I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday – we’ve been really busy already this week.
Monday started with an attempt to take a group photo of everyone who works at the zoo, not an easy task with a few hundred staff, particularly when you also want the giraffes to pose at the same time!
A member of the management from Minsk Zoo, Belarus, is here at the moment and Steve has been advising him on electric fences for primates. They are desperate for Steve to go there to help, even offering to pay for Steve to go back with them tomorrow to get their fences done. It’s actually a very interesting proposition, but we just can’t go at the moment – too much to do here. They even bought him a very expensive bottle of Vodka, but it just isn’t possible.
Whilst I’m on the subject of Vodka, I was amazed by a kids TV programme I watched at lunchtime on Monday. It starred a few clowns who had been fishing and were waiting for Mrs. Clown to cook the fish. Whilst they were waiting for their dinner they started drinking vodka and eventually all got so drunk that they fell over and went to sleep before their food was ready.
Construction staff here seem to have incredible hole digging skills, you saw my clumsy attempts a month ago in the lynx enclosure – the ground here is very hard to dig, the soil is so sandy it just crumbles away. These staff are able to dig the most incredible holes. For fence posts they can dig holes 5 foot deep and a foot in diameter by hand, and the holes are just perfect. In just one day this week they have dug a hole about 12 foot deep and 5 diameter for a drainage system. See photos.
We had a huge long meeting on Monday night with all the Heads of animal departments to discuss and decide on various new management systems and protocols. It was really embarrassing as Igor, head of small carnivores, gave a presentation on husbandry routine protocols and used pictures of me and Steve posing in the coati enclosure (after we had finished building it) as the background for his PowerPoint slides.
Today, to complement the new enrichment committee and programmes the zoo issued a press statement asking for people to donate various items for the animals. They asked Steve and me to be interviewed for the news. It’s just typical – I always have unexpected press interviews on days that I can’t be bothered to wear make-up and make my hair nice! Anyway, it went very well. They interviewed Steve, me and Masha and then filmed some tiger enrichment. I hope that people will respond to this and bring items for our animals.
Steve and I are trying to implement new concepts and procedures into the animal management systems here. It’s quite encouraging that when we discuss something e.g. enclosure design (design first for the animals, second for the keepers, third for the visitors and last for the management) that the zoo staff say to us “yes, we understand, we read about this in Gerald Durrell books”. Generally if we can link something back to a Durrell book it will be accepted and implemented by the staff. I think sometimes in many zoos staff forget just how much we owe to Gerald Durrell in terms of animal management and much of his work is the foundation of much of the zoo based conservation in practice today.
Monday started with an attempt to take a group photo of everyone who works at the zoo, not an easy task with a few hundred staff, particularly when you also want the giraffes to pose at the same time!
A member of the management from Minsk Zoo, Belarus, is here at the moment and Steve has been advising him on electric fences for primates. They are desperate for Steve to go there to help, even offering to pay for Steve to go back with them tomorrow to get their fences done. It’s actually a very interesting proposition, but we just can’t go at the moment – too much to do here. They even bought him a very expensive bottle of Vodka, but it just isn’t possible.
Whilst I’m on the subject of Vodka, I was amazed by a kids TV programme I watched at lunchtime on Monday. It starred a few clowns who had been fishing and were waiting for Mrs. Clown to cook the fish. Whilst they were waiting for their dinner they started drinking vodka and eventually all got so drunk that they fell over and went to sleep before their food was ready.
Construction staff here seem to have incredible hole digging skills, you saw my clumsy attempts a month ago in the lynx enclosure – the ground here is very hard to dig, the soil is so sandy it just crumbles away. These staff are able to dig the most incredible holes. For fence posts they can dig holes 5 foot deep and a foot in diameter by hand, and the holes are just perfect. In just one day this week they have dug a hole about 12 foot deep and 5 diameter for a drainage system. See photos.
We had a huge long meeting on Monday night with all the Heads of animal departments to discuss and decide on various new management systems and protocols. It was really embarrassing as Igor, head of small carnivores, gave a presentation on husbandry routine protocols and used pictures of me and Steve posing in the coati enclosure (after we had finished building it) as the background for his PowerPoint slides.
Today, to complement the new enrichment committee and programmes the zoo issued a press statement asking for people to donate various items for the animals. They asked Steve and me to be interviewed for the news. It’s just typical – I always have unexpected press interviews on days that I can’t be bothered to wear make-up and make my hair nice! Anyway, it went very well. They interviewed Steve, me and Masha and then filmed some tiger enrichment. I hope that people will respond to this and bring items for our animals.
Steve and I are trying to implement new concepts and procedures into the animal management systems here. It’s quite encouraging that when we discuss something e.g. enclosure design (design first for the animals, second for the keepers, third for the visitors and last for the management) that the zoo staff say to us “yes, we understand, we read about this in Gerald Durrell books”. Generally if we can link something back to a Durrell book it will be accepted and implemented by the staff. I think sometimes in many zoos staff forget just how much we owe to Gerald Durrell in terms of animal management and much of his work is the foundation of much of the zoo based conservation in practice today.
Big Hole
Big Hole again
Big Hole with Drainage Tank
I was just given this photo of Steve and Larissa (our translator)I thought you'd like to see it !
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