I started my day early to go to Billabong Sanctuary and got to experience some pretty cool things. First off, cleaning a Koala enclosure with a Sulfur Crested Cockatoo as my companion. She (Jacko) is quite sweet and loves scratches but makes it kinda hard when she wants to ride around on your hand while you are raking. Koala enclosures are not that hard, much like cleaning a bird enclosure, the droppings are small. They are actually like deer pellets. You rake, remove eucalyptus, dump out water from the canisters (pots) and refill them so fresh eucalyptus can be put in. Pretty sinchy stuff AND you
get to give a scratch to one of these guys.
The rest of the day included helping with reptile presentations and assisting people with photos with the snakes. It's kinda crazy, the guests are allowed to hold the snakes and get pictures of them with it. At the San Antonio Zoo they could only touch the snake with two fingers while I held it. This was really cool that they could experience the weight of the snake and feel it's muscles as it moves. It's a bit nerve-racking too because you don't want them to accidentally hurt them by squeezing them or rubbing their scales backwards. The other neat thing is that a child of any age could hold a snake. So this little boy, about 5 came up and wanted to hold this Black Headed Python that was about one and a half meters (five feet) long; I wasn't sure he was old enough to hold him so I looked over for approval to put this snake on him and got told to "wrap him up" so I did. It was pretty funny and cool to see his reaction. He was so pleased and his parents snapped photos of him and this snake that was bigger than he was!
At the end of the day Robbie took me into the reptile room to show me some of the cool critters.
That's a baby Freshwater Crocodile (freshie).In the background you can see a Bearded Dragon (Pogona vitticeps) and a Shingleback Skink (Tiliqua rugosa).
This is a Legless Lizard (Lialis burtonis)
As the day ended an afternoon shower came through to cool things off. I love the way the water changes the colour of this tree and creates stripes down it's trunk.
I have been needing to learn to drive a manual and adding to the difficulty the gear shift is on the left so I needed practice. Robbie was kind enough to lend me his car and we went to the park where dirt roads and speed bumps allowed me to practice going through the gears and a lack of traffic minimized the risk of me careening into something. We practiced until it got dark and prepared to leave, upon leaving we saw this little fellow, heating up on the asphalt (bitchum).
We had to move him off of the road so he wouldn't get squished.
Robbie, working his magic.
(My videos are having problems playing in some viewers, if you can't see it leave me a comment and I'll work on converting to a new player, any suggestions are welcomed.)
It's been a good day today. The wildlife here offers me endless opportunities to learn and always excites me. :)
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