Austin Zoo and Animal Sanctuary blog 4 (Jana Stuhr)

The first thing I did today was clean the tortoise barn with Kait. This was very interesting to do because the tortoises had to stay inside because of the cold so we had to work around them. We scooped up their old bedding and messes they had made then rinsed out the pens with water and squeegeed the excess water outside. Then I spent probably about two or three hours doing laundry. I only made a small dent because the comforters I was cleaning were so large only one could fit at a time in the washer and dryer. The zoo is in the process of having a new laundry room installed with more washers and dryers. All week long I’ve seen the employees outside working diligently to dig out a space for the new water line. After laundry I met the group at the kitchen and we split up and shadowed zookeepers as they worked in different sections of the zoo. I was able to shadow Katie the zookeeper on the farm animals section. As we went around feeding them she told me the names of the alpacas and the pigmy goats. My favorite part of the shadowing was getting to play with the baby lamb they had received on Christmas that had been abandoned. The lamb’s name is Lana; she is very shy, but vocal, bleating a lot. Once I had food in my hand though she was more than happy to come over and eat from my hand while I petted her. She was the softest creature that I have ever felt. Once I finished helping Katie I met the group back at the kitchen and we headed out with Chris to do deer bones this consisted of digging through parts of deer to find the meatiest ones. These will be fed to the tigers, lions, and other big cats. Oh one other thing when I was shadowing Katie she took me over to the Mountain Lions and showed me that if you meowed at them they would meow back because they can’t roar like the other big cats. Anyways after we did the deer bones we went and did feedout and I was able to pet the very friendly black pigs. Their hair is very bristly, but I liked how it felt. I finished out the day in the office loving on Freddie the guard dog. The thing that I love about this zoo is that the people are in the business for the animals. None of the animals are bred they are all rescued. Either from abusive and or neglectful situations is given up by private owners, or the Austin Zoo and Animal Sanctuary acquires them from other zoos when they get too old. The zoo has three legged animals, animals with deformed limbs, old and arthritic animals, and animals that will never even be on display for public viewing. Although they will never be displayed they will always have a meal and a safe, warm home for the rest of their lives. In my opinion this is the only kind of zoo that should be in operation, one that rescues these wild animals that have been taken from their natural habitats for whatever reason, brought to the United States then abandoned.