Today was a rainy day, to say the least! While the lions were not happy about it, Hannah the hippo could not have been happier! She was swimming in her pond and rolling in the mud truly enjoying herself.
While it is more difficult to get them to cooperate in the rain, we still needed to feed the lions and clean their enclosures. I prepared 1 pound of beef for each of the mountain lions, breaking two fish oil pills in each and hiding Sheba's pills in smaller sections so that she would eat them.
We started off trying to persuade Samson to come down from his house, but he simply turned around and faced the wall, ignoring us completely.
We decided we'd try back when the rain calmed down a little and went to work with Tonka, Sasha and Sheba instead.
We recently moved Sasha to a new enclosure, trying to create a more promoting environment to interact with people. I'm happy to say that it seems to be working! She went into her holding area without any hesitation and even allowed us to give her a few good scratches before she walked away. I still worked quickly cleaning her enclosure because we don't want to cause her to associate the holding area with fear and long drawn out periods.
She was very happy to get out and be able to go find where we hid her food today!
Once we were done with the mountain lions we walked back over to Samson. I walked around the back to peak into his house and this persuaded him to walk down to us to check out the weather.
We waited patiently to see if he would lay down so we could feed him but he insisted on walking back and forth trying to find a dry spot, failing to do so. He then decided he wanted to be pet, so I handed over my camera and went over to give him some love!
After getting a good petting in, he turned around and went back to his house. This is alright since it is raining but we usually encourage him to eat twice a day.
After we were done with the lions I went to help out in the Med Center, we have an male owl in there right now which is part of a breeding pair. His beak looks as though he ran into something very hard, but he is eating and looks healthy, almost ready to be re-released. He even was up and puffing his wings out in a warning fashion.
Before I left the peacocks caught my attention, sitting safely under our roof so that they wouldn't get wet.
And of course, I had to stop to see the feral cats before I left, one of them were adopted out this week! Here are some of the other ones, anxious to show their good side and find a forever home soon.
