Zoo Camp

I'm in a program right now through the Oakland Zoo called Zoo Camp. I found it under "volunteer opportunities" on the Oakland Zoo website and thought it would entail manual labor of some kind, like shoveling elephant poop. But it actually is a neat sort of summer camp for teens that lets you do cool stuff with the animals.

On Monday my camp group took a general tour of zoo, our first stop being the lions' area. Our day starts an hour before the zoo opens and apparently a lot of the animals love to come out when there aren't many people around. So the lions were laying around in plain site (usually they're back amongst the trees). I don't know if you've ever heard a lion roar, but it is, I swear, the most terrifying sound I have ever heard. It's so deep and guttural that it sounds like its starting from down in the lion's stomach. The lions are actually pretty cute, though. They lick their lips and suck on their toes just like my cats at home do.

Anyway, today we took a three mile hike along a ridge that overlooks Oakland. From the top I could see the big red McAfee sign where the Coliseum is (the baseball field). Pretty cool. It was warm for about an hour or so but the wind picked up and the air got cold. I wished I had my jeans on instead of my stupid shorts. I also think I got a million mosquito bites and a couple of brushes with poison oak. Oh, well. It was fun.

We got to see a great horned owl (is it capitalized?) demonstration later. Her name was Olivia and she was beautiful. Except when she looks straight at you - then she's pretty chilling. I was surprised to learn that she weighs only two pounds, but I guess it makes sense since she's all feathers. I also found out that an owl's ears are asymmetrical. One is in line with her eye and the other is down by her mouth. Apparently it really fine tunes her hearing. Pretty interesting.

Well, tomorrow will be cool. We're gonna feed some giraffes and watch the alligators get fed. We'll also put out food for the river otters. I guess it's not "safe" to be out with the otters because they have a pretty powerful bite. The best part, though, will be when we clean out the lemurs' area. We'll do some "weeding and feeding" over there. It'll be fun to hand-feed them.

Thursday we get to wash and oil the tortoises. Yes, wash and oil them. I'm not sure exactly what that entails, but I will report back. Heh.

Well, that was my day. I have some ball games on right now but I'm not really paying attention. I'm writing this instead.

Ok, I'm off to watch the games!