Today was the first day we got to volunteer at the Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Kendalia. We began by receiving a tour from the executive director, Bill. He took us “below” the gates, where the more exotic and wild animals were contained. In order to go below the gates, we must always be supervised. He guided us around each enclosure telling us snippets of information about each animal. It was also interesting how he mentioned that people shouldn’t call animals “it” or baby talk to them. They should be called “him” or “her”, and treated like they are one of us. It was interesting to think about.
I began the volunteering by scrubbing walls. Let me tell you, there was a lot of bird poop and stains on the walls of this one room. However, one lady grabbed me urgently and asked me to look for a baby opossum that was on the loose. She had me digging through clean laundry to find it, but I never saw it. Then, I had to go through the old opossum cages. To go through the cages, I had to remove the dirty rags inside as well as the dirty dishes. Since I still couldn’t find the missing baby opossum, she sent me on a task to clean the cages. So, I had to scrub the cages, removing the feces and food remains. I rinsed them out, dried the cages, and put them up in a separate room. I was surprised at how tiring this job was. After I was finished with that, I helped four members of my group sort through laundry. The laundry was items that the animals liked to sleep or play with. Another task that I was assigned to that day was to remove staples from the newspapers. The work day today was from 9AM-4PM. While we were volunteering, we learned that there was going to be severe weather that night. The workers at the Wildlife Rescue even told us that they took flash flooding seriously there too, and if there was any water on the road, to just turn around and not volunteer that day. So, we figured that it would be very dangerous to camp considering the amount of rain that was forecasted. Thankfully, Shannon’s father was able to find a place for us to stay in Boerne, Texas. The Riley’s adopted us for that night, and they were so kind and welcoming. We all had a bed or a couch to sleep on. The only family members at the home were the mother, Charleen, and her daughter, Kayla. They had two dogs, one named Cupcake and the other named Kodi. Cupcake was a tiny little dog and Kodi was one of the biggest dogs I have ever seen. I was so happy to be in the presence of dogs. That night, Kayla made us cookies and Charleen ordered us pizza. Also, Tony Parker was their neighbor. I thought that was crazy. Turns out, there was least one tornado that touched down south of San Antonio, which is decently close to where we were staying. I’ll forever be grateful to the Riley family for opening their home to seven college students.
My overall thought of the day: Working with animals is a lot of hard work. Also, I shouldn’t call animals “it”, and I should fight the urge to baby talk animals.
For Day one, it started out rough because I still hadn’t gotten used to sleeping on the ground. I’m tall enough that my sleeping bag would only cover up to my chest unless I curled up into a ball, which was very uncomfortable. So sleeping didn’t happen and so I was pretty tired for most of the day. But when we first got there, we were given a tour by the executive director Bill. He showed us all the different types of animals that they had. They had everything from chimps to rare foxes to jaguars and mountain lions. They were very specific when describing how to interact with the animals. They were wild animals, and weren’t to be given names or be spoken to in “baby talk” and were to be referred to as “him” or “her.” Once the tour had been given, the fun could finally begin.
ReplyDeleteKatie and I were assigned laundry duty, and there was definitely no exaggeration when the employees said there was always laundry to be done. Literally every moment that we thought we had finished doing the laundry and folding it, there was another load to be done and folded. It was so monotonous and tiring, but it was certainly better than scrubbing the walls and cleaning out cages. Plus, we were kept company by a friendly vulture that would try to help us do the laundry. Whenever we had neatly folded the laundry, the vulture would so kindly pick out the bottom piece of clothing and remove it, causing the pile to fall over and make us refold everything. But it was so weird seeing a vulture that wasn’t frightened by humans and would even get close and peck at us.
That night, there was a tornado warning in effect, and camping in an RV park was not the safest place to be during a tornado. Luckily, Shannon’s father knew someone in Boerne, Texas that gave us a palce to stay for the night and the next night. She not only let seven random college kids come into her house, provided us clean clothes, a room or couch to sleep on, and bought all of us pizza and had more than enough breakfast food to satisfy my enormous hunger. They had two dogs that immediately fell in love with me, Kodi and Cupcake. Cupcake was this old, sweet little dog while Kodi was an enormous, fluffy dog that was full of energy and wanted to be the center of attention. Staying at the Riley residence was an amazing time and I can’t thank them enough for letting us stay there during the severe weather.