10 things I love

Oh mannnn I am sucking at this whole once a week consistent blog post thing. I have been so busy with work and trying to experience the things South Texas has to offer and not wanting to miss out on anything, but it's also exhausting. So exhausting that I finally broke down and got sick. I slept like, 14 hours last night though so hopefully that helps me out.

1)



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Carnivals at night/sunset

We're going to a CARNIVAL TONIGHT!!! And I love carnivals at night so so much because of all the beautiful glowy, rainbow lights! So beautifulll! This one in particular is right on the beach, which is even better ♥


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Reading nerdy books about training

I have been reading through what some people call the "animal trainer's bible" and it's awesome. I spend nights off when I'm not doing anything else watching TV in the background while I flip through the book and take notes. NERD ALERT.

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Bob's Burgers

This show is so amazing. I was only sort of into the first season, though there were some truly laugh out loud moments, but since the second season I have been consistently loving it. Especially since every character is basically AMAZING!

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Possibilities for volunteering with rehab

I used to do rehab occasionally (mostly for raptors), and I miss it! This is a photo of me when I was at REGI and I tube-fed a GHOW. I'm also a novice rehabilitator in the state of MN! So I'm going to apply to volunteer at the ARK, a rehab facility that takes care of birds and sea turtles! I'm excited for the prospect.

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The Bird Cage

I just watched this movie last night and it was AMAZINGGGG!! I loved it so much. Robin Williams is perfection, I absolutely adore Nathan Lane, and their "maid" Agador was THE BEST. Soooo yeah, I really liked it.

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My new car! And help getting that new car.

My Opa flew in from Utah to help me find a new car because the process was EXHAUSTING. We looked at so many different cars and it was so hot and humid and by the end I was so incredibly brain-dead I had to make a choice and I went with a blue Rio Kia! I love her (I think she's a girl car), I'm just sad that she's not a standard :( But I've gotten used to the automatic. Plus, she's BLUE.

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Fiesta eggs or Cascarones

Cascarones are a hispanic tradition; they're colored eggs with paper mache glued on the end to keep in beautiful sparkly confetti. You smash them on other people's heads and it gives them good luck! This past week was Fiesta week in San Antonio, a festival celebrated in conjunction with Easter (it's kind of like Mardi Gras), and these guys were everywhere. We got some for animal enrichment, too, which was AWESOME to see the boys crush them in their talons.

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San Antonio River Walk

The River Walk is so beautiful! I loved it a lot. It was cool by the river, we ate mexican food and drank margaritas, watched boats going by, and then we went on a boat tour!

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Mutton Busting

The cutest sport EVER! I almost used a photo from a website talking about how it was child and animal abuse, but the sheep really just trot around the arena and the child tumbles off. Children tumble of trees all the time and they're FINEEEE. Anyways, we watched it during the rodeo we went to for Buccaneer Days, a festival held in Corpus Christi each year!


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Servals in boxes

The other day we gave our serval a box for enrichment and as I left at the end of the day, I saw him sitting in it. IT WAS SO CUTE!!! Proof that any sized cat loves a good box.

I have once again spent most of the day on my bed in my jim jams. Time to go grocery shopping and get some stuff done before I go to the carnival!

weekend updates

Oh hey Internet world, what's going on? It's been a week since I last (sort of) updated, and even though I don't really have any new pictures to share or anything, I still have been living it up in the world of south Texas!

My training with Nacho, our Red-Legged Seriema, is going really well! Aside from some particular errors (don't get me started), she is going into her crate immediately upon opening the door (her cue), and she stays in there calmly. She is having issues leaving immediately because she thinks, "Hey, I'm being reinforced in the crate!", but we're working on that. Next up is to try carrying her. SO EXCITING (this is my dream).



I learned one of my favorite people in my department is leaving for a different position :( She's going to still be at the aquarium, which I'm happy about, but it will still be different without her. A little harder (again, don't get me started). But I'll make it. This is what I want to do, I won't be run off so easily. Anyway, because she's leaving I might be able to start working with her animal she was training, Mr. Wendel the Southern Tamandua!



Southern Tamanduas have HUGE claws on their front paws for ripping open the earth to find ants and other social insects, but also to protect themselves if they feel threatened. Sooo I need him to get used to my scent first before I really start working with him, so he won't try to attack me, but so far it's been good. I've been taking him on walks with his trainer and feeding him juice to associate my smell with something positive, and he's never acted defensively when I've been near him, even when I touch his little nose! So cuuuuteeeee!!!

My other training DREAMS are to train our Eurasian Eagle Owl to be in shows again (he wads in shows ONCE), so I can handle him and basically be in love because I have always wanted to work with a Eurasian. Also to work with our Crested Cara-Cara because he is beautiful and adorable and makes little grunts.

I'm FINALLY done petsitting for my coworker so it's been nice to just hang out at my own house with my own birds instead of another couple of slightly crazy animals. Though I did get to have some fun times, like going on birding walks (where I saw Scissor-Tailed Flycatchers and Purple Gallinules!) with Argos and cuddling the cats.





So that was fun, but I know that having a dog at this point in time is definitely not for me. An important lesson to learn.

In the past week, I've been to an amazing 80s cover band called The Spazmatics which was SO FUN! Like, SO FUN. I went with my friend Roxie and we stood right up front, swooned when the singers looked at us, and I sang and danced to EVERY. SONG.



Since we were so close, we made eye contact with the band OFTEN and sometimes they sang to us!

I went to trivia night at one of my favorite bars and we advanced from 11th place to 7th! YAY!! One of the categories was all about rabbits in honor of Easter and we KILLED IT. Get several animal people together and their intensity is overwhelming as soon as trivia stops talking about geography and starts asking the important questions, like, "what is the word for an animal that is active at dawn and dusk?" We all FREAKED. OUT. Also when answers were being read, we basically barked and howled for every correct answer we got.

We went to Whiskey River again and some guys taught me how to dance! With the twirls and everything! I'll become a two-stepper, yet. My favorite part of Whiskey River is learning line dances. I've learned a couple and I feel almost like a real Texan now. Whiskey River, while semi-weird, is still pretty great due to its cheap drinks. Actually, most of Corpus has cheap drinks!

Tonight I had movie night with Elise and Laura, which was super nice. I love going out, but it's also amazing to be able to just chill with peeps in comfy clothes and eat candy in front of the TV.

Tomorrow we are throwing an ORPHAN EASTER party!! A bunch of us who don't have family here are bringing food items to Stewie's house and are going to feast, chill in the hot tub, play volleyball, and have an awesome Easter Sunday.

Now time for bed; I'm supes tired. Nighty night, fireflies.

good things

-I'm training a Red-Legged Seriema to crate

-I get to play with an otter on a daily basis

-I flew a Harris's Hawk to my glove and it felt like I've been with the birds all along

-I went grocery shopping yesterday and have many fresh things to eat

-It's spring (for reals this time)

-I'm going to the beach today with Jess and a bucket of margaritas

10 Things I Love

It is once again no longer Monday, plus I forgot to do it last week, BUT I want to keep up this tradition (as well as continue to write in this blog despite still acclimating to my new life).

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Beach bonfires

I had SO MUCH FUN the other night at our beach bonfire! You're allowed to drive up onto the beach, park, and make a bonfire LEGALLY (opposite of the many illegal bonfires made on California beaches in my time). We gossiped around the fire, drank sangria and vodka, frolicked in the water, and accidentally stepped in some tar balls that still haven't come off my feet.

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Bioluminescence

As we frolicked in the water around midnight, I noticed bright specks of glowing blue and screeched, "BIOLUMINESCENCE!!!" I splashed them onto my legs so I could see them better, tossing them into the air like tiny crystalline bursts of fireworks. I ran through the waves, practically swimming in them (due to possible high amounts of alcohol in my blood), and giggling madly as I weaved in and out of my friends, sprinting through the water. I loved it. And I'm excited for many summer nights involving the same thing.

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Game nights

We had a Settlers of Catan game night! During our beach bonfire, we all drunkenly reminisced about playing Settlers of Catan and agreed to get together and play it the next night, however I soon realized that I have never actually played the game. I just assumed I had played it because my family is obsessed with it and they always play it. It is complicated as shit. I set up settlements along green valleys and woodlands and basically hoarded sheep the entire game. Whenever people tried to steal my resource cards, there was approximately a 67% chance that they would get a sheep (or a shoop, as I explained my whole theory regarding sheep vs. shoops at the beginning of the game). But it was still super fun and we ate dinosaur chicken nuggets for dinner and I lost spectacularly, but I had a lot of sheep.

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Exploring natural history museums

On my day off last week, Jess and I decided we were going to head downtown and do something touristy. We ended up at a cafe at the art museum for some lunch and mimosas, and then realized we didn't want to look at art and instead walked over to the natural history museum. It was...interesting. It was more of a human history plus a tiny bit of natural history museum, and there was A LOT of history to talk about. There was a cool shipwreck exhibit about the ships from Spain that went down off the coast a little south of here, exhibits about the western cultures, about old school regal peeps of Corpus, etc. It got a little overwhelming. The natural history portion was hilarious because you could tell everything was labelled and exhibits created in the '70s and nothing has been updated since then. The rock exhibit reminded me of my favorite Shell Shop. The Sandhill Crane pictured above was possibly one of my favorite parts of the museum; his name was Bonaparte and he lost his legs in a coyote trap. Luckily, someone found him and a scientist researched how to create bionic legs for the crane. She DID it! Those weird plastic things are his ROBOT LEGS. Eventually, Bonaparte died of a heart attack. Magnificent. After the museum, Jess and I got salads and soup and drank peach vodka/iced tea while watching American Idol and it was glorious.

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Awesome cover bands

There's a really cool bar downtown called The Executive Surf Club. I went there for trivia a couple of weeks ago, and last week I headed out on a Tuesday night (my Saturday) to watch a live band play. It was AWESOME! They played 80s and 90s rock covers, and A LOT of The Police. Our friend was super into it plus quite drunk because it was $2 pint night, so he danced around us and sang to the songs, which was hilarious.

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Training our River Otter

I've been able to start doing some training with our River Otter so I can start doing sessions when other people are busy, plus I really want to learn because OMG RIVER OTTER!! His name is Merlin and he is so cuuute!!! We worked on "station", "hammock", "stump", and "come here", which are all simple outdoor commands. I love it.

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Birdwatching

I LOVE birdwatching. Like I've mentioned before, it's basically like my crack. I get super excited about the prospect of seeing a new species of bird, or identifying something difficult such as a vireo or warbler. I went birding on my "weekend" last week at the Suter Wildlife Reserve and unfortunately didn't really see any new species except for some waterfowl that I've seen maybe once before, which was still pretty cool. I saw Roseate Spoonbills, Reddish Egrets, and Caspian Terns for the first time in the wild which was awesome! Plus it was just a really nice, beautiful walk. I am looking forward to spring migration craziness and seeing different types of warblers! One of our volunteers who is an avid birder told me about a couple of places in Port Aransas that are good for birdwatching so I hope to make it out there soon!

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Taking dogs for a walk

I'm petsitting right now for a coworker and am taking her dog on walks every day (well except today, whoops). There is an adorable park nearby her where kids play kickball and baseball in semi-official diamonds alit with giant stadium lights as the sun sets, later each and every day. There is a field filled with cacti and then a hiking path lining a river. It is an amazing walk and reminds me of spring as the sun sets behind us.

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Congratulatory brownies

Elise, the new vet tech Laura, and I all had a potluck at Elise's house the other day where Elise provided food, I provided drinks/alcohol, and Laura brought over brownies decorated with "Congratz", birds, and fish in honor of our new "grown up" jobs. They were awesome and basically I love sugar.

10)



Firefly

I love this show. We watched it while playing Settlers of Catan and I would get visibly distracted from the game to watch this show despite seeing it a thousand times. It's just SO GOOD. If you've never seen it before, watch it. It's on Netflix.

This past week was awesome, complete with ice hockey, sangria, angry high-beam battles, hot tubbing, new york style pizza, mini cocker spaniels, playing in the ocean, cat cuddles, receiving new/old shoes in the mail plus an amazing handmade card from my BFFL, and hanging out with my new franz, and even though it's my sunday it has still been a great, chill day. Time to attempt catching up in my written journal before bed. Fare thee well!