Aquarium Life
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Hey that's my finger!!
It's been a really good while since the last time I updated. So what is new? Well the ray pool has been interesting ... we have a female undulate ray who always "attacks" the crabs when we feed them ... to get their food ... she is quite distinct so we know it's the same one ... now her attacks involve jumping on top of the crab and waiting till it moves off to get its food and last Thursday one decided ... to here and no farther ... he grabbed her by the fins and then tried too grab her tail. Since then she's been behaving. Today however they all went nuts ... I gave a thornback ray some squid and the next minute one of the crabs grabs the thornback to get the squid ... pandemonium ... the crabs were fighting each other ... the rays were going nuts ... but they quieted down after a while.
I had a rain forest feed today ... I haven't really done them in a while D was giving me time to deal with my fall from the last time ... but I must admit it is one of my favorite feeds. The piranhas were fairly uneventful and we moved on to the archer fish in the mangrove tank. As a side note we always wear gloves in this section since we are handling fairly stinking fish and the ciclids tend to scratch you if you don't ... but I was glad about mine today. I was sorting through the food and taking out the hanging food we use to show how the archer fish jump ... when all of a sudden I got spit in the eye ... ok the food has not even been put out yet but ok ... so I was dangling some sand eels over the tank to show how they jump and they were doing quite well with the jumping ... then one jumped up right from under the sand eel and took it and Sabrina was saying how it was a funny jump ... so sand eel again and the next minute the same archer fish jumps out and instead of grabbing the sand eel it grabs my glove finger ... ok so now I've already dropped the sand eel and I'm trying to shake off this fish hanging off my hand so it finally lets go drops back into the water then he came back a second time so I hoped for the sand eel ... nope glove again. It was bizarre they have never done it before. Got splashed by the catfish again but nothing new there ... no falls so was a good day.
I'm still doing shark talks and enjoying it tremendously. I was very flattered on Monday when one of the ladies that had been listening to my talk said that it was one of the best talks she has ever heard and she has been to the aquarium a couple of times ... yeah me ... I even got an applause today.
So it was a a good day
More L8r
Panthera
I had a rain forest feed today ... I haven't really done them in a while D was giving me time to deal with my fall from the last time ... but I must admit it is one of my favorite feeds. The piranhas were fairly uneventful and we moved on to the archer fish in the mangrove tank. As a side note we always wear gloves in this section since we are handling fairly stinking fish and the ciclids tend to scratch you if you don't ... but I was glad about mine today. I was sorting through the food and taking out the hanging food we use to show how the archer fish jump ... when all of a sudden I got spit in the eye ... ok the food has not even been put out yet but ok ... so I was dangling some sand eels over the tank to show how they jump and they were doing quite well with the jumping ... then one jumped up right from under the sand eel and took it and Sabrina was saying how it was a funny jump ... so sand eel again and the next minute the same archer fish jumps out and instead of grabbing the sand eel it grabs my glove finger ... ok so now I've already dropped the sand eel and I'm trying to shake off this fish hanging off my hand so it finally lets go drops back into the water then he came back a second time so I hoped for the sand eel ... nope glove again. It was bizarre they have never done it before. Got splashed by the catfish again but nothing new there ... no falls so was a good day.
I'm still doing shark talks and enjoying it tremendously. I was very flattered on Monday when one of the ladies that had been listening to my talk said that it was one of the best talks she has ever heard and she has been to the aquarium a couple of times ... yeah me ... I even got an applause today.
So it was a a good day
More L8r
Panthera
Monday, November 13, 2006
Ander ma's het snaakse kinders
Well I must apologize to my faithful readers for not updating as often as I would like. It is extremely busy and with the onset of winter comes the flu and his big friend the cold so it has been busy.
This week was quite quiet up to Thursday when everything just seemed to go wrong and happen at once. We had an evacuation just as the majority of the staff went on lunch ... Murphy's law ... but we could handle it we had done it before but miscommunication plus caused a lot of confusion on which evacuation procedure to use. We evacuate often actually since County Hall wherein which the aquarium lays is quite a big building and the Aquarium is located right in the middle of it so if a fire alarm goes off anywhere in the building the Aquarium gets evacuated. This happened at about three.
I was at info point around four when a big family group came in marched straight at me and demanded some maps ... ok? no harm no foul ... I thought. Now when I say a big family group I mean Grandma in the wheelchair with grandpa along with more sets of grandparents... parents about three sets, aunts uncles assorted teenagers children, even a mom with a stroller.
Now I finish at half past four but usually stick around until the end of the day. So I was in the staff room when the call came from Lizzy (at the ray pool) for security to please come down as there are visitors acting inappropriately. So what happened was that this big group had moved down stairs to the ray pool then started spitting in the pool and smacking the animals ... as Lizzy said luckily I wasn't there I would have had a heart attack. So the duty manager asked if someone could please go to the rainforest's section as that is the only other place downstairs where there are open tanks and poisonous fish not to mention Terrapins (freshwater turtles) that can bite. So I went downstairs to keep Christy company and on my way down the stairs the tank lights started going out.
So now we have a big group ... open tanks ... and no lights in the tanks. So people start getting angry at us its not yet six why have we switched off the lights? What a nightmare ... luckily we got the big group out as soon as possible, but then we had people wanting to go back and see previous tanks when the lights where back on ... then believe it or not we had a crazy woman who after being in the aquarium for two hours wanted a refund because her daughter fell asleep and they actually came for her ... huh?
Like the title says other mothers have funny children.
More l8r this week
P
This week was quite quiet up to Thursday when everything just seemed to go wrong and happen at once. We had an evacuation just as the majority of the staff went on lunch ... Murphy's law ... but we could handle it we had done it before but miscommunication plus caused a lot of confusion on which evacuation procedure to use. We evacuate often actually since County Hall wherein which the aquarium lays is quite a big building and the Aquarium is located right in the middle of it so if a fire alarm goes off anywhere in the building the Aquarium gets evacuated. This happened at about three.
I was at info point around four when a big family group came in marched straight at me and demanded some maps ... ok? no harm no foul ... I thought. Now when I say a big family group I mean Grandma in the wheelchair with grandpa along with more sets of grandparents... parents about three sets, aunts uncles assorted teenagers children, even a mom with a stroller.
Now I finish at half past four but usually stick around until the end of the day. So I was in the staff room when the call came from Lizzy (at the ray pool) for security to please come down as there are visitors acting inappropriately. So what happened was that this big group had moved down stairs to the ray pool then started spitting in the pool and smacking the animals ... as Lizzy said luckily I wasn't there I would have had a heart attack. So the duty manager asked if someone could please go to the rainforest's section as that is the only other place downstairs where there are open tanks and poisonous fish not to mention Terrapins (freshwater turtles) that can bite. So I went downstairs to keep Christy company and on my way down the stairs the tank lights started going out.
So now we have a big group ... open tanks ... and no lights in the tanks. So people start getting angry at us its not yet six why have we switched off the lights? What a nightmare ... luckily we got the big group out as soon as possible, but then we had people wanting to go back and see previous tanks when the lights where back on ... then believe it or not we had a crazy woman who after being in the aquarium for two hours wanted a refund because her daughter fell asleep and they actually came for her ... huh?
Like the title says other mothers have funny children.
More l8r this week
P
Labels: Oh boy
