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9:53 a.m. - 06/20/2008
Panda \"fun\" and blood and fingerprints
So it's been a week since I did my first Panda watch and I don't think I wrote about it. It was boring, yet enjoyable. Actually, boring is the wrong word. More so it just lacked a certain excitement, although it was pretty cool to be manning the web cameras. So pretty much what I did was man the web cameras of the pandas for 3 hours. We're not really taking data yet because its not close enough to the time she would give birht if she were pregnant. The only thing we mark down is when and where Mei unrinates so that samples can be taken to test her estrogen levels.
So, me, my mom, and brother have this long running joke about my brother's daily schedule that was started way back around my freshman year of high school during one of our vacations. A young child described her observations of what my brother does throughout the day as this "eat, sleep, drink, pee-pee, sleep." Cute right? It was if you would have heard her say it. And what's funny is that its somewhat accurate and to this day that's prett much all he does, well maybe there are some video games and some times with the cats thrown in.
But anyway, the point of that story is that the pandas pretty much follow that schedule. They'll eat bamboo for about an hour. Just sit there, eating, then they'll sleep for another hour, then they'll get up to defecate, then eat again, or go back to sleep. On occasion they might find a ball or something to play wiht but that only entertains them for about 10 minutes before they go back to the bamboo, and really it was just Tai, the cub who did any playing. I think the most exciting part of the entire shift was when I actually has to keep my hands on the camera controls cause Tai was pacing so I had to follow him. Oh another interesting thing was when Mei and Tian were both engaging in these undesireable behaviors that we are not allowed to show on camera. (Mei stands on her hind legs and kin of hops up at the keeper door when she wants to go out, and Tian does this thing wiht his tongue) So anyway, I had to have both camreas on Tai who was pacing so I was following him around form difernt angles.
So anyway, that was my "fun" with the pandas. Another quick little zoo tale that tickled me when I really thought about it. So on my keeper day with the lions and tigers, I had finished making diets, cleaning yards and cleaning cages, and asked if there was anything else I could do, becasue I like to keep busy. (I'm super volunteer lol) So Tracy told me that if I didn't mind I could clean the kitchen. Then she told me not to worry about scrubbing it down, just to wipe down all the blood and fingerprints. When I heard that my first instinct was to laugh like she was making a joke, but then I thought about it and well the kitchen is full of blood and fingerprints from diet preparation. Blood just oozes out of that meat when we're making diets, and no one really cleans theri hands everytime they need to touch something while making the diets. Say I'm measuring out meat on the scale, and I need to zero it out or something, I touch the button with the bloody glove, or I need to get soething out of the freezer, again I don't bother to remove the bloody meat stained gloves, getting out the containers wiht the fecal markers in them, same thing, and most of the time people don't use a cutting board wiht the meat so the counters aare all stained. Anyway that little event just tickled me. How many people (other than I don't know hitmen,and other killers or criminals) have a job where your boss can seriously tell you to make sure you wipe down the bood and fingerprints.
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