Our handy office shelf broke, so we fixed it!
Animal keepers (and our volunteers!) can be pretty good at fixing things.
Sometimes more creatively than others.
Author Archive
QuickPic: Ingenuity
May 1st, 2013Join the conversation:
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Career Day
April 21st, 2013Most of the education work we animal keepers are asked to do happens on museum grounds in the form of programs, events and blog posts. Every once in a while something fun pops up and one of us gets to go out into the world to spread our knowledge to the sponge-like minds of eager children and adults alike.
Well, maybe that’s pushing things a bit. This event wasn’t as much about “spreading knowledge” and “eager children” as much as it was about a 4 hour, 200+ person career fair for 8th graders. Think of speed dating but with potential career paths rather than potential dates.
First things first, I needed to collect a bunch of things from around the office to bring with me that showcase what animal keepers do.
Next I asked my fellow keepers what tools or objects represent their jobs best.
My favorite responses: “fecal cups!!!” “keys” and “my clicker.”
The day of the fair arrived and I set up my table. This was all happening at Neal Middle School, a local magnet school that emphasizes science, technology, engineering and math.
The kids came in groups of 2 -3 classes at a time. I was surprised and really happy to see how many of these students were dressed in suits and ties or conservative business attire and even more so by the number that, without any trepidation, approached me, shook my hand and introduced themselves.
These two boys stuck around for a while and asked so many great questions about the job that I asked for a photo for the blog!
I was one of ten careers being represented that morning. The others were the Boy Scouts of America, the Mayor’s Office, a pilot for US Airways, Habitat for Humanity, a Duke University pediatric social worker, the headmistress of a Montessori School, Durham Technical Community College, “Work Smart” a local IT outsourcing company, and the owner of a small business named, “The Art of Style.”
Overall, it was far more tiring than my typical Farmyard morning, but totally worth it. The kids were awesome, the teachers appreciative and the other careers present had some amazing stories to share. I’m very glad I got to spend a morning with them all!
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If a Zookeeper would have come to my Middle School it wouldn’t have taken me so long to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.
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What Happened to My Chair –answer
April 9th, 2013This happened. Here’s a link to the previous post with the question.
Bugsy, our Holland Lop rabbit, lives in the education holding room and seems to shed large amounts of fur every 3 months and sheds less during the months in between. He is in constant need of brushing. The dead hair that easily pulls off of him in small tufts is typically a very light grey; which strikes me as silly since he’s a black bunny. Bugsy gets brushed three times a week and he doesn’t seem to mind it (more often than not he ends up falling asleep in my lap).
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What Happened to My Chair?
April 3rd, 2013Keeper Jill walks into the office with a brush, a towel and an animal. She hands them all to me and says, “here, do something useful” and walks out.
Which animal did she leave with me? Leave your guess in the comments!
More importantly, is this animal now completely bald???
Ignore my index finger close-up, please. Sometimes I’m not good at cameras.
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that looks like opossum
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i know i know
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Nope, not the opossum! There will be another post with the answer in a couple days. Keep guessing!
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It’s the Little Things
February 23rd, 2013Our Jersey steer, Max, is a picky eater. Unlike most bovine, which will eat anything you hand them, Max really only eats his hay and steer chow (breakfast cereal for cattle). Keepers Kent and Jill and I have been working extra hard since last summer to sneak extra pieces of training foods into his giant mouth, just to get him to try something new.
For training reasons, it’s a good idea for Max to learn to eat foods that are more portable than an armload of hay. We’ve been the most successful thus far with dried fruits, but only if Max is in the mood. Usually, Max takes a tiny nibble of the new treat and turns his nose up at it, if he tries it at all. The rest of the farmyard animals (pigs and Ducky, included!) are happy to much down a “cookie” that’s specially made for farm animals, while Max fires them back out of his mouth covered in steer spit without even tasting them.
Until recently, anyway. Here’s a short, shaky cell phone video of Max FINALLY trying (and liking) a farmyard cookie…or three.
Please don’t feed the animals anything! Even if it seems harmless, like loose hay off the ground or grass or leaves, could potentially make them very ill. Leave feeding the animals to us keepers, it’s the one part of our job that doesn’t involve cleaning poop!
If you want to see what our animals eat up close, become a Museum of Life and Science member and sign up for a Bears Up Close or a Behind the Scenes Tour, they’re wicked awesome!
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Sheep Update
February 17th, 2013Since the arrival of our 4 alpacas, we’ve had many people inquire about our sheep. A member of our farrier‘s family (the man who comes out to trim Lightning’s hooves) was very excited to provide the retirement home for our old ladies. They now live about an hour from Durham on a few acres of grass with a roomy stall they can access at any time. Their only jobs are to mow the lawn and to look pretty.
Our farrier, Ron, was here a couple weeks ago and he told me the sheep have some new companions! They initially moved in with a couple goats (one of which just had twins!) but just recently, two older rams with very curly horns joined them! Ron couldn’t remember what breed the rams were, but he said one of them had horns that curled around in two full circles, kind of like this guy:
Almost 2 full circles!
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Great update. Thank you for sharing.
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Trimming Duck’s Wings
February 13th, 2013Have you ever wandered into the farmyard and asked yourself, “Why doesn’t the duck simply fly away?”
There are three answers:
1. He does, sometimes. As you can see here in an older post.
2. He seasonally has wing feathers trimmed to help keep him down on the ground.
3. At nearly 11 pounds, he’s a little bit too chubby to really get off the ground.
In the early spring and fall, Ducky molts (loses) his old feathers and grows a nice new set in. This would prepare him for long, seasonal migration flights, if he were a wild duck. These young feathers, called ‘blood’ or ‘pin’ feathers, have a great blood supply and birds need to be handled carefully when they’re coming in. Once the pin feathers grow out completely into flight feathers, we can safely trim them back to keep our duck grounded.
Keeper Kent holds Ducky snugly with Duck’s feet tucked into his arm to keep Katy safe from his claws. Kent is also extending Duck’s right wing in this photo
Keeper Katy extends Duck’s left wing and counts the feathers to be trimmed.
With rounded bandage scissors, Keeper Katy starts to trim away feathers
You can see the small gap the missing feathers are creating in Duck’s wing, this is what stops him from flying.
Kent and Katy place Ducky down onto a scale for weighing. The rubber bowl gives his feet traction so he doesn’t slide off the metal scale.
Trimming feathers might look a little rough, but it doesn’t seem to bother our duck very much.
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do you need to do both wings?
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Yes, Bette, we do trim both wings. If we only did one wing, our duck would be very off balance if he were to hop up onto a higher surface and try to flutter back down to the ground. With only one wing trimmed, he might spin or crash to the ground, but with both done, it takes him only 2 or 3 attempts before he figures out how to descend from higher ground safely.
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Concurrent Accession
December 31st, 2012“Accession” is a word the zoological world uses to mean, “adding to.” It’s the term applied to newly acquired individuals to a museum/zoo/aquarium’s collection. We don’t have a large turnover in our collection at the museum. Every year we lose some animals due to old age, health problems, or transfers to other institutions and we gain a couple, but our collection stays at about the same number.
Because we don’t take in new animals very often, I found it interesting to learn that the animal keepers here each have a sort of “buddy animal” that joined the animal department at roughly the same time they did.
Sherry and Ursula (Fall 1991)
Kent (Summer 1996) and 2 American Robins (Winter 1997)
Marilyn and Chummix (Fall 2003)
Katy and Virginia (Spring 2005)
Jill and Scout (Fall 2005)
Me and Robin Owl (Summer 2010)
Kimberly and Ladybelle (Fall 2010)
Aaron and Jaybird (Spring 2011)
Jessi and the baby Pine Snakes (Summer 2012)
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Great post, I love that Marilyn looks like she’s about to attack Chummix
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2013 for me is about enjoying the ‘moment’ whether that moment is truly a moment or a whole day long; “smell the roses” so-to-speak.
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If You Give a “Whistle” Pig a Pancake
December 29th, 2012
If you give a Whistle Pig a pancake…
He’ll chase you down the hallway until you give him another.
It wasn’t quite like the book
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oh he loves him some pancakes!
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This just goes to show that we love all the “staff” here at the museum!
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It was one of the best things in the office while it was up! It brought a whole new natural and rustic feel to the room.. fitting in well next to the creepy doll, the stinky can, and the snowflake cutouts on the window. Haha..