On Friday I visited the Wuppertal Zoo, and it was an awesome experience. I worked with a zookeeper in the monkey house. His name was Chris and he was from South Manchester, so his English was really good. I'm really happy I got to work with him because he is very passionate about his job. He has been to zoos all over the world and described zoo-keeping not only a job, but a calling. To him, the monkeys were like family. Basically what we did all day was clean out the monkey pens, and feed them. We also prepared the food, i.e. cutting up fruits and vegetables. Some of the species I worked with included spider monkeys, gibbons, mangabes and lemurs. They are all really fun to watch and interact. I was able to feed some of the monkeys by hand; they would reach through the cage and grab the pieces of fruit with their little monkey-hands. By the end of the day, I was exhausted, but it was such an incredible experience to work with these creative little creatures. I am looking forward to write more about my experience there in my 485 paper.
Yesterday, I shadowed a veterinarian in Cologne. It was surprisingly a lot like the vet clinic that I work for back in Texas, with a few exceptions, such as where they draw blood from a cat and the order of examining patients. One huge difference was the German language being spoken all the time, which made the experience a little underwhelming at times. This was because I could never understand what the vet was talking to the owner about. She was really nice and explained some to me after each patient, but it still would have been nice to know in the moment. But I don't want to complain about it too much, because I'm glad I went. The veterinarian was an awesome person to get to know and she was very knowledgeable. Also, a turtle came in to get its nails and "beak" trimmed so that was a cool thing to see.
Tomorrow I will be going to the Zoo in Dortmund to work with the sea lions and I am very excited to post about it later this week! Bye for now.
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