It was a rainy week, but we managed to have a lot fun! We met lots of animals and even had our picture taken with Kramer, the hedgehog!

Hedgehog--At LCS we have a hedgehog named Kramer (after the Seinfeld character. He is an African Hedgehog is about the size of an adult hand. Many people commonly mistake it to be a smaller version of a porcupine. In actuality they are different. Porcupines have quills they can shoot; where as the "spines" on the hedgehog are just types of fur. When the hedgehog gets nervous about a situation it tightens the "spines" so they stick up and are sharp to touch. The two most common types are the European and the African hedgehog. They are burrowing creatures with excellent smell. They mainly eat insects and can actually smell and insect underground! For craft we made tiny hedgehogs out of rubber pompoms to take home and show our friends!

Macaw--When we arrived at the nursery, we were greeted by Jesse, a Scarlet Macaw who is about 4 months old. The bird keeper talked to us about macaws and we learned a lot of cool stuff. Like did you know you can't tell the sex of the bird just by looking at it? You have to take a DNA sample to find out the sex. The macaw is found in South America and it is now illegal to buy a bird from the wild. Like a lot of animals, their numbers are decreasing and it is important to discourage a black market in the exotic animal trade. The birds found at LCS were hatched from an egg and you can see their parents currently on exhibit. There is also a baby blue and gold macaw, Azul, who is about a month old.

Tortoise-- We met with Melissa for our talk on the tortoise in the nursery. She had bowls and food read for us to start making the diet. At LCS there are a total of 4 Aldabra tortoises (3 on preserve and one in the walk-through). The campers broke up into 4 groups and distributed the lettuce, salad dressing, grapes, strawberries, and other goodies among the bowls. Then we took slices of watermelon and sweet potato to Redman. Each camper got the change to carefully feed and pet the tortoise! Them we asked Melissa tons of questions about Redman. Such as can they see in color? (Yes!) Can they swim? (Excellent swimmers!) It was a lot of fun, and the campers really loved getting up close and personal with such a cool animal!

Primate Keeper--We started our day off by making enrichments. For those of you who don't know, enrichments are treats given to different animals to give them new experiences during their day. We took paper towel tubes and filled them with oranges and kiwi, and decorated them with non-toxic markers. We then headed out to the chimp islands, where we watched one family of chimps move from one island to another. At LCS we have an excellent set up for the chimps; we have the ability to move them to clean islands while maintain no personal contact with the animals. Also the different families can communicate since the islands are closely located and gives a natural environment for them. The keepers answered all our questions and we had a blast!

Native American--Today was one of the campers favorite day because the got to go out on the preserve and check out all the animals. Our main stop was at the Bison, which were an important animal for the Native Americans. Their hunters would follow the buffalo and it was a source of life for them. They used ever part of the buffalo from the meat to the fur to the bones. Easterners came out to the prairies and started killing off the bison for their hides; this made life more difficult for the Native Americans because they were losing such an important part of their life. For our craft time, we created different Native American crafts such as dream catchers, beaded crafts and headdresses.