Birdies!

[monocleostrich]

Starting Monday, I get to volunteer at the raptor center at the zoo! woot!! I've been volunteering twice a week at Zoomazium, the kids' play and educational area, since January. I originally just wanted to volunteer in the Animal Unit positions, since those are basically "zookeeper's assistant" positions, but when they found out that I know some

Comments

[yamo]

Just make sure none of them are prostitutes.

[cranbonite]

I've got to reiterate how insanely jealous I am of this. The zoo in Boston is pretty "eh" and hard to get to, and they definitely don't offer opportunities this cool. But never mind that, I envy because of RAPTORS. I went through a phase of obsession with birds of prey in 5th grade and it's never really left me and I die and get transported onto a cloud of dreams and happy when I am around them. (The few times I have seen some hawks randomly on trees and lampposts in the city I drop everything and stare until they get creeped out and fly away.)

[monocleostrich]

Me, too! I have been way into them since we did a big class project on them in 5th grade (dissecting owl pellets, etc.). And I always flip out and try to identify them whenever I see them. I've gotten pretty good at telling species from the way they fly.

My favorite local raptors are the turkey vultures. They're so cute!

[kilted_kelt]

Speaking as someone who wields a hose on a daily basis it's not the pants-wetting but the shoe-wetting that you have to worry about. Having wet fet all day will give you jungle rot. Get some good gore-tex shoes of some sort. Raptors are really cool but man does their shit stink!

[monocleostrich]

I'm going to be using rubber boots with these draw-string things at the top. Hopefully that will keep the jungle rot at bay. If it doesn't, I'll switch to gore-tex.

yeah, hooray for enormous bird-poops. Definitely not a fun smell.

[kilted_kelt]

Rubber boots cause jungle rot too. On days that I have to do heavy amounts of hosing and I'm wearing my rubber boots I always end up changing my socks after I'm done hosing because at that point my socks are soaked with sweat. Being a zookeeper is just a nasty dirty job. However, working mostly with reptiles and amphibians is far less dirty and disgusting. I wouldn't mind raptor or other bird crap though - way better than monkey crap any day!

[monocleostrich]

Ewww. Okay, I'll see if I can find some better footwear tonight, then. Thanks!