Meet The Education Animals Part 2

It has been a while since I did Meet The Education Animals Part 1. I finally remembered my camera today while I was doing DOD (Docent of the Day - me feeding, watering, cleaning the education animals every Sunday for those of you who are new or just forgot).

This is Electra. She is an 11-year-old Eclectus Parrot. The whole cocking her head sideways like this is her "I'm curious" look or maybe a more accurate translation would be "What the hell is that?" She is finicky about who she will go to and can be a little temperamental. She acted like she wanted me to take her today, but I am still leery since she was attacking the inside of her cage trying to get to me a few weeks ago.

These are Bonnie and Clyde, hedgehogs. They're still pretty new to the education department, but are already favorite animals with which to do presentations. Bonnie is more laid back than Clyde.

This is the African Fat-tailed Gecko. He almost always gets taken on Zoo Mobiles. He's small and easily portable and the kids love him. His tail resembles a head so they tend to call him the two headed gecko. He is very soft, almost velvety, and still has his original tail. It's hard to tell from the pic but he is only about 6 inches long.

This is Sonnie, a 10-year-old Madagascar Tenrec. He has been around a long time and is nearing the end of his life span. He is so little (I can hold him in the palm of my hand) and sweet. He is not as prickly as the hedgehogs and sure can put away the mealworms.

This is Abigal, a 3-year-old Sun Conure. They are beautiful, but loud birds. I can hold Sunny the male, but not Abigal.

This is one of my favorites, Pablo, an 8-year-old Burmese Python. He is about 5 and a half feet long and is almost a 2-person snake. We can still handle him alone for now though. The kids love him, because he is huge and active. I always feel like I'm dancing with him, because he keeps you moving. One of these days I'll get someone to take a pic of me with him.

I hope you've enjoyed another glimpse into the zoo's education animals.

SeaWorld Career Camp 2007 Part 3

Wednesday - Aquarium

We got to the aquarium and were waiting for our guide. During that time, we looked at the shark exhibit. We also looked at the stingray exhibit. Our guide, who's name was Frank, was going to show us the behind the scene aquarium. He told us that he had a meeting to go to, but it would only last about 30 minutes. We went through his meeting room into another room, and as we were going through I noticed that there were two cakes, but I thought nothing of it. We were standing around a big metal table when Frank brought out a big plastic bag about a foot and a half high. He opened it up and dumped a HUGE pile of clams onto the table. He said, "I want ya'll to clean all these clams out and make a new pile. Ya'll want gloves?" Our counselor said that we didn't need gloves, we could just use our hands. I would later regret not having gloves. Frank went to his meeting room and shut the door. For those who do not know, these clams were icky, nasty, and smelly. I got to work pulling the clams open and pulling out the icky brown stuff. After a while the smell started to make me nauseous. Later Frank came out and helped us for about 30 more minutes, and then we were through. As we went back into the meeting room to wash our hands, I noticed that the cakes had been completely demolished. And then Frank showed us behind the exhibits. Frank was interesting...we were looking down upon one of the coral reef tanks and Frank said, "Ya'll see that coral over there?" We were like, "Yeah." And he said, "Ya'll see that coral over there," and we were like, "Yeah." Then he said, "Do you think they look like the same type?" We were like, "Yeah." He said, "It's because they are."

Frank repeated that same scenario several times with various fish. We did learn a lot from Frank, but it was really difficult to stay awake when he was talking, even when standing up.


Frank took us outside behind the scenes where we got to see some more sharks and touch the bamboo shark.





After we petted the bamboo shark, we got to pet and feed the stingrays from our hands.

That evening we had dinner after watching the reef talk at the aquarium. Then we had our evening activities where we went to the park and we played volleyball, soccer, and catch the flag.