back to panicking about my interview...

Roses are red, and hearts are, too...

This is my obligatory Valentine's Day post. So.. happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

I (llama) heart all of my readers!

Since today is all about love and hearts and stuff, I thought it would be a good day to post about one of my favorite llamas in the world. I love(d) him so much. His name was Gandhi (because he "sat in protest" every time someone tried to walk him). Gandhi was a screwed up, old llama. Probably pretty inbred, but he was such a nice fellow that it was pretty easy to ignore his hideousness.

Gandhi had been having some health issues for quite some time (lump on his jaw, trouble eating, etc). He was checked out by the vet multiple times, and we always gave him all of the special treatment he needed (which is why I got attached to him).

Before the summer started to get too hot last year, the llama shearers came to give all of the camelids haircuts, and I guess the stress was too much for Gandhi. The next day, we found his body in the pasture.

Being the gore-fascinated freak that I am, I requested to do a necropsy on him (I was also curious about why he had died, but I'm not a vet so I couldn't exactly make the diagnosis). I had never cut open such a large animal, so I set out with some friends, and we found a few tools we thought might be useful: a box cutter and a broken pair of branch trimmers.

The old, rusty scalpel I found wasn't going to cut through anything, so I sliced through Gandhi's muscles with that handy-dandy box cutter, and when I got to the ribs, I chopped through them with the branch trimmers. Our makeshift necropsy kit turned out to be surprisingly useful.

I look way too happy. I was sad that my friend died, I was dripping with sweat, and I was elbows deep in llama guts. Why am I smiling?!?

After exploring Gandhi's insides, I couldn't really say for sure how he died, but he did have a decent about of food debris in his trachea.. and that's not exactly a good thing.

To commemorate him, I dissected out Gandhi's big, beautiful, loving, llama heart and preserved it in an pickle jar (because a llama heart in a pickle jar is pretty hard to forget).

Apes and Eagles. "What a creative title!" Yeah, I know.

My hedgehog was supposed to have babies this week. I don't think it's going to happen, and I'm pretty bummed.

But. Otto is well on his way to becoming a therapy dog! All we need to work on is walking on the leash (he thinks he can pull me.. I think he has short man/dog syndrome), so I'm pretty excited. He was honestly one of the most well-behaved dogs at the pet therapy workshop (for a Yorkie, that's pretty impressive). I'm so proud of him. He didn't even poop in front of everyone (which he likes to do when we go to new places.. especially pet stores.. the other day, he took a gigantic poo at Alex's work, and some lady was gushing, yes, gushing about the amount of poop he produced.. it was awkward and embarrassing and horrible.. just horrible).

And today was awesome. So I guess the good things outweigh the lack of hedgie babies.

Today, I assisted with a physical exam on a Siamang, which is a lesser ape (a type of Gibbon, actually). And Siamangs are awesome. When I go to the zoo as a visitor, they are one of my favorite animals to see. They're so acrobatic and fun to watch!

I love them! I could seriously watch them flipping around like that for hours. I wish I was one of them... I was really hoping they would be super tame, but sadly, they were not (not the male that was examined, anyway). So the zookeeper got the male into a crate, and then we had to sedate him. He didn't exactly go down easy either.. he was pretty chill after he had a sedative shot, but when we tried to gas him, he woke up a little and fought the keeper that was trying to hold him (he was really strong, too.. I'm glad I wasn't the one holding him).  We did basically every test that could possibly be needed while he was out, so I was frantically running around, processing his x-rays, handing things off to the vet, helping hold his limp head up, cleaning up nervous poop squirts, drawing up vaccinations, and doing whatever else the vet needed me to do. It was pretty hectic.

After all that work, we basically just confirmed that he was very healthy (except for his teeth.. they were kinda messed up, but it wasn't anything serious).

I was given one of his hand prints for helping. When the animals are out, they make prints like this to give to the keepers and to sell to people. Since I'm just an intern, I got one of the kinda messed up ones, but I'm totally okay with that (I honestly didn't expect to get one at all).

After our Siamang friend had recovered from anesthesia, we began preparing for surgery. On a bald eagle. I was so excited.

The eagle had a broken wing (likely the result of getting hit by a car), and we were going to attempt to pin the bones back into place so they could heal properly. I didn't actually get to catch this bird, but I'm kinda glad. It was freaking huge. And strong. And it had a giant beak.. that was kinda dripping blood because it had just ripped the head off of a rat before we went in to get it. So I just opened doors and put a towel over its head.

It looks so elegant even when it's all doped up. That can't be said for many species (humans included).

Unfortunately, when we cut the wing open to make sure that necrosis hadn't set in, we discovered that the bird's entire humerus was completely shattered, which basically meant that there was no way to pin it. The bird would never be able to fly again, and it would be in a lot of pain (physically, but probably mentally, too) for the rest of its life. Therefore, the vet decided that euthanasia would be the most humane option. So yeah... we killed this country's symbol animal. I've never felt so un-American. I hate that a broken bone can completely destroy an animal's life. It's so sad.

On a happier note, the zoo's mountain lion is getting a new friend! It's going to be a while because the mountain lion coming in is still a cub (and was just rescued), so it will be hanging out with people for a bit before being introduced to the other guy, who seemed kinda lonely last time I visited him. I'm really happy he's getting a companion.

Hungry, hungry hippo.

So hippos are supposed to be one of the most dangerous animals in Africa.

(For more info about the horribleness of hippos, check out this interesting question/answer thing: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1862/are-hippos-the-most-dangerous-animal).

Look at those ferocious beasts. (Picture credit: sodahead.com)

 But today, I met a hippo. A hippo named Henry. And he was the most adorable, calm, well-behaved animal I have met in a long while (apart from my dogs, that is).

I was working with the vet, and we were called down to check on a mass in Henry's mouth. I was expecting him to be sedated or something when we got there, but nope. He was wide awake, swimming around in his pond. When we went into his enclosure, he swam right up to us and opened his mouth (much like the hippo in the picture below). And he kept it open. For like, 5 minutes straight.

Those teeth.... (Picture credit: huntercourse.com)

I guess he's been trained to do that for treats, which makes it very easy to look inside his mouth (luckily for us). But then the vet stuck her arm inside his mouth to poke around on his teeth, and I was like, "Dude, what the heck are you doing? He's going to snap that mouth shut, and you're going to lose an arm." But he didn't. He was actually quite accommodating and really sweet. So much so that I worked up the courage to pet his wet, bristly nose. And then.... I, too, stuck my hand in his mouth.

Yeah. I stuck my hand in a hippo's mouth. It was amazing. I'm pretty sure people in Africa would think I'm like a god or something (or maybe they would just think I'm crazy...).  

But anyway, Henry's mouth was basically okay. He had a big lump where a tooth had fractured, but it wasn't causing him any pain, so they're just going to keep an eye on it for now.

Other than this, my day was uneventful. But I'm pretty sure I have a new favorite animal.

:)   (Picture credit: fanpop.com)

Tails and Toes.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.