Targets, Turns and Reptiles (I lost track of the days…)

I have recently been fortunate enough to get back to work at the aquarium full time, and have been seemingly rewarded for doing so. I am now allowed to work targets with the chickens (so cute!) and to do turns with the otters (also super cute). Along with these new allowances, I was supposed to be gaining permission to handle Niles the Savannah monitor, but due to an unfortunate incident with one of the other interns where Niles became aggressive, I am not allowed to handle him. I have gained the knowledge of how to handle the snakes that we have as ambassador animals (two ball pythons), but I have not yet been given permission to actually handle them.

On top of these things, today I did my first otter chat. It’s fun to do a chat when no one listens to you. Especially when it’s the first one. Then you don’t have to stress about screwing up. Haha. I spewed out basic information about our otters (twelve years old, came from the Louisiana otter farm, a sanctuary for otters where their “owners” who had taken them from the wild took them when they decided that otters don’t make good pets, Blue and Slater, et cetera), and then talked about training and enrichment and the like. It wasn’t very difficult or nerve-racking, but it was new!