We met Richard and Craig at the Rhino night house. We had a pleasant little addition to the Rhino "family". 2 weeks earlier a baby Rhino was born at LCS and her name is Eliza. She and her Mother will be staying in the night house for about 6 months until the are released onto the preserve with the other Rhinos. Richard told us all about the Rhinos and how they are endangered and why they are hunted so vigorously in the wilds of Africa. We then got a awesome chance to taste some Rhino food. Craig was giving the mom and baby a treat--pellets coated in molasses. It was pretty tastey.


Aaron, an education assistant, met with us to tell us about the Cockatoo. We started at Casper's cage. Casper is a Umbrella Crest Cockatoo. He talked to us about their habitat and what they like to eat. Casper was very friendly and excited it seemed to see us. Her pretty white crest kept going up showing us she was happy. We then made enrichments for all the parrots. We took papertowel tubes and filled them with peanuts, parrot seeds, rasins, and lots of other goodies and closed them up. Later in the day the parrots were given the enrichments and they tore into them seeking every last morsel of goodies.


We met Linda, an education assistant, outside Elizabeth's cage. Elizabeth is our Burmese Puthon and she is huge! She weighs 200+ pounds and stays curled up in a ball a lot of the time. When we saw her she was starting to shed her skin so it was at a dull color, but once her new skin is on she will be bright and shiny. We then headed over to the Animal Theater to meet Cleopatra, a Ball Python. She had just shed her skin so we got to see her colors in brillance. We learned how the snakes move by using muscle contractions and that the reason why they dont blink is becasue they have a clear lay of skin over their eyes that protect them. We got to have our photo take with Cleo later on in the day after we made a cool snakes by painting sticks!


On Petting Zoo Keeper Day, we met with Chris of Wildlife in the back of the petting zoo barn. Armed with rakes, shovels, and a wheelbarrell we entered the goats night pen. We had a messy, dirty, but fun time raking up all the hay and droppings made during the might. We shoveled them up and tidied the place. Then came the fun part--we brought them hay to eat and they were so excited. The goats especially liked the green leafy kind. One even jumped into the wheelbarrell to get the stuff that had fallen out. We spend an additional 20 minutes playing with goats! They are so cute.

On spider day, we read a couple of books about spiderd and went on an insect hunt. We split the teams up into two parts (boys vs. girls) and send them off with bug boxes to catch as many as they could. The girls won, unlike the last time, by a landslide. It was fun finding the different creatures. Of course we wanted to make sure everyone stayed safe so the creepy bugs and anything unknown was just verified by the counselor, not handled by the campers. We also made neat hanging spiders out of paper and pipe cleaners. We hung them up around the KOA pavillion just to give it that festive, summer camp feel.