14.10.2018

14.10.2018 10days at billabong sanctuary

                          An exciting day

It was still raining a little and there were a bunch of puddles from yesterday. Today timmi was very active in the car and I had to put him back in his bag quite a few times.

We started raking though I got pulled aside by Ranger Sara. She had to clean the cassowary enclosure and one of the cassowaries "Yalla" was very territorial. So it was my job to distract him with grapes while sara cleaned the enclosure. 

I led him all the way to the other end and kept teasing him with the grapes. Because of course the grapes were very sweet and you're not supposed to feed them to many grapes but still keep their attention. I had them for a few minutes when sara raked just a little too loud and yalla's head turned around. I yelled "hey!" and yalla looked back at me and I fed him a grape. But then another rake strike from sara and Yalla turned his entire body around. I yelled but there was no reaction. Yalla looked around his territory and spotted the intruder. I told yelled to Sara: "RUN!" and yalla went into a sprint towards her. Luckily she was far enough away to get to the gate before Yalla got to her. Dont mess with cassowaries kids!

On my way back I saw Kim. She needed the pickup truck for something but was currently not able to get it moving since it was stuck in the mud. So me and Ranger Jules used our impressive muscels and bodyweight, I am not gonna say who used muscels and who used her bodyweight, and we pushed the car out.

With the other volunteers we finished the morning raking and cleaning duties. We also gave all the animals breakfast.

While in the kangaroo enclosure we noticed a kangaroo who was not in the enclosure with the other ones. This would be normal since we have 3 kangaroos that are walking around freely but this one was smaller and younger so he should not be outside. Thankfully Kim came along. She didnt hesitate for a second, I gave her some food as bait and while the kangaroo was eating kim just grabbed it and carried it back in the enclosure. 

Then I got to help out in the reptile show again. This time I got to hold Muffin. He was a bearded Dragon and pretty active. His head always had to be the highest point and he was verx difficult to put into a good position. Muffin wasnt used to be held by hand so he had to be on your shoulder or lap. However he was still very cute and very cool looking. The people could pet him or hold him on their shoulder and most of the time he stayed calm. Thougj other times he wouldnt stop crawling around until he was almost on their backs trying to find a better position instead of just staying. 

At lunch we heard from the kitchen that a kid celebrated his birthday today. That was great but not really interesting for us. Until we heard that he did not finish his birthday cake and did not want to take the rest home. CHOCLATE CAKE BAAAAABY!!!! 

So that was a pretty cool lunch, after that I helped out with the dingo show. While one Ranger was talking about dingos we locked them up, hid food around their enclosure and then let them out again. They were pretty quick at finding it and the visitors liked it a lot. Then we took the dingos outside so the people could pet them.

The rest of the day calmed down for a bit which I didnt mind. As everyday I am tired and exhausted, but the good kind of tired. Were you can just go to bed and fall asleep within 5minutes.

Kim goes on vacation on tuesday, so someone else is going to pick me up. However that meand that my weekend changes again. So I was able to get wednesday to saturday off. And with that long weekend I am going to Cairns. It was a very spontaneous idea I suddenly got and organizing it was a bit chaotic but I think it will be fun. Also I wouldnt know what to do in townsville for 4days.