A Day in the Life of a Zookeeper

A Day in the Life of a Zookeeper
Ever wonder what its like to share your world with a bunch of crazy critters? Tune in to find out!

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Critter Tales

Its been a fairly uneventful weekend so far - lots of rain resulting in sleepy or hiding furry children -

The ferrets have been something else here lately.  Madison is in love with the games of tag with Winston the pig.  Violet has been very social with the pig and in general - we are loving that.  The boys have been giving me a run for my money the last couple of days.

Theo is obsessed with the pig - he wants to jump on the pig and bite the pig and Winston doesn't really love this....  as a result - Theo is also obsessed with breaking into Winston's upstairs pen.  First he decided he would make a huge leap from the bed onto the dresser - then he can use the dresser to jump into the pen.  This was circumvented by placing a flattened cardboard box in the top drawer of the dresser - closing it in so it stands up straight creating a ferret deflection shield.  This worked as a deterrent for a few hours....

Then Theo decided that it was important to squish himself to flat and get behind the dresser and then squeeze himself between the wall and the side of the pen.  Sigh..so - I broke out the duct tape and taped shut the gap between the dresser and the wall - this was okay til he figured out that he can climb the tape - so out came a slippery plastic lid that got taped to the top of the dresser.  HAHA evil ferret - I have stumped you - at least for 8 hours or so....

Finn has found his own troubles - he has found that if he climbs over the cups, onto the water machine he can skinny between the bed and the wall to get into the headboard where we store the linens.  Sigh - no place is safe.  I couldn't find him the other night and then all of a sudden I heard paper crinkling - couldn't figure out from where.  Yep - it was the headboard.  Not sure what to do to keep them out of the headboard - my brain is stewing on that one.

Winston is doing great - spending lots of time in laps getting loved on and getting more and more accustomed to being touched, loved on and even picked up a tiny bit.  Working on the litter box - I would say he gets it about 75 - 80% of the time which isn't bad for 5 days of exposure.  We are also working on no biting - he doesn't really bite but he likes to put his mouth on everything - human, critter or otherwise so we are trying to break him of that.  He is doing well with self entertainment and seems content to play with his toys or snooze in his blanket while the humans are busy.  All in all - pig parenthood is good - we love him to death!

Kitties are all doing well - very sleepy with the weather.  Emma is hating the rain and has spent the bulk of the weekend hiding under the bed.  I am going to try to get her to come with me to the pet store to pick up a few things.  We will see.

In sad news - my sweet little SteveIrwin betta fish passed away yesterday - he was a very tenacious fish - we will miss him....not sure we will be doing any additional fish - so hard...

And there you have it - the tales from the weekend...

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