Let's see... I arrived here in New Orleans on June 14th and started my internship the very next day, so things have been a bit crazy. I live at the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species which in the West Bank of the New Orleans area (the exact location is somewhat classified, so that's as detailed as I'll get!). It's really lovely here... palm trees, tropical flowers, sun--can't beat that! It is definitely HOT, though--gets to nearly 100 degrees every day, and I haven't allowed myself to look at the heat index. Along with the heat comes a LOT of wildlife! There are lots of birds (egrets, vultures, gulls, hawks, etc.), snakes, lizards, frogs, spiders... I even saw a gator by the road--HUGE and lovely! Also, there are armadillos EVERYWHERE and they're so cute. Here's a baby that was outside our trailer:
I love 'em and will pick one up eventually... they are always just digging in the dirt and don't seem to see or hear us, so it's very easy to catch them!
So, speaking of the trailer... that's where I live, right on the park grounds! I live with three other interns and share a room with one of them. Our living conditions are very nice and the trailer is air-conditioned which is really all I care about!
The "living room":
The kitchen!
Our dining table
The room Ely and I share (*cough* messy *cough*)
We also have two darling kitties as roommates (retired research colony cats). The brown tabby is named Tigger and the orange one is Heidi. Heidi won't let us touch her but I'm determined to make her into a lover. Tigger is, without a doubt, the sweetest, most wonderful kitty ever... very cuddly.
So what do I spend my days doing? Mostly I care for the domestic cat research colonies--right now there are four colonies with about 30 cats each (and two colonies for adoption, also about 30 cats each). As you can imagine, that's a lot of litter, and food, and hair, and toys, and poop... :P So I have a big job. It's really enjoyable, actually--I never did mind spending time with kitties. These are research animals, though; certain kitties are frequently pulled for procedures like oocyte retrievals, embryo transplants, artificial insemination, etc. When these procedures happen I get to watch, and that's the really cool part.
The other really cool part is that I also help to care for other kitties in the Center's collection--servals, caracals, clouded leopards, fishing cats, African wildcats, and cougars! They are absolutely gorgeous cats and it's so neat interact with them. One day we took one of the servals for a walk and I fed some meat chunks to one of the cougars through her fence (to distract her while her sister received meds)! Awesome experiences. Some of these cats were frozen/thawed embryos and some are clones, the first of their kind. Definitely need to work on more pictures of these guys because they are just breathtaking.
In addition to my duties here at ACRES, the Louisana Fish and Wildlife Service sometimes uses ACRES interns as volunteers for their projects. That is how I ended up on the Gulf of Mexico (Venice, LA--Breton National Wildlife Refuge) banding 900 endangered brown pelicans! I can now say there's nothing cooler than leaving on a boat at 4:30 AM to motor out to an island COVERED in birds (the FW guys say 40,000, I think) and getting to wrangle bunches of pelicans! The only bad parts are getting covered in poop, the smell of bird vomit (they throw up as a defense mechanism--I totally smell why), and the terrible sunburn (they say my burns are probably 2nd degree). But never in my life had I done anything like that before--and what child doesn't dream of just running up to a wild animal and snatching it without repercussion?
One of my fellow interns took some amazing pictures and put them into an album on Facebook; hopefully it's public and you can see it--if not, let me know and I'll see what I can do...
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=2030288&id=1201568294
Yesterday was the experience of a lifetime. We had two cougars here at ACRES on loan from the Baton Rouge Zoo; if I remember correctly one is over 15 and the other is over 18. The 18 year old was lethargic the last few days and going into renal failure, and yesterday keepers witnessed her have a seizure. The poor girl was in really bad shape and she had to be euthanized--very sad; I wish I had had more than just two weeks to spend with her (her sister has cancer and probably won't last much longer, either). She was a beautiful cougar, even if thin due to age and condition. I rode with her body in the back of the truck to the vet building for her necropsy. Got to touch her face and nose, belly, tail, paws. So powerful and incredible. It was really humbling to touch her like that; felt almost like I was doing something wrong, being disrespectful! Hopefully I wasn't.
All thoughts of respect flew out of my head once the necropsy started, though--the vets did not hesitate with those knives! I can't tell you how neat it was to be able to watch, even if her death was still fresh. Poor Misha (the cougar) had all sorts of problems--thin muscle and heart walls, polycystic kidneys, lots of tumors throughout her body, including one that eroded her skull and spread through the brain! I wish I could have gotten a picture of those kidneys; they were unbelieveable--just riddled with cysts.
During the necropsy, I made some pawprints so we all had some memories of Misha:
That's all the news that's fit to blog about for now... I KNOW I'm neglecting Kenya but I have to pace myself. I have finally started uploading photos! I don't have albums from Kenya yet but I DO have the ones from my layover in London. Take a look!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019060&id=1164180056&l=cc1c85d114
Hope you all are doing well and staying cool wherever you are.
