Written from the 15th July 2012 - 7th September 2012
Tomorrow will be the start of 8 full weeks of work experience for me at an amazing zoo known as Paradise Wildlife Park! I am feeling a mixture of excitement and nerves, this will be the longest and most intensive work experience I have ever completed, I will have worked 320 hours by the end of these eight weeks. This is going to be one of the most amazing experiences of my life and is going to give me so much experience and increase my knowledge immensely.
Week one -
Day one was one of the most amazing days! I was so nervous, but it turned out so good! I have made new friends, both humans and people. And I am already growing in confidence and proving myself which is something I plan to continue. I was working with the small mammals today, i cleaned out and fed bats and cleaned out other enclosures, i learnt so much even if it was just one day! The rest of the week definitely lived up to that of the first day! I got to do things by myself like go in with the Coati and feed and clean her, cleaning and feeding the squirrels and skunks and making feeds as well as setting up all of the bat food around their enclosure! I also got to go in with the Corsac foxes and clean and feed them, go in with the red pandas, clean out and feed the otters, and also cleaned out one of the meerkat enclosures. I met some truly amazing people too who gave me some brilliant advice. Can't wait for next week!
Week two -
This week i was on farmyard, which i was really nervous about because i hate change but i soon settled in and i made two really good friends pretty much straight away! This week i worked with so many things such as goats, pigs, sheep, rats, chinchillas, tenrecs, i worked more closely with meerkats, ponies, rabbits, guinea pigs and mice. It doesn't sound very exciting but i really enjoyed it more than i thought i would and i learnt alot and fell in love with some of the animals that i've never really been interested in such as the pigs! Some of the highlights of my week were getting to help move the mice into new enclosures including their babies which were tiny and also getting to watch a goat give birth with help from some of the keepers due to complications which was amazing!
Week three -
This week i was on paddocks and it was just as amazing as i imagined it to be! It is such hard work but it is so good and worth it! I even got to feed the tapirs on my first day before i went home! I was also on section with two amazing other work experience this week and we all got on great and worked extra hard to prove to our head keeper that we could do it! We got to do all sorts, including working with two species of dear, camels, alpacas, reindeer, emus, wallabies, tapirs and red foxes!! It is definitely my favourite section so far! And by the end of the week i think we succeeded in our mission to impress the head of paddocks which was brilliant!!!
Week four -
This week i was finally on birds, my most dreaded section!! I have only ever heard bad things about this section and how little you actually get to do, and i'm not very in to birds anyway. And how right i was, the week was pretty much terrible, the only good part of it was the one day when we were with Nicky (a new bird keeper) and she let us fly Stella the owl!! (Biggest species of owl in Europe) It was scary but amazing :D The most exciting thing that we got to do other than that was clean out the small aviaries and that was only because they contained the Lorikeets and i fell completely in love with these birds! They have so much character <3 Most of the week was either spent chasing up the keepers to find out the next stupid job they wanted to give us or weeding (i've never done so much weeding in my life, and my dad used to be a gardener!). I really hope i'll never have to be on this section again!
Week five -
This is the week of my birthday, i was praying that i would be on Paddocks as that was my favourite section but i knew the chances that i would be were slim, but i was!!!!!! It was another amazing week, made even more amazing thanks to James and him letting me feed the Tapirs AND the red foxes on my birthday! And my parents and brother came into the zoo on my birthday too so they got to see all of this and meet James, it was the best birthday i have ever had! I also got trusted to jet spray the outside Tapir enclosure and their pool which apparently work experience and volunteers are never allowed to do so i must have proved myself!!
Week six -
This week i was back on Small Mammals!! I got to do pretty much everything i had got to do during my first week but i got trusted and held responsible to do much more on my own this week which was brilliant! The highlight of my week was getting to help worm some of the meerkats, i learnt alot about how to disguise medicine in food and how it was hard to make sure that the right meerkats got the right amount of de-wormer and stuff like that, it was a good experience!
Week seven -
I was not looking forward to this week at all as i was either going to be on farmyard or birds, my two least favourite sections. But i was shocked to discover that i was actually going to be spending my week on primates!!! I must have really proved myself! I got to work with gibbons, slothes, armadillos, squirrel monkeys (my favourite animals of the section), lemurs and all sorts of smaller monkey species (terrible with remembering species names) !!! It is a very relaxed section to work on and i got to spend a lot more time with the animals themselves. Especially Louise the black lemur who is my joint favourite with the squirrel monkeys! Before i was on primates i loved them but thought i would never actually want to work with them but these week completely changed my view on that!
Week eight -
My last week :'( The first two days i was on primates again which i was ecstatic about!! It was just as good as the week before and i couldn't think of a better way to spend my last week, until i walked in on Wednesday morning and saw i had been but on reptiles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've never been so happy and excited in my life!!! This really was my dream come true!! I was on reptiles for the rest of the week and i learnt so much, i know so much more now about reptiles and how to look after them and i definately know that is what i want to do with my life (although i would like to work with everything else too) they are what i want to specialise in! I even got to feed their chinese alligator which was the highlight of my whole time at Paradise! I love how much i was trusted on reptiles as well, even know i don't have much experience with reptiles they let me feed and clean many of their reptiles alone and they also let me do the reptile encounters on my own and it was amazing, truly the best time of my life <3
No comments:
Post a Comment