Mammals...Oh My

Last Monday was Mammal Group Day on my work schedule.  I had a blast!

I started the day freshening one half of the Dingo enclosure and came extraordinarily close to wearing a Golden Orb spider for decoration.  At first I was sure it was 2 foot in diameter but after backing up, realized it was more like 4 inches.  That's what happens when working in the foliage.  While the Dingos are wild animals, they seem a lot like great big cuddle puppies.  Samson has learned how to open the door to his enclosure.  And no, I didn't find that out the hard way. He tried but it was locked.  Lone Pine has 3 dingos:  a white senior at 11 years old and 2 pups about 3 years old. 

Then it was time to wake up the Platypus and listen to him run through his labyrinth of PVC pipes and watch him jump into his tank.  He sleeps in a wooden box on a little blanket.  He eats yabbies (really big crayfish) during the day and when the keeper tossed some in the tank, it was a swimming frenzy.  VERY happy platypus. (Don't worry, the yabbies are farmed - not from the wild.)  I also fed the yabbies...they get protein pellets.

Next it was off to the feed shed to fix the daily fruit salad for the flying foxes (bats).  We spend a lot of time prepping animal food!

Fifteen or so large bats eat a LOT of fruit salad.  I cut up a dish tub full of fruit that included pears, oranges, bananas, mango, rock melon (cantaloupe), honey dew melon, grapes, apples, kiwi and guava plus other fruit.  It looked pretty tasty except for the serving container.  Once again, quality control told me I needed to change the size of the bites.  They needed to be flying fox mouth size and I was making it a little too big.  Who knew?

After finishing the fruit salad, I made the dishes up for the wombats.  They like corn, carrots, sweet potato, hay, oats, kangaroo food and some other grains.  They also like perfect apples (with no bad spots) cut into quarters. 

Then I was off to the wombat enclosures to help freshen up their areas.  Apparently, it was feisty wombat Monday.  No moving from enclosure to enclosure easily and Boris was very loudly telling everyone what he thought of the entire process. 

Back to the dingo enclosure to finish the other side...they look at you with such intelligent eyes.

The mornings fly by.

After my lunch, it was back to the feeding shed where I had the pleasure of mixing the shredded carrots into the raw meat and making "meatballs" for the Tazzie Devils.  As with some kids, keepers have to hide the veggies or they won't eat them. 

Off to feed the animals!

First up was the timid little possum.  We had to coax it out of it's log burrow with a piece of broccoli.  It had flowers for a treat.

On to the Dingos!  They get a mix of mince (ground meat) and dingo bikkies (biscuits).  They are properly trained to sit by a hand command and wait for their food to be put down.  I had one behind me and didn't realize he was sitting, waiting patiently for his food until the other one already had his.


We took 10 bowls of food for delivery to the 5 wombats.  My job was to keep the bush turkeys out of the wombat food as we went to each enclosure and to warn the keeper if the wombat was up and heading toward her.  From my limited research, looks like wombats love corn on the cob. 

Wombat Phil was exceptionally uncooperative and actually went into a different enclosure where he wasn't supposed to be (who left the gate unlocked???).  The off limits enclosure did not have any animals in it but did have a "deadly" watering can and rake.  Phil immediately attacked the gardening tools.  I happened to be standing at the fence right above watching the show and the keeper told me to be careful because Phil could actually jump high enough to reach me.  I backed up to avoid a claw encounter.  The keeper was finally able to get Phil back to his pen by using the offending rake and having him chase it. 

Next, we fed the sugar gliders, Tasmanian Devils and the bats.  The sugar gliders are very timid but did come out for food.  The devils wanted to be hand fed their meat but the keeper tossed the mixture into various locations in the enclosure making sure they had to work for it.

The bat food was initially left on the floor and the hungry foxes started to climb down to it, but before they could reach it, the keeper finished feeding the devils and hung the buckets from the roof.  Climbing back up the cage wall, one bat promptly "walked" upside-down across the top of the cage toward the fruit salad, stopping first to check out the keepers hair.  Then he (?) went to the bucket and dug out a piece of banana.  He rolled it around in his mouth like he was checking the texture.  I now have an idea of the size of a bats' mouth.  :)  While flying foxes make a shrill, chalk board grating type of noise, it is really uncomfortable listening to it when you are only 10 feet away from the argument.

Another wonderful day at Lone Pine.  You should visit!