Walking snakes,reading minds and goodbyes
10.1.07
I then spent the rest of the days working with the various departments.
One of my first tasks with the reptile department was actually walking a snake. Now I promise at this point I haven’t been out in the sun too much or developed a taste for Pinga but they had a snake that wasn’t very well. It had no appetite so to try and get it to regain its appetite they were putting it out in the sun for a few hours so it would warm up and start to move about. Plus being out in natural sunlight means it was getting a good dose of vitD3.
Now most people think snakes move quite slow… PAH think again! I was amazed at how fast they move! I thought this was going to be quite an easy task how wrong could I be? The snake wanted to go everywhere and everywhere which is great when you haven’t got snake size drain pipes in the wall, that the snake wants to investigate! So armed with a snake hook I’d let the snake go so far then bring it back to the middle of the grass and it would then head straight back to the wall and try to go in these holes in the wall. I ended up with my foot over the hole and a snake that was getting more and more fed up with that game. Noo didn’t help by coming over and telling me I was a crazy crazy mad girl! By the end of it I was beginning to believe her! If it didn’t head off to the holes in the wall it was heading off to the quarantine section. Either way I was quite glad when I was rescued from that job!
I also went out with the education lot. Every year they help organise a big school education trip to a part of forest the help protect. There’s about 200 kids that go out on this trip and stay in a big building that has dorms a kitchen etc and then they spend the day orienteering and doing experiments along the way. Given that this was all in portugese I didn’t do too badly! That was really fun and I enjoyed it a great deal even if I dint understand most of what was being said I understood the theory!
I then went with the nutrition gang which is just awesome. There are 8 people in this team and they get 1800 animals fed before midday everyday. The feeds are broken down into sections eg carnivore, fruit eaters, fish eaters etc . The keepers come and drop off their bowls from their sections and the nutrition team then collect them and get them filled. The keepers either then come and pick up their feed or it gets dropped off by one of the trucks that goes round and delivers the feeds to the door. Everything is weighed out ,chopped by hand and just blew me away to be honest.
On one of my last days at the zoo I got to work on the small cats section which included the anteaters. The keeper again spoke 2 words of English “no problem”. I was again quite happy to be given a bucket, broom and know what I was doing so I quite happily scrubbed down walls and floors, hose out, squeegee all the water out put bedding down and be aware of the keeper looking in and smiling or shaking his head. We whizzed through a lot of the stuff and when he emptied the bin I put a fresh bin bag in common sense I thought! When were at one of the wolf enclosures there was a student doing some behaviour study’s and she came over to chat to the keeper. He asked her to translate as she did speak English and apparently he had spent most of the morning convinced I was reading his mind. He was flabbergasted that he emptied the bin I had a bag ready, I knew to sweep the water out. By this time I had got the major giggles and said to her to explain in London (trying to explain Kent was too difficult) I am him that I am also a keeper to which his hat came off he doubled up laughing pointed and said “no problem!”. Later on she said that I did his job too well and what am I doing next Monday as usually he cleans all day with me helping he had nothing to do this afternoon. Again I started laughing and got a big hug for it goes to show I guess that laughter and smiles are a universal language! On the afternoon I got to go see the anteaters and help feed them. They are such bizarre animals amazing but very odd.
As well as having all the local papers & news come to the zoo and do interviews etc the time at Sorocaba soon came to an end. On my last night we went to Ronaldos pizza place and had much beer and pizza. I’ve met many good people here and hope to come back.