This past weekend, I finally got to visit Little Zoo again. It's been so hard to get out there with school and stuff. But now that I'm not doing marathon training anymore, I have time to volunteer on Saturdays. So off I went to help Mallory with the animals!

There were two other young girls helping Mallory that day, so we all worked together and got a lot done. First, we cleaned the cages. As we went from cage to cage, scooping lots of poop and raking the dirt, we were allowed to touch some of the animals. Mallory let us take turns petting the lynx, which was one of the coolest things I've ever done EVER. I realized as I touched his head that large cats kind of freak me out! Who knew? But I'd pet him again in a heartbeat. I couldn't believe how soft his fur is. Incredible.

Then we made up the diets. Preparing food for a bunch of animals is one of my most favorite things to do. It's so fun seeing all the bowls filled with brightly colored food, all mixed together: fruits, vegetables, eggs, and worms! Yum! Heh. Of course the bowls filled with just a large chunk of raw chicken are pretty interesting-looking too!

When we handed out all the food dishes to the animals, Mallory said it would be okay if I hand-fed the marmosets!! I said, "Really?!" And when she said yes again, I picked out a small piece of banana and reached up to them. One marmoset (I think it was the girl) [Edit: They're both boys! Brothers, in fact.] grabbed some banana in her mouth and ran away. The boy sat there and opened his mouth wide and still couldn't fit the tiny piece in. Their mouths are so tiny! I broke it into an even smaller piece and he gently ate it off the tip of my finger. He has such teeny teeth, and I could feel them on my skin. So amazing!

Eventually, it was time for Mallory, another volunteer, Martha, and I to get ready for the day's program. The young girls left, and we got all the animals ready. The place we went to was really nice. It was a Halloween book event for kids, so we brought kind of "spooky" animals, such as the orange-ish and black Red-Ruffed Lemur (Halloween colors!) named Rufio, an 8 foot long Burmese python, an African pixie toad, Emperor scorpions, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, the sloth, the tarantula, the turkey vulture and Ty, the baby raccoon. (Oh Ty, how I love thee...)

When the kids came in, I got to hold Rufio for the first time! He has such thick fur, and it felt so natural holding him. He gets a bit rambunctious, but scratching his armpit seems to keep him pretty settled most of the time. I just can't even tell you how cool that was. I mean, I held a lemur. Wow.

I didn't hold him too long before Mallory noticed a problem with the python. "Um, we're taking him out now," she said. I looked down and realized he'd torn a hole in his zippered snake bag and was crawling through it! There was no way to encourage him to go back in, so we had to rip it a little wider to make sure he could get out. I handed Rufio to Martha and helped Mallory set the snake on the table. Then I controlled his head to make sure those giant teeth of his weren't facing the audience. So many people checked with me before petting him though, asking, "Do YOU have his head?" Most of the time, I had it behind me, so they didn't even see it. Except for the one woman who did see it and pointed at his tongue, as she reached WAY too close to his mouth. I told her not to do it and she seemed very confused. I don't know why. He could totally eat her child, but that's no reason not to bother him and touch his face!

People asked lots of questions, and I was happy to answer them as best I could. I showed them the toad and the tarantula (who spun part of a web onto my arm! that was really cool!). I showed them Rufio and Ty, too. Ty continued trying to suckle my arm, but not as much as last time. I think he's slowly getting away from that behavior. Rufio was tickling me which was really funny, licking my face all over, including the inside of my nose and the inside of my ear! He even grabbed my hair with both his fists and spent a long time licking my hair! His red fur is very similar to my hair color, so Mallory said that might be why he wanted to groom me so much. I could have been a red-ruffed lemur in his eyes!

These outings are always a good opportunity to explain why wild animals don't make good pets, because people inevitably ask. "Oh, he's so comfortable with you -- they must make great pets!" Uh, no. Lemurs are endangered, first of all. Secondly, it's illegal. Thirdly, primates are SO complicated and unpredictable. As I told these visitors, "No human should have a primate in their house except for other humans." Monkeys, apes and lemurs are intense animals, can give serious bites, can get extremely frustrated without the right kind of enrichment exercises, and are pretty dirty and gross, playing with their own poop and stuff. They are not pets.

Anyway, at one point, I was left alone with the animals. I held Rufio in my arms, while the python chilled out in Rufio's crate, and Mallory and Martha showed kids the sloth in the next room while they waited for the storyteller to arrive. Only one kid and a few straggling adults stayed behind. I let Rufio walk on the table a bit (he had a leash around his waist), but that didn't last long -- he kept making a beeline for the hissing cockroaches. I'm sure he was thinking, "Ooh, snack!" I wrapped my arms around him and scratched his armpit, and soon he was pretty relaxed. The only thing bugging him from time to time was the rustling of the table cloth. Other than that, he was being so good and calm.

At that moment, the turkey vulture, Gross, who'd been sitting perfectly still right behind me, leaped off his perch, flapping his wings wildly. Rufio almost jumped right out of my arms, and I know I jumped, too. I talked in soothing tones to Rufio to keep him calm, then I gently placed him in the sloth's crate. I turned around to assess the vulture and things looked scary. He hung completely upside down from his jesses, just hanging very still. I couldn't see his head, because he'd bent his neck back, and there was blood on the ground! I was terrified that he'd cracked his head open. "Okay, the glove, the glove, where's the glove?" I said out loud to myself. The onlookers stared at me, waiting for me to do something. Only a few seconds had passed but I still didn't see the glove, so I turned and told the little boy who'd been hanging around me since the beginning of the presentation to go get Martha. He ran off, and the second he left, I saw the glove, right under the vulture's head. I very quickly and carefully grabbed the glove, pulled it on, and gently lifted the vulture up enough so that he could flap and pull himself back onto the table and back onto the perch. He was already upright again when Martha came back. "Sorry," I said. "I didn't see the glove at first." We analyzed the situation, looking Gross over to make sure he was okay. Martha pointed to his wing. He'd opened up an old wound, and that's where the blood was coming from. Talk about relief -- I was so worried he'd damaged his little head somehow! A wing injury is a lot less serious.

When Mallory returned with the sloth, we put Gross back in his crate. Not long after, it was time to pack up, so we did. One guy decided our packing up time was the perfect time to take pictures. We told him he couldn't since they were already put away. He said, "Oh so you're going to take them out for me?" I just said, "No." I mean, come on! It was obvious we were leaving. Some people are so demanding and weird.

When we got back to the zoo, we put everyone away except for Gross. We toweled him inside. Well, Mallory and Martha did, being the only two gloved ones. They wrapped him in a towel so that only his hurt wing was exposed and they both held him still. I got to play doctor, scrubbing his injury with a cotton ball, first with water, then hydrogen peroxide. We also put some ointment on it as a finishing touch. After all that, he seemed glad to be free! I'm sure he was thinking, "What in the hell are you people doing to me?!"

After we put Gross away, a few birds needed a toenail trim. It was really cool to watch! I even got to help when we got to the cockatoo. I was the one who got to towel her, since she doesn't know me. We didn't want her making a bad association with Mallory or Martha, who handle her and know her well. So I did it, and Mallory said I did a good job. I made sure the bird had enough room to move her head around and breathe inside the towel, but not enough room to break free of the towel and bite someone (the way Gross kept trying to do! he unwrapped his head and sharp beak a few times - so scary!). She was certainly trying! It was over quickly, though, and afterwards, she seemed perfectly relaxed and pleasant, as if nothing had happened. What a good bird!

And that was the end of our day! I spent the rest of the evening feeling high on life, and so grateful for the experiences I get to have with these animals. I can't even explain what it does to me to be near them. I love it so much. I will definitely do this kind of work for the rest of my life, in some capacity or another. I love Little Zoo, and can't wait to go back!