Boston to Bridgeport: Getting Comfortable

Hey everyone!

I'm sorry I haven't updated in awhile, things have been a little crazy since Rachel left and I've been on my own. The past week and a half has been basically figuring out how to do everything I had been doing with Rachel, just making the decisions myself. For example, doing something simple like cleaning the back of the vet center took no time at all with two people...but when you're doing it by yourself it takes so much longer just because you're doing everything.

Cleaning the lemur enclosure has been almost impossible to do alone because it is very intensive work. I can get the outside pens cleaned in no time, but the inside has to be scrubbed with Clorox wipes because the lemurs are dirty little jerks who put their hands all over the walls and get them gross. :D Yesterday I was cleaning them, went out to clean some tiger pens, came back to the lemurs and the areas I had literally just cleaned were already covered in dirty smudged hand prints. They're so rude. I just can't get a large enough amount of time needed to fully clean their inside before I'm needed somewhere else. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to.

But the exciting part of being the only intern here right now is that I'm finally getting comfortable in everything. I have been doing morning and night duties each day and am confident in administering the medicine and watering. I have even butchered by myself. Terrifying? Yes. But there was no one available to help me, so Derek (my boss) told me how exactly to deal with butchering a very large cow. Which is what this was. Huge. But I did it! And when I was gutting it, Heidi (my boss) came up to see how I was doing, and gave me a couple tips to help me finish it. Then she said the cow was pregnant when it died, so I pulled a full-term calf from the uterus. Sad, yes. But really cool and the calf was a nice meal to one of our tigers.

I've also been able to give tours! I have given three tours so far by myself and I actually don't mind them. Yes, sometimes it can be a pain to stop what you're doing in the day to go give a tour, but it's fun when you have a good group who are interested in what you're saying.

Basically, the point of this post is to say that I finally feel like I know what I'm doing in some aspects of this internship. Just in time for the new intern to come next week! Suddenly I will be in the position of a trainer.

Since this was a word-heavy post, here are some recent pictures.