The Midnight Train Crossing

My third year of college and one of my classes took a field trip to the zoo. The title of my course is "Animal Thinking" so I suppose that it would make logical sense to go see some actual animals, rather then just reading about them.
Still... I took a field trip to the zoo :)
It was organized by a friend of my professor - my professor did not actually attend this field trip. My professor's friend is working closely with some people in my class. His name is Nigel - and I'm going to be calling him that because it's too much effort to type "My prof.'s friend".

We'd gotten our tickets in class on Thursday and we were all supposed to meet in the welcome center at ten. It took me a few minutes to locate some other people from my class. Two guys in my class had gotten there so early that they'd decided to go look at the animals nearby to kill some time.
Most of the people that lived in the dorms carpooled, and they all showed up pretty much promptly at ten.

We met up with Nigel's friend Bess (Who works at the zoo). She was to be our ‘guide'. She took us downstairs to this conference room thing. There was apple juice and cake in there, but it wasn't for us, so we couldn't have any :(

Another keeper came in and Bess gave a short presentation on bats. Our zoo has three different kinds. The Straw-colored fruit bat, another fruit bat with a long name that I don't remember, and vampire bats. They've got a lot of Straw-colored bats, so those were mostly what they talked about. Apparently our zoo is also doing some studies on local bats in the area (Hey I learned something)

When bat babies fall to the floor of the exhibit, if they aren't too badly injured, the keepers raise the bats by hand. These bats become very used to people and the zoo then uses them in presentations to schools - or to groups of visiting college students.

The bat they showed us was the Straw-colored fruit bat. His name was Starbuck (Note: No "s". He's not named after the coffee place). He's a very fat bat. According to his keeper, who's name I have forgotten, he weighs about twice what he should way. So because of this, he can't fly.
He was adorable! His keeper held him by the feet and walked around the room with him. He was... maybe about five or six inches long with light brown fur on his belly and dark brown on his head. His head looked kinda like a fox maybe. He had huge cute brown eyes, a long nose, and well, not huge, but kinda big ears. He was just hanging out there, eating a grape.
Then he decided to wiggle around and show off his wing span. I think that it was probably a bit more then a foot long.
We spent a good forty-five minutes down there with Starbuck and his keeper and then we headed off to our next destination - the elephants.

Our zoo has two elephants. Lucy who is in her 40's and Brittany who's in her 20's. We watched them outside for a few minutes while Nigel told us some things about them. Basically we were waiting for the keepers to be ready for us.

At our zoo, the elephants have a yard outside where they spend most of their time and then there are pens inside (which are plenty big to hold an elephant by the way). They go in the pens inside at night, or when they take baths, or when the keepers are working with them, or when it's just too cold to be outside. ((Hey it is Wisconsin)).
The elephants were outside and the keepers had just finished cleaning the inside pens. They let us inside the room, and then inside the pens. We were actually part of the exhibit :) We waved to the people that were watching us from the other side of the glass.

I'm going to see if I can describe the set up. The visitors to the zoo watch through the glass. There's a pathway immediately inside where the keepers walk and then the pen-stall things. Then behind the pens is a hallway, and then a door to the outside exhibit. When they move the elephants, they put up these gates, and make kinda a chute (well that's the first thing that I thought of.) The rest of the hallway is storage... hoses and brooms and brushes and stuff.
Well the keepers were going to give the elephants baths, so my class moved into the hallway to watch as the elephants came inside. It was very cool. I think that we had to be like, four feet away from the elephants. (The very large and strong looking metal gate prevented me from being nervous) Brittany came through first. She came flying through and went straight over to her keeper for a treat.
Then Lucy came backing in much slower, so we all got a very good view of her.
Then we went back outside to the viewing area and watched for a few minutes while the keepers washed Lucy.

Our zoo has a rather cool timber wolf exhibit, and that was where we went next. For once all five of the wolves that our zoo has were out in view (instead of hiding behind the trees or rocks). They all seemed to be napping, but then all of a sudden, while we were watching, they got up and started to run around. As it turned out, it was feeding time.
While we were watching, our guide was telling us about the history of these five. They're all siblings and they were raised by people in a research center. (Can't remember what it was called). But apparently the vets that did most of the care when they were pups were all blonde women. One of the wolf-keepers is a blonde woman, and apparently when the wolves get nervous about something, they send her in and she calms them down.
I also found out that for anybody brave enough to come to the zoo in January, after it snows, the wolves put on a rather good show.

We walked over to see the new hospital for animals. Part of it is open to the public. They weren't doing anything when we were there, so we just looked around.

There's an exhibit of Macaques (They're a sort of ape) that's always outside. (They're from a cold climate, so they fit in here fine) Apparently a wild mink decided to move in. The zookeepers sorta adopted him. They gave him a name (Al) , and they feed him, and he has his own sign.
One of the girls in my class really wanted to see Al, but we were told that the mink had been taken to the vet. At the vet, they discovered that Al probably should have been named Allison :)

Then Bess told us that they were taking Al back to the exhibit, so we walked over there.
It was also feeding time for the Macaques, so they were all waiting around, their eyes on the door. (by the way, Macaques make a very annoying sound). First a keeper came out and threw apples and something else... either carrots or sweet potatoes (we couldn't tell) all around the exhibit. Some of the Macaques took the food down to the moat and like, washed them. There had been something in our book about that, and we were pretty impressed to see that it actually happened.

Then the vet came out with a carrier and out came Al. Minks are really pretty animals. She looked so soft... and she was quick too. She darted off through a hollow long, and sat there at the entrance for awhile, so we could all see her.
Then she went off down a hole in the ground and we'd thought we'd seen the last of her, but she came up again. The keeper through her some fish... actually she dropped the fish down the hole and it looked like it hit Al on the head.
Al again vanished down into the hole, this time staying put.

That was the end of our time, so Nigel said good-bye to us and the group split up to go their various ways, mostly to go get food or go home or both.

So all in all, it was grand fun, and I rather wished that I hadn't forgotten to bring my camera. Ah well.