Sometimes life gets hectic...

I've been slacking a bit. I'm blaming midterms. They are evil, stressful, little things.

So I've got a lot to catch up on. I'll start with my zoo experiences...

Elephants. They're pretty cool, so I was excited to get to hang out with them a little bit. I was amazed by how well-trained they are! The zookeepers would just say, "(Name of elephant), lay down." And the elephant would do it. I know a lot of people are pretty against the whole idea of having elephants in captivity (and rightfully so in a lot of cases), but from what I saw, these elephants were treated with nothing but love and respect. You could tell how much the zookeepers genuinely cared about them, and it was incredible how strong their relationships with them were.

Anyway, we drove down to the cow barn (they also have a bull barn), and it was so weird! I felt like I was in a jail for giants! There were stalls set up inside of the barn that were basically made out of huge jail bars, but they were spaced out enough that humans could easily slip in between them. It made me feel incredibly small.

The elephant we went to see was having some kind of skin issue. She was developing hot spots on her hips, and she was super itchy, so we did a skin scrape. The vet gave her some local anesthetic, and we even used a bit of ice to numb the area, but she was still being a huge baby about it. You would think that with such thick skin, a little skin scrape wouldn't be very bothersome... I've seen chihuahuas take scrapes with more dignity.

This is not my picture, but it shows how thick an elephant's skin is, and I thought it was cool. So enjoy.

The next week, we had to go back to check her for lice (we were pretty sure it was just an allergy issue, but the vet wanted to rule it out). All the vet did was roll scotch tape around her hands, and she patted the elephant down with it, and the tape was sent off to a dermatologist. It was super simple and kinda weird.

Fun fact: A dose of Children's Benadryl for an elephant is over 1,000 mL (depending on the elephant's weight), which is roughly 11 bottles (unless you can get bigger bottles, I suppose). Our elephant friend had to have that twice a day for five days. I can't even imagine what the people at Walmart thought when the keepers went to buy them out of Benadryl...

I also got to take a bunch of x-rays of a hippo skull so the vet could figure out what settings she needed to use to take x-rays of the living hippo's jaw. So that was a fun experiment.

And of course, I spent plenty of time with birds of prey.

I helped force feed a Barred Owl (aka Hoot Owl).

He was pretty grumpy, and he kept crunching the mouse's skull when we were trying to slip it in his beak.

Then I helped dispose of a dead hawk of some sort (I'm pretty sure it was a Red-tailed). It was kinda sad.

I also helped stuff a bunch of frozen bald eagles into boxes to ship to the government (who supposedly disperses them to Native American tribes, so the feathers can be used for cultural things... pretty interesting).

Then I met a Screech Owl, and oh my god, was she cute (she lives at the zoo and is used as an education animal). We had to pluck a bunch of her feathers because she kept breaking them, which was causing feather follicle cysts to form (they are like ingrown hairs for us.. and I had to help pop them.. it was disgusting).

They are so tiny! I want one! (Not my picture either.. my fingers were covered in blood and cyst pus, so I couldn't get a picture of the one I spent time with.)

That's pretty much all of the interesting zoo stuff. Now to the sadness.....

Otto didn't pass his therapy dog evaluation. Honestly, I'm kinda bummed, but I don't feel too bad because A) it was kinda unfair and B) I might be moving soon, and I wouldn't be able to continue taking him on therapy visits anyway.

The reason it was unfair: we had a workshop last month, which was to basically familiarize us with the skills he needed to have to pass his evaluation (so there would be no surprises during the eval). Otto was awesome at it. The only thing we needed to work on was calming him down so he didn't pull on the leash so much (but he was just excited to meet all the new people). So we worked on that, and he improved (still wasn't super great at it, but better).

Well, we had a different evaluator this time (who didn't really seem like a very nice person.. I honestly thought that even before I found out she was our evaluator). Otto went through the tests like a pro. He was seriously awesome, and I was really proud of him. Then we got to the part where there was a group of people sitting in chairs. At the workshop last month, we were told that we just needed to walk our dog around to each person to greet them, which Otto did just fine. But this time, the evaluator told me I had to put Otto in each person's lap. He stayed for a second, then jumped down. Because he didn't say in their laps, she failed us. For that one tiny thing that we didn't even know we had to do (otherwise, I would have worked with him on it, and he would have been fine). I tried to explain that/rationalize with her (because I had put a lot of time into this thing), but she just said (in a really snippy/mean way), "Well, they should have had me evaluate you the first time."

She even went on to say, "It's such a shame. We need more small dogs." So I'm kinda done with that group. There were some really nice people in it.. so I guess it's a shame that one lady can ruin what could have been a great experience.

Their loss. This little guy could have made a lot of people happy.

Okay, I'll stop complaining now. More sadness:

Shaymi, my beautiful hedgehog, somehow managed to get a string wrapped around her foot so tight that it became embedded into her skin. It was so swollen that I couldn't cut the string off without cutting her, so I had to rush her to the emergency vet at 1 am (I always check on her before I go to bed, so I didn't discover it until then). I was so worried they would have to amputate her foot, but luckily, the blood flow was restored, and aside from some wounds and little swelling, she is doing fine. I've been soaking her foot in epsom salt two to three times a day and treating the wounds with antibiotic ointment, and it's looking so much better. The vet was really, really nice, too, and she only charged us for the medication she prescribed (maybe she took pity on my obvious poor, college studentness).

So it's been a pretty eventful couple of weeks. I'm so glad to be on spring break.