Trial Day!!

I apologize in advance for not having any photos, but I was trying to be professional ;)

For my trial day, I spent the first two hours of the morning raking up leaves and cleaning out animal cages (which really isn’t that bad, they are not very messy animals). Considering right off the bat, I was in the cages face to face with all of the animals who just sat there and watched me clean, it was pretty cool.

We run three 2hour tours per day, at 10am, 12, and 2:30pm. We also do a Koala breakfast 3x per week briiiight and early in the morning, but luckily that wasn’t today. Tony, the head ranger, is an interesting person.... some of his interactions with the animals and with people seemed a bit questionable to me, but I get the feeling he is not the kind of person you want to question, especially on your work trial day. But he definitely knows his stuff. I basically just job shadowed Tony through all of the tours, and also got some more inside info from May, the Japanese volunteer who has been here for about 2 months. The first tour, I basically was just one of the tourists, holding all the animals like everyone else. I got to kiss the cockatoo, hold all of the lizards and baby crocs, and the koalas (the wombat didn’t come out until later :(.... By the second tour, without warning, Tony told me to go grab one of the snakes out of the shed.... pretty sure that was my test... or a mean joke... but either way, I laughed a little, until I realized he was completely serious, put on a smile and walked into the shed as bravely as I could, with the 8 or so snakes, wondering which one looked the smallest and least intimidating. The answer? None of them. But I did it! I proudly brought one back out and continued to walk around and let people hold it. That’s one way to get over a fear (strong dislike rather...). The rest of the day, that became my job.... so much for cute koalas...

By the third tour, Tony threw me under the bus and told me to start off the tour with the turtles... the animal that I had learned absolutely nothing about throughout the day (Tony doesn’t always give a whole lot of animal information, probably because he has been doing this for so long that he gets bored of saying the same things)... either way, I figured this was my next test... I was loud and chipper and did a fine introduction... and then handed it back off to Tony to actually talk about the turtles haha. But I think he was pleased that I said anything at all.

By the end of the day, I was already comfortable handling snakes (although I still don’t like waking them up when they are curled up fast asleep.... I imagine them being very angry with me...), I could handle the birds, one which LOVES me and the others who some don’t like to obey me right away, and I fell in love with a little squirrel glider named Chino :)

Tony seemed happy with my personality, said he would put in a good word for me, handed me three dictionaries of animals to study up on and sent me on my way. 

I think that is a good sign.