Snake goo.

Well, my internship at the zoo is officially over. I'm a little sad that I didn't have anything else exciting to write about, but I might go back to visit before I start vet school.

Speaking of which, I'm not entirely sure that it's completely sunk in yet. I'm going to vet school in a few months. Whoa. When I told the zoo vet I got in, she hugged with me a baby kangaroo. You'd think that would be a enough to make you realize that it's actually happening. Maybe it won't hit me until I get there...

But I have one week of undergrad left. That's it. Another whoa. And as soon as my last final is over, I'm packing up and heading to camp for half the summer. So I'll have half a summer of money making, animal adopting, kid teaching, dead animal cutting, organ preserving, and flesh eating beetle feeding. More details on that awesomeness later, though. And then in July, I'm moving, and my vet school preparation will begin.

I have to get a rabies vaccination before I start school. I wonder if I get a tag for it? If so, do I have to start wearing a collar? I was freaking out about it at first because I thought the shots were in your stomach, but apparently that's only if you get bitten by something first. So it's just in my arm, and I am very relieved.

They are also having a big retreat for the incoming class the week before school starts. It's at some camp, and we are supposed to do a bunch of team-building, friend-making exercises. So that will be fun... a bunch of antisocial, awkward vet students trying to do physical activities together... I mean, it's totally necessary. It forces us to make friends, but it's going to be painful. I feel awkward just thinking about it.

Since I don't have any recent animal adventures to share, here is one of my fondest memories from last summer at camp:

Isn't this one of the coolest pictures you have ever seen?!?

 That, my friends, is a Columbian Red-Tail Boa in the process of giving birth. Boas are one of the few (but not super few) snake species that have live births, and I was fortunate enough to get to see one actually happening. It was seriously one of the most awesome things I've ever experienced in my life. She had a total of 31 baby snakes (and a slug, which is an unfertilized egg.. it's the yellowish glob next to the mom's tail). Two of the babies ended up dying after about a day (my guess is that they were underdeveloped or weren't able to get enough oxygen through all of that snake goo), but the other 29 survived, and guess whose job it was to take care of them all summer?

Yeah. That'd be me. I had to teach those things how to eat. Do you know how freaking hard that is?! Especially when there are that many of them?! I spent countless hours sweating my butt off in that 80 degree reptile room. Every single day I had to do a count to make sure they were all alive, and that was incredibly difficult because the little jerks kept escaping on me. Then I spent a good hour everyday (unless I could find some poor, unsuspecting child to do it for me) changing their paper towels and waters (because every single one had its own box to keep track of feedings).

And then. Twice a week, I spent my entire evening dangling dead baby rats in front of their stupid, little faces, trying to encourage them to eat. Some of them didn't want to eat. And I did not like those. Not one bit. So I tried everything.. from rubbing the rats in gerbil litter to poking holes in their brains. Eventually, all of the snakes started to figure out how to eat, and that was one of the happiest days of my life.

I can't even tell you how many baby snake bites I endured that summer (some of them were strikers.. big time.. luckily they were so tiny that it didn't really hurt). But I wouldn't trade it for anything, and I even kinda miss those little guys. I almost wish I could have kept one, but they get like, 8 feet long, and I don't want to be eaten by my own pet.

This is about 6 months after they were born. Little dudes grow up so fast.

And it all pays off...

I guess I'm going to have to change my blog's name from the pre-vet life to the vet life because I was just accepted into vet school!!!!

Baby roo.

Yesterday when I arrived at the zoo, I noticed a sling around the vet's neck, and I knew that momma kangaroo had died. She was starting to do better, but I guess she just deteriorated overnight and had to be euthanized. 

So in the sling around the vet's neck was baby roo. Luckily, marsupial babies aren't terribly difficult to raise (the pouch thing is pretty helpful), but they are kinda messy (the whole, pooping in the sling and rolling around in it thing). And heavy. So to give the vet a break, I was on baby roo duty all morning.

She didn't want to hold still (too busy trying to nibble on everything she could get her mouth on).

Other than that, I didn't do much. Just cleaned a few things. And I was growled at by an adorably grumpy raccoon named Dan, who was angry that I was cleaning things near his isolation cage.

Smelly days.

Yesterday I spent the day at my favorite large animal clinic. The people there are awesome (like, they provide my lunch and/or breakfast almost every time I go out there, and nothing makes me happier than free food.. you know, besides animals). I wish I could shadow there more often (I start to miss the smell of cow/horse poop), but my schedule doesn't always allow it.

Anyway, everyone was bringing their horses in for Coggins tests, vaccinations, and equine dentals (aka floating teeth). I like horses and all, and I'm grateful for the experience, but Coggins tests and teeth floating are two of my least favorite things to help with. Coggins tests suck because of the paperwork associated with them. You have to freaking draw the horses. Like, down to every single marking on every single horse. So if you get a Paint or an Appaloosa, it takes you 20 minutes just to do the paperwork for one blood test. I mean, a lot of vets use shortcuts and stuff, but it's kinda ridiculous. Some places have just started taking pictures, but a lot of clinics around here are still using computers from the 80's.. so yeah, I don't see them hopping on the technology train anytime soon.

Try drawing every detail of that. While the wind is blowing. With a few horse hairs in your mouth. And while you are trying to avoid being kicked by all of the other horses standing around. It's not easy. (Not my picture, by the way.)

Floating teeth sucks because it's so tedious. And kinda gross. Luckily, this clinic has an awesome machine for it, but some places just use hand files to grind down the sharp tooth points, and that is just.. unspeakably horrible (imagine being covered in horse hair, sweat, blood, and saliva when you're done.. not fun). But even with the machine, it takes forever. And my job is "cheek/tongue holder". I wasn't very good at it when I first had to do it. They have really muscular tongues! And they are slippery! So it's really hard to keep them from flopping around.. I've definitely gotten better (it's a great hand workout), but those first few times were not pretty.

You have to hold onto those tongues like your life depends on it.. this man has a great tongue grip. (Also not my picture.)

 And today was my zoo day! It was quite eventful. The first thing we did was flamingo physicals. The vet handed me one to hold so she could examine it, and of course, she gave me the most ugly, feather-plucked, smelly, decrepit flamingo in the bunch (their necks are super difficult to control, by the way). And what did it do as soon as I had it in my arms? Pooped all over me (as if it didn't already smell bad enough). And then I had to go to class right after that. I got some strange looks, that's for sure.

When I got back from class, we did 3 maned wolf physicals (they had to be anesthetized for theirs). Maned wolves don't really look that big when you see them in their enclosure, but up close, they are kinda huge. They look huge, anyway. They don't really weigh that much, though (the heaviest was only 50 lbs.. they are super lanky, but don't look it because they are so furry). But they smelled pretty horrible, too. It was just a day full of lovely smells.

They're kinda pretty. If only they didn't smell so bad... (Again, not my picture.)

 I mostly helped with x-ray processing for the maned wolves. I also prepared a mammary tumor for a biopsy on one of them and gave some vaccinations, but that's not too exciting.

Then. The vet gave me a packet of this powder stuff and a syringe and asked me to go to isolation to syringe feed a mother kangaroo. The poor momma had toxoplasmosis (it's a parasitic disease caused by the same parasite pregnant women are supposed to avoid by not cleaning out cat litter boxes.. even though more people get it from gardening than litter boxes), and she was so messed up that she couldn't even stand on her own. So I mixed up her food, fed her all of it, and reported back to the vet. The vet seemed pretty impressed that I was able to feed her all of it (I've had plenty of experience with that type of thing, though). She was even more impressed when the kangaroo started trying to stand up just a few minutes after I fed her. She's still in pretty bad shape, but things are looking up for momma kangaroo.

A little while later, I went back in to check on her and discovered that the joey was out of the pouch and hoping around. The vet asked me to try to stimulate the joey so it would urinate. I was able to get a few dribbles of pee out of her, but then she pooped a massive poop right into my hand. It was pretty nasty, and I decided that I had probably rubbed her genitals enough for one day. The vet was quite pleased that I was able to cause baby roo poop, so I feel like I earned a lot of her respect today (and that, my friends, is why I love veterinary medicine.. what other profession can you earn respect by gently rubbing an animal's genitals until it poops in your hand?).

My little roo friend! This is my picture, as you can probably tell by the bad quality.

The last thing I helped with was a beak trimming on a scarlet ibis. I still haven't quite gotten his nasty fish smell off my hands, and his beak was terrible. It looked like a chunk of firewood. It took us forever to get it trimmed down, and it still doesn't look completely normal. It didn't help that he was pretty feisty and tried to bite us every chance he got. This was probably the most miserable part of my day because we wore masks while we were trimming (because no one wants to inhale rotten bird beak dust), and every single time I have to wear a mask (without fail), my nose itches like crazy. And I was holding a smelly bird, so I couldn't scratch it the entire time. It was torture! Someone needs to start adding some sort of nose scratching device to those masks. I'm sure every doctor in the world would appreciate it.

They're kinda cool looking when their beaks aren't so disgusting.

Visit to my second home...

I spent my day in the company of some amazing animals...

Baby Patagonian Cavies! It's ridiculous how cute they are.

We're BFFs.

This is the most awesome bunny I have ever met!!!!! I am going to adopt her. (Not kidding. Seriously. I'm not.)

Baby lemur! The momma loved the mango I brought for her.

My camel friend using my head to rest his gigantic neck. At least he wasn't trying to eat me.

I was also going to post a video of the camel racing my friend and I (he likes to chase people), but it isn't working right now so I'll try again later. It's kind of a jumpy video, but you can see his lips flopping like crazy, and it cracks me up.

Sometimes life gets hectic...

I've been slacking a bit. I'm blaming midterms. They are evil, stressful, little things.

So I've got a lot to catch up on. I'll start with my zoo experiences...

Elephants. They're pretty cool, so I was excited to get to hang out with them a little bit. I was amazed by how well-trained they are! The zookeepers would just say, "(Name of elephant), lay down." And the elephant would do it. I know a lot of people are pretty against the whole idea of having elephants in captivity (and rightfully so in a lot of cases), but from what I saw, these elephants were treated with nothing but love and respect. You could tell how much the zookeepers genuinely cared about them, and it was incredible how strong their relationships with them were.

Anyway, we drove down to the cow barn (they also have a bull barn), and it was so weird! I felt like I was in a jail for giants! There were stalls set up inside of the barn that were basically made out of huge jail bars, but they were spaced out enough that humans could easily slip in between them. It made me feel incredibly small.

The elephant we went to see was having some kind of skin issue. She was developing hot spots on her hips, and she was super itchy, so we did a skin scrape. The vet gave her some local anesthetic, and we even used a bit of ice to numb the area, but she was still being a huge baby about it. You would think that with such thick skin, a little skin scrape wouldn't be very bothersome... I've seen chihuahuas take scrapes with more dignity.

This is not my picture, but it shows how thick an elephant's skin is, and I thought it was cool. So enjoy.

The next week, we had to go back to check her for lice (we were pretty sure it was just an allergy issue, but the vet wanted to rule it out). All the vet did was roll scotch tape around her hands, and she patted the elephant down with it, and the tape was sent off to a dermatologist. It was super simple and kinda weird.

Fun fact: A dose of Children's Benadryl for an elephant is over 1,000 mL (depending on the elephant's weight), which is roughly 11 bottles (unless you can get bigger bottles, I suppose). Our elephant friend had to have that twice a day for five days. I can't even imagine what the people at Walmart thought when the keepers went to buy them out of Benadryl...

I also got to take a bunch of x-rays of a hippo skull so the vet could figure out what settings she needed to use to take x-rays of the living hippo's jaw. So that was a fun experiment.

And of course, I spent plenty of time with birds of prey.

I helped force feed a Barred Owl (aka Hoot Owl).

He was pretty grumpy, and he kept crunching the mouse's skull when we were trying to slip it in his beak.

Then I helped dispose of a dead hawk of some sort (I'm pretty sure it was a Red-tailed). It was kinda sad.

I also helped stuff a bunch of frozen bald eagles into boxes to ship to the government (who supposedly disperses them to Native American tribes, so the feathers can be used for cultural things... pretty interesting).

Then I met a Screech Owl, and oh my god, was she cute (she lives at the zoo and is used as an education animal). We had to pluck a bunch of her feathers because she kept breaking them, which was causing feather follicle cysts to form (they are like ingrown hairs for us.. and I had to help pop them.. it was disgusting).

They are so tiny! I want one! (Not my picture either.. my fingers were covered in blood and cyst pus, so I couldn't get a picture of the one I spent time with.)

That's pretty much all of the interesting zoo stuff. Now to the sadness.....

Otto didn't pass his therapy dog evaluation. Honestly, I'm kinda bummed, but I don't feel too bad because A) it was kinda unfair and B) I might be moving soon, and I wouldn't be able to continue taking him on therapy visits anyway.

The reason it was unfair: we had a workshop last month, which was to basically familiarize us with the skills he needed to have to pass his evaluation (so there would be no surprises during the eval). Otto was awesome at it. The only thing we needed to work on was calming him down so he didn't pull on the leash so much (but he was just excited to meet all the new people). So we worked on that, and he improved (still wasn't super great at it, but better).

Well, we had a different evaluator this time (who didn't really seem like a very nice person.. I honestly thought that even before I found out she was our evaluator). Otto went through the tests like a pro. He was seriously awesome, and I was really proud of him. Then we got to the part where there was a group of people sitting in chairs. At the workshop last month, we were told that we just needed to walk our dog around to each person to greet them, which Otto did just fine. But this time, the evaluator told me I had to put Otto in each person's lap. He stayed for a second, then jumped down. Because he didn't say in their laps, she failed us. For that one tiny thing that we didn't even know we had to do (otherwise, I would have worked with him on it, and he would have been fine). I tried to explain that/rationalize with her (because I had put a lot of time into this thing), but she just said (in a really snippy/mean way), "Well, they should have had me evaluate you the first time."

She even went on to say, "It's such a shame. We need more small dogs." So I'm kinda done with that group. There were some really nice people in it.. so I guess it's a shame that one lady can ruin what could have been a great experience.

Their loss. This little guy could have made a lot of people happy.

Okay, I'll stop complaining now. More sadness:

Shaymi, my beautiful hedgehog, somehow managed to get a string wrapped around her foot so tight that it became embedded into her skin. It was so swollen that I couldn't cut the string off without cutting her, so I had to rush her to the emergency vet at 1 am (I always check on her before I go to bed, so I didn't discover it until then). I was so worried they would have to amputate her foot, but luckily, the blood flow was restored, and aside from some wounds and little swelling, she is doing fine. I've been soaking her foot in epsom salt two to three times a day and treating the wounds with antibiotic ointment, and it's looking so much better. The vet was really, really nice, too, and she only charged us for the medication she prescribed (maybe she took pity on my obvious poor, college studentness).

So it's been a pretty eventful couple of weeks. I'm so glad to be on spring break.

Kitchen Floor Discoveries.

So I was cleaning my kitchen floor yesterday when suddenly....

What the.....?

Then I flipped it over....

Yep... definitely mummified flesh of some sort...

So I went to check on the cat and found....

No more ball sack.

But he was just like...

Whatevs, man.

And that's the story of how I found my cat's ball sack on the floor.

I'm just glad it wasn't in my bed.