Week 9

Ariane and I began by letting out the turkey and peacock (who displayed his tail quite beautifully), guinea pigs and rabbits. All 7 soay lambs were out in the field, looking delightful. We swept all around the guinea pig area, and then fetched a bucket and cleaned all the glass and the windows around the guinea pig enclosure. There are always sticky finger marks to wipe off! Then it was breakfast time for them all, and the guinea pigs started squeaking in unison - it was quite funny. I distributed cabbage leaves and carrots, and left them their dry food in their house - Kate explained the guineas have food with vit C because, like us, they cannot make their own vit C.

We had a nice break, sat in the sun, and everyone was quite chatty this week. Amy was tired but she was being quite amusing, and Alex was chatty too. I suppose now we are comfortable enough with each other to chat quite easily.

Our next task was the rodents. Ariane and I and fed, watered, and cleaned them out. One rat was determined to escape, and nearly made a successful attempt, so we left this one and I told Kate we'd not been able to do it, and she did not mind. I swept the floor and we took the rubbish sacks to the skip.

I had a look round at lunchtime and discovered that the mouflon have had their lambs! Two lovely caramel coloured lambs, who are already quite big. They stayed towards the back, as if they were shy of the public.

In the afternoon, we took some sacks of birdseed back to the rodent house, and then went round and filled up all the feeders. Following a successful ploy we had used earlier in the day, I distracted Sid the goose by standing in front of him, on the other side of the fence, whilst Ariane went round the back and nipped over the fence. She was then able to fill two feeders that hang in his enclosure. I signalled to her when it was safe to move! We felt quite smug to have tricked him. The alternative is upsetting him so he runs at you and attacks... 

Amy was all smiles because she had had the chance to feed a lemur. She and Alex had been working with Colin, a full time member of staff, who had returned to work after having an operation. He seemed glad to be back, and was very friendly and chatty, asking about where I worked and saying he had been there 25 years. It sounds like there is a bit of politics that comes from the council (who run the centre), so not much different from the university really... We were all in the kitchen, chatting, and I was cleaning out a particularly gungy bird feeder. Alex had to get 2 frozen rabbits out of the freezer and was trying to fit them into the box but one rabbit's ears were too long! It was the first time we've been allowed near meat or food, so perhaps Colin has the authority to let us do a few different things.

Still no sign of the beaver: one man asked me where the lynx were, as he'd been five times and never seen them. This is the same for me and the beaver. I think he was too early - the lynx were all out by the afternoon. 

Lastly we went to the soay sheep to replace their bedding; Colin said he wanted to keep it nice and fresh for the lambs. We shovelled up the straw and muck and hay, and replaced it with fresh straw and new hay for eating. When I returned with the hay, Amy and Ariane were away at the skips. The ram came to investigate, and went for me - I put the bag of hay between me and him and he butted that instead. Thank god I had it! He did this again, when, luckily, Amy and Ariane returned, so I had back-up.

Once we had finished we headed back for more duties, but Kate had already put the animals away, so we were free to go a bit earlier.

I was told about some mentions of the new animals at the NC on Twitter, so I followed this up and contacted the tweeter - happily there seems to be a lot of devoted nature centre fans, who have been really positive about the blog and suggested ways of getting involved. I am hoping to post a video clip they have of the otters, and also find out more about setting up a Flickr account for the Nature Centre! The NC goes Web 2.0!