Update on Life

I'll get the life news out of the way first so that people who are not so fascinated with zoos as me can skip the rest. The internship is going so well - I was expecting a very, very different experience. My supervisor told me to come in on Monday so I could start on paperwork. I though, oh boy, filing paperwork, can't wait. Actually, what she meant was that I needed to fill out paperwork. Oh. That's easier. So I did that and wasn't really sure what to do for the first few hours because she kept giving me really simple tasks that were done in a couple minutes. Anyways, on Tuesday she told me to research various e-mail mass marketing campaign programs and give my recommendations to her and the executive director. They're really interested in any projects that I'd be willing to start so I'll have to begin those soon.

Here's my work station. It's not quite an office because it opens up to the hall but I actually like that better since people walk by and stop and talk to me all the time. I have been freakishly lucky since all of my co-workers are very, very nice and no one is grumpy. I'd say 95% of them have come up to my desk to introduce themselves and stayed for at least five minutes.

One of the older guys ('Bill') retired yesterday so I made sure that I was working during that time because there was a luncheon and I am all about free food. Lordy, was there ever free food! There was salad with all kinds of dressing, rolls, biscuits, margarine (woo), and the main course had a Mexican theme since he was taking a trip to Mexico. There was chipotle chicken, swordfish, potatoes, onions, oh tasty. Hah, the spell check doesn't recognize 'chipotle' and instead offers such close alternatives as 'spotless' or 'potlatch's'. Almost!

In addition, we all got to eat in the board room with the fancy dimmed lighting and large leather reclining chairs and shiny long table. They set up all of this bunched fabric in the middle along with candles that I'm sure posed a fire hazard. Then, for dessert, we had carrot cake (delicious), various bakery treats (I took a meringue which tasted so weird, like butter popcorn. I could not stop eating it because each time I finished a bite I said 'that didn't really just taste like popcorn, did it??'), and for a finale they poured out champagne for everyone to toast Bill. Thanks, Bill! He's my new favorite ex-employee. This luncheon took an hour and a half.

It's cold and rainy outside, but thankfully it's not icy like in other parts of the company. I can't complain because it's normally sunny here and I get to walk around a lot. Here's some recent pictures:

Oh, the first SmartCar USA sighting!








What? The L. Ron Hubbard House? And they give tours?!? What is with the Scientology focus in my hood?






Now, on to the zoo. I stayed mainly in the Invertebrate House because I don't trust animals with a backbone.





What is this thing? I should spend more time reading the informational placards.






Current desktop background. Oh, I like this picture.







The crabs were really feisty. Out of the four crabs I saw, three of them were actively snapping at me. They must intuit my love for crab legs at inexpensive Chinese buffets.




Grr.

















This was a local crab.








Nice close-up.








This was the one crab that didn't react to me. He was kind of brooding back in the corner of the tank.





Nautilus.











Neat rainbow fish.








This urchin looked like it had lips.











More urchin.








It seems that all of the zoo volunteers are in love with the octopus. One of them actually came by and rounded up everyone in the invertebrate house because there wasn't anyone around to watch the feeding.


Closer picture.








Did you know... this octopus is able to suction herself to the surface of the water?






Hah, that's cool. She looks angry.








Here is the volunteer about to give her a half crab on a stick. She is very unwilling to release the stick afterwards.





This was the only animal I saw that had a number.










Shell.








Shell with growth.








More jellyfish in the tank. Unfortunately, I cannot replicate the rainbow shimmery coolness that these things radiate in real life. Maybe next time I will take a video.




Doesn't this look like there should be a glass wall between you and the spiders? I talked to one of the volunteers and he said that the spiders were homebodies that didn't like to leave their webs. He tried unsuccessfully to throw crickets in the web so I could watch a feeding but they weren't sticking.


Eek.








I know that it was called the pollinarium, but there were no bees in this room. Thank god.











































































This centipede looked fake. The original probably died years ago and someone just tossed this in saying "eh, no one will know the difference".




This made me laugh. Look at the huge bowl of food for that one, immobile millipede. I have never seen a millipede that wasn't curled up into a little pile. How much food could they possibly need?



I exhausted the Invertebrate House and moved northward to Reptile Land.

The crocodile looked bored.








Eek - gila monsters scare me. I think I had some book about them when I was little and it talked about how they were poisonous and that was the moment I decided that I did not want to visit the southwest.



Oh! Wow! It was here - a skink!








I had imagined a little lizard-like creature but this thing was almost as big as the gila monster.







There were a ton of snakes that were incredibly active at 11:00 in the morning but at this point my camera ran out of batteries and I walked home.

Zoo, Two

Woooo hooo, more zoo pictures to come! You can see hairs on the spider's legs.






Check this out.








I don't have time to upload any more, but they're wonderful as well, of course. I am on the verge of either getting or not getting work five to eight hours a week at this psychiatry office, and I have to go work again today at three so we'll see how that goes. I'm really enjoying my internship, thank god.

What Luck

Of course, George Bush goes to the MLK public library on the one day that I don't stop by. He's obviously avoiding me. He won't return my calls, either.

And it appears that they use the exact same template in their electronic card catalog at Penn State does, so that makes things much simpler. Reserve, reserve.

(Sigh) More Cats. But Some Dogs, Too.

I started reading about Koko the gorilla today, and then I read about her cat All Ball and then ... I couldn't help myself. More Centre County PAWS cats.

Emerald should have been named 'Patches'. I don't think I'd want to touch her at first as she looks a bit mangy. Interesting giraffe look on her chest.

Bingo has definite similarities to Padiddle, the one-eyed Montpellier cat.

Oreo! Oh, how I want a cat. I want cats the way other girls want children.

"Dior is quite elegant and seems to be very nice." Seems is the key word here.

Hansel and Gretel.

Buster!

Hee, Patch.

If I were into dogs, Sadie Mae would be my choice.

Zippy looks like one of those old-timey cartoons about the red-eyed Saint Bernards. He also has a sad Droopy face.

Angel looks demonic.

Chippy! I'd wager him and Zippy are related. Oh, yes. It says they're brothers.

Paco, the chihuahua.

I like Minnie's picture.

Raw Chicken

AskMefi has a post going about some woman who was worried since she didn't cook her chicken all the way. One of the comments made me laugh:

While I'm no doctor, I once ate half of a breaded chicken breast before discovering it was entirely raw in the center.

She used the 'I'm no doctor' to qualify her later statement saying that she thought it was less dangerous than eating raw chicken skin, but here it seems like she is implying that eating semi-raw chicken is a doctory thing to do. Hee.

Zoo Time

Since it wasn't too cold outside, Travis and I went to the Smithsonian National Zoo rather than the art museum. It reminded me a lot of the Lunaret Zoo in Montpellier because a: it was free and b: there wasn't much rhyme nor reason. I'm used to the Pittsburgh Zoo where there are very specific arrows and you know very quickly if you are off the beaten path. Here, you kind of just wander around and hope that you aren't going towards a dead end or a parking lot. We were too cheap to spring for a special visitor's map ($2.00) so we took our chances and headed down the Asian Trail. I took a ton of pictures today (my immortal batteries finally died) and here is a giant influx of them. My favorites are from the butterfly cage and the aquarium tanks.

Let's group them by animal category, shall we?

Mammals:

Porcupines.








Elephant. How about I keep naming obvious animals?










Two elephants. Aww, they're kissing.







Everything I've ever learned about hippos has given me reason to be afraid of them.






This one was especially fierce. It kept half yawning, half biting in my general direction






Hippo in the pool.








Wow, frightening.








Awww - the famous panda bear! How cute!







God, I just wanted to reach into the pen and cuddle and hug this baby panda. Do you think that is a good idea?





Apparently not. I think that the zoo just wants the pandas all to themselves. Selfish. It's blasphemy to say that an animal so cute could be dangerous.




This was a neglected bear (everyone else only wants to see the pandas) and it showed it by relentlessly pacing back and forth. I hate when zoo animals do that because it makes me feel guilty for being there even if I didn't pay two dollars for the map.


Sad, sad.








I got over it and sat on an extremely spiky, not-amenable-to-climbing, cold cold statue of the bear. Ow.





A kitty! Some sort of sleeping leopard!







What is that? That freaky thing? Yes, that's right - it's a naked mole rat. Come on! You have to watch.






Monkeys and monkey-like primates are shrill, shrill animals.








Birds:

This was one of the first birds we saw in the Bird House. Common duck, right?






Blarrrrghhh!! He was into shaking. Go on, click the picture. You won't be sorry.






Fun, pretty bird.











This is the bird that doesn't get invited to all the parties.







Now, this kind of gross. It was feeding time in the Bird House and this particular hawky falcon was dining on either a mouse or Rufus, the naked mole rat.




Crunch.








Ah, that's better.











Owl on a cactus.








You know, this was a whole cow when they brought it into the exhibit.






So, check out this crazy looking bird. I have never seen a bird like this before in my life. It was a total show-off. It kept prancing around and strutting to make sure we saw his feathers.




But honestly, what plumage!




















He wandered away and led us to...








A real peacock! Oh, it was so on.








I wish they would have had some giant colorful battle.







The peacock was equally proud of his feathers. Vain, vain birds.









Same position, different location.










Travis challenged the peacock to a walk-off. Travis lost, and we had to leave in shame.






This wasn't a zoo bird! Just some random bird in some random tree.








Amphibians:

We skipped the amphibian house because we read that there was an OCTOPUS FEEDING at three o'clock and there was no way we could miss that. Sorry, frogs. And newts. I'm sure you were very interesting.


Reptiles:

There was a komodo dragon in another pen but a large crowd was forming in front of the exhibit and honestly, I've never seen a reptile do anything that great, especially in winter DC weather.




Fish:

No fish. Sorry.


Insects:

The Hercules beetle, or something like that. I can only imagine how much it would sting to get that hooked into your ankle.





Woo!! Yes! There was an entire greenhousey area just filled with butterflies and flowers, and people were just filing through it like they were bored. Not boring! I want to go back to get more pictures.












More butterfly.









Other Invertebrates:










We did manage to catch the octopus feeding, which was very interesting because this guy was giving us some explanation about them and he obviously had a not-so-secret love affair going on with this one because he kept bragging about her intelligence and arm strength and the fact that she could fit through one-inch tubes and unscrew caps. That should help in the wild.

These were crazy-looking jellyfish things that were forced to revolve in a circular motion all day by means of a high-pressure water current.




Killer crab.








More of the jellyfish.








A sea cucumber.








More creatures of the sea. I need to start writing down names.







I couldn't get enough of those jellyfish.







Now, here's a tale. I was like SWEET, there's a spider right next to the glass so I can get a great picture of it. So I get up all close and this turns out really well. I go to get another picture, and realize ... wow, I'm super close. Is the glass angled or something, or, how is this working? I put my hand up to feel the glass, and my hand goes much farther in than it should. At this point, I am almost hyperventilatey nervous. I blow on the spider, and it wavers. AURGHGH! There was no glass! It was just me and spider and web and nothing in between! Thank god I didn't actually touch it with the camera because if I had, I would have flung the camera with velocity and then cried. Travis suggested afterwards that they weren't real spiders or else they would have had glass there. I'm not so sure. There were a ton of them in webs that were obviously not man-made. I need to go back and ask someone, and steer very clear.

I'm thinking that I'll go back sometime Tuesday or Wednesday with recharged batteries and a few hours to kill. It's free! That is such a foreign concept to me that I must take advantage of it. There was a ton of stuff that we didn't get to see, either, and not only the amphibian house. We missed the entire Wild Cats section and this bizarre twisted part in the middle. And, oh god, we didn't see Lemur Island.

It's 11:45 PM right now and about nine people were supposed to be here by 11:00. Well, I am going to bed at midnight and waiting up for no man. I will tape a piece of paper on the door that will be to the tune of 'suckers!!!' and flop down into my bunk bed. It's gotten so much more comfortable now that I'm used to it. A lot of people that stay here freak out on Fridays and Saturdays because we have this club right underneath us and funky bass grooves keep pounding until the wee hours. Hah, I have the good fortune to be on the third floor and hear none of it.

One of the many bonuses of working the hostel desk is that I have hour upon hour of downtime of which to do nothing but play on the computer or watch the San Antonio Spurs. Result - many, many more postings. You're welcome. No, no - thank you.