zoo doo

I was just sitting down to write about my week training with sea lions when the neighbor kid had diarrhea all over my floor. Why? Seriously, why?

Well, yippee for pet stain stuff. It worked really well. I spent my day scrubbing animal poop, why not spend my evening scrubbing the NEIGHBOR's diarrhea out of my carpet? Hope that's not an indication of how my weekend's going to be!

I had a great week at work! I trained on the sea lion string so I can help fill in while the main keeper's on a long vacation. (Lucky her.) I had really been dreading it because there are two daily sea lion shows AND the pool filtration system is complicated and scary. We do many water tests twice daily that determine meter settings and chemical addition. Just the water tests themselves took me forever to learn. I still need work on learning to properly set all the pumps and filters, but I know enough to get by in a pinch.

I never had any real desire to work with the sea lions so I was surprised at how much I enjoyed them. Training them is REALLY fun. It's pretty intimidating when a 680# sea lion puts his head in your hand, but it's also pretty cool. It's fun to give a string of commands that are accurately performed. I did my first mini programs today and they went pretty well. The main sea lion keeper's been with me all week but next weekend I'm on my own. Hopefully they'll perform for just me.

The one bad thing about working with sea lions is they eat fish. Lots and lots of nasty, slimy, smelly fish. Fish that must be cut in thirds and stuffed with vitamins and salt tablets. Fish that must be thrown as a reward for a correct behavior. Nasty, nasty fish. I keep finding fish scales stuck to my arms and legs. Yesterday I had one in my ear. Yuck.

Subject change: Kaylin and I adopted a new Webkinz. This one's a tiger named Anya. Now I have to spend twice as long playing games to earn KinzCash so Anya and Poofy (the monkey) can eat. We also added a bathroom to our "house" and both pets were quite happy about the addition of a toilet. Well, I better go to Quizzy's so I can earn enough for a bathtub! Gene's been teasing me that Webkinz is more addictive than World of Warcraft. As if I'd be dorky enough to play THAT, lol. (ooooh, I wonder if there's a Webkinz sea lion?)