Friday, July 4, 2014

Zoo Negara #1

Day 1

Sunday morning, leave home at 6.55am, reach destination at 7.30am. There wasn't traffic so I guess I was lucky in that sense. But its Sunday anyways. Its expected..

Supervisor was on leave, so I ended up at a volunteer! Today's area: Savannah.
Only manned by 4 guys. Divided into two section; hooves and african animals. But we had quite a number of volunteers today, so they did most of the work alongside the zookeepers. I'd call them zookeepers, because they look after the animals of their sections. That's what zookeepers do right?

Cleaning poo is absolutely necessary. Because it prevents the animals from falling ill as bacteria could take homage in their poo. Cleaning their enclosures are definitely necessary. It's like how humans would prefer living in their houses, clean. Also because these animals can't move to different location from time to time, their 'home' has to be cleaned.

Feeding them is the fun bit though. I worked at the hooves section today and I had to scoop poop and sweep enclosures while the zookeepers hose down necessary stuff, refill their water bowl and attend to animals that are injured. They get fed twice though. Once with pallets and once more with grass and leaves after everything is cleaned. Them animals were happy to eat. :) I'd like to know if its the optimum amount of food to be given to them though.

Also the zookeepers seems to have much more to do. They were nice and gave me a long lunch break today. Hrmmmm. I wonder what else we could be doing later at 2pm until closing.

The staff here are all friendly and lovely. My bahasa has gotten rusty and it takes me some time to figure out what I would want to say. I feel like everybody aort of knows everybody. :)

There was one playful cow I encountered today. I'd thought it would just mind its own business but it came and gave me a bump on my bum as I was waiting for the volunteer to put the scooped poo into the bag (which was on that rickshaw? That one wheeled thing where it helps you to carry/push things around?). Thank goodness it was only a small push, might have a little bruise but eh. All good! :)

Oh. Zoo Negara is private company owned while the panda enclosure is owned by the government. Which means, I don't think I will have any interactions with the pandas. Even to have a look at them, I have to pay an entrance fees. :(

This zoo just turned 50 years old a couple of days ago. Maybe thats the reason that the ecstatics were not as appealing when compared to zoos that I've visited elsewhere. They are upgrading some stuffs here and there, but I guess it's because we already have the animals here and that we have a functionable structure, tearing it down and rebuilding a new one would be too much. Hrmm...

Can't wait to get home and have a cold shower. Hehe
After lunch wasn't much. Think it was because we finished everything with the help of the volunteers by lunch! Hoorei.

** after lunch
Fed the rhinoceros, prepped food for giraffes.. that was about it. We walked to the bear area. Not sure what for, but there were only 2 people in charge. It had 6 cells for the bears, maybe 4. Not sure how it was structured but I saw one bear pretty up close. :)

People say: what kind of zoo is this? All the animals are sleeping.

What would you be doing if you are living your ordinary life and people would walk pass your windows everyday and just staring at you to get your attention?

I wonder what tomorrow would be like.

***I apologise for the formality, wasn't planning to make this a proper thing by the end of day 5. lol. <3

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