Vodka, Bears and Elephants: Don't forget the rhino

This week has been more of the same at the elephant enclosure, but the weather is starting to deteriorate. I don’t think we’ve seen the sun all week as it’s been foggy, drizzly and pretty cold. But we are not people to be put off by bad weather (unlike some of the sulky keepers!) and have all been back out at the elephant sand enclosure digging the rest of the sand over. It’s a pretty big achievement to actually dig the whole area by hand. My elephant friends at other zoos all have nice diggers to do the job for them (slight case of jealousy!). Once we finished digging the enclosure we raked it thoroughly, which the keepers must now do every day and we dug some of the sand into big hills for Boy to play with. It looked a bit like an elephant sized Zen Garden.
Now that the sand is much softer, Boy has been able to start expressing some more elephant behaviours. It’s much easier for him to pick up sand for dust bathing but even better is digging. I hoped that once the sand was loosened Boy would have a little dig and was so pleased when I found the first hole that he dug in the enclosure. Now he is digging regularly to find hidden food, clean his feet and get sand for dust bathing with.
Boy has also been exercised every day this week, but not by us. It’s been taken over by the vets and the keepers, which is great to see. They have also started talking to him more as he really needs the interactions.
We moved from the outdoor area to the inside enclosure with our cleaning programme. Whilst Boy was outside we had a good opportunity to work indoors. We have scrubbed Boy’s enclosure from top to bottom and shown the workers the standards that we want maintained. The food preparation area was also a big priority – it just wasn’t being kept clean enough. It’s not a nice area, it needs new tiles, but that’s no excuse for not keeping it clean, so we set everyone to work – taking everything out, scrubbing and bleaching until everything was clean. The vets even donated a new table for chopping food. I think it went really well as the keepers were arguing over where the best place was to put the table. That shows pride and thought in what they are doing. I am confident they will keep it hygienic now.
So, with the elephant spring clean almost complete, Steve and I turned our attentions to the next animal on the elephant section – our lovely old rhinoceros. Same routine here; digging over an extremely compacted sand enclosure by hand and then scrubbing out a very dirty water pool. Fortunately for us, the rhino enclosure is considerably smaller than the elephant so we could get most of the work done in two days.
Steve particularly enjoyed playing (sorry, Working) with the power washer and discovered that the indoor enclosure was not actually grey, but green and the wooden boards where the rhino sleeps were really a lovely light brown colour!