Friends at the AoP

Today was my husbandry volunteer day at the AoP, so I did food prep and stuff mainly for Shark Lagoon this morning and helped with the 11am feed. Well, today, I also got to help with the 2 o’clock feed which is cooler, because those are the big sharks. Since I am a rookie with feeding the big guys (today was my first), I only fed the zebra shark (my fav!) and a couple of the hugemungous rays. That was difficult, but a lot of fun. Coolest thing is that Alex and Anthony were right there watching the feed as well. After the ‘show’, I took them behind the scenes and showed them around some of the quarantined areas and fish that are not on display yet. Our favorite was the baby cowfish – they are so adorable (those little freaks of nature)!

I know that they enjoyed the personal tour in front and behind the scenes – even if Anthony was dead tired. Kinda half way through, Hilda joined us randomly out of the blue which was also really cool. We took a picture on the way in, and guess what… Osama Bin Laden creeped into our picture! I swear, that is not my joke – it’s his. lol.

Oh my goodness, but I forgot to say that I got so mad this morning. OK, we got two new baby sea lions from Sea World in Orlando. They are about a year old, and our mammologist decided to rename them so that, well, the reason doesn’t really matter. I guess he just wanted to name them himself, I dunno. Well, he decided on Miguel and Rosa, which I thought was a wonderful idea seeing as how that will make a lot of the local spanish speaking people feel more connected to them, since you know, most places don’t give their animals names like that. The reason he gave them those names is because they are names he identifies with locally, like San Miguel and Santa Rosa. Well, people gave our curator crap for renaming them, especially such ‘ethnic’ names. !!!!! Ethnic names! So now they are back to Kona and Parker. They are not bad names at all, but denying them those names because they are ethnic is wrong. I can’t believe people complained that much. I have so many arguments, but I don’t feel like getting into them right now.

Anyway, hilda wants Rungus, our Binturong. She thinks he’s her’s. He’s mine. But I’ll let her think he’s her’s for a while since she bought us all a yummy dinner at the Sunfish Grill at Shoreline Village. Very nice.

It was nice to hang out with great friends and hilda, at my workplace – a place that I love and that they all like as well. It makes me feel really good to show people around and see their faces of wonder and amusement at my tidbits of info. I was happy to see Anthony awake and interested in what we were doing. I am glad he had a good time. He needed a distraction, but at this point, what he really needs is some sleep. And some self-confidence. It’s in there, somewhere. I saw it glimmer today. We’ll work on it until is shines. =D

And now I am off to do stuff, stuff I always do…