Days 14 & 15, October 5th and 6th, 2010

Lately, I’ve been getting a little bored.

Maybe not bored, but I feel like my work at the aquarium is slightly static, and I’d love to get in some new responsibilities.

Possibly the best example that the aquarium is not static is yesterday’s encounters with Tempera paint. Mindy brought paint up to the tiger reserve and I was concerned. Paint? That doesn’t seem like safe enrichment… Little did I know that it is indeed safe enrichment, and quite possibly the coolest enrichment ever. Seriously. We put down green and black paint all over the front of reserves 2 and 3, and then some sheets of large drawing paper next to the paint. After we were all set up, the trainers basically led a training session…all over the paint and paper. The tigers are target trained so that the trainer could put a target near the paint and the tiger would put his nose on the target, and then the trainer would lead with a target over the paper. It was incredible. Large blackish green paw prints were all over the sheets of paper, and the tiger (Heran) was content to be covered in color. After we retrieved the paintings, we hosed off the reserves and Heran (who legitimately seemed to enjoy the entire process). We hung the paintings on the wall to let them dry and continued down to otters with yellow and red. The biggest downfall with the otters was that their tails just ended up covered in paint because they drag on the floor, so there were large streaks of yellow and red across all of our paintings. (I actually got to keep an otter painting, and I’m told we will paint again with the tigers so I can keep one of those.) Moral of the story, coolest artwork EVER.

Honestly, I haven’t been doing a lot of new things at the aquarium lately, so there isn’t that much to talk about. I have free-fed the bunnies and the chickens and the ducks, but I have yet to start actually training anything. Even the chickens. Come on. I think I’m good enough for the chickens. Please?