OK, so I was just on the Hunting Party Podcast and it was awesome! I had a great time and am sitting at my computer trying to find something to do with the nervous energy left over from wanting to do a good job - Mainly hoping I come off sounding excited and appreciative and geeky for WOW and for animals and that I didn't crossover into Know-it-all land or total-douche-land. Having listened for years, there's is a certain familiarity with the disembodied voices and so a desire to be playful, but also to balance it with respect for the podcast they've put so much time into creating. Professional zookeeper Jen definitely came out. Naturally, as I sit here and decompress from talking with those wonderful lads and lady (For the Horde!), my brain is feeding me all of the things I should have said or included, the better responses, cooler information. So, I'll just let some of that energy bleed off here and include some of my other ideas. My favorite Hunter pet in WOW - Loque'nahak, hands down. I love the skin, I love the movement. I've spent many, many hours camping to get him on numerous toons. The real life base animal - Snow Leopards - are awesome. And the only other one like him is a Loa, a troll animal spirit God, so it even has a Troll connection. He's just the whole package. My first rare tame and best vocalizations - Snort the Heckler (Hyena). I remember the nervousness of the tame and then the joy at using her and hearing the vocalizations. I still have her. Some of the questions I thought I would be asked- My craziest zoo story - the problem inherent in this question, and don't get me wrong, we all have one or two of these stories, is that Crazy Zoo Stories and safe situations are at opposite ends of the spectrum. That being said, the craziest story I am willing to share, and mostly due to the combination of events, is one about a juvenile rhino, 4-5 months old (5-6oo, lbs) who was ill. The mother had unfortunately died and while we had managed to get it transitioned over to a moistened grain mixture, it still was not doing well. One day we called for him to shift in and he didn't come up. That, of course, had us worried. So we gathered the hoofstock crew, vets and management and went out to try and get him in. When animals get sick they work really hard not to show it, so that by the time they start acting "off" things are usually pretty bad. We were worried the little guy was crashing (when sickness and stress push them to the point that they stop fighting and stop putting in an effort to keep living. I've seen the moment where animals just give up and that's a sad thing.) - I'm just going to pause right here and say the rhino is fine, all grown up now and making babies. Woot! I'm explaining to you because you look nervous. Where were we, ah yes, "she was in the water, the Eel was coming after her. She was frightened. The Eel started to charge her. And then" - We found him in the moat and proceeded to work to get him standing and then to get him excited enough to get moving. He loved to play with a largeboomer ball, so we would roll it to him to get him excited and once moving we could direct him into the barn and the vets could better assess the situation and treat him. What I have failed to mention up to this point is that at the same time this is happening a Category 2 Hurricane was 4 hours from landfall. 4 HOURS from the eye hitting land just a few miles away on the south Florida coast. That meant we already had feeder bands and a good chunk of the storm over us- Wicked dark clouds, bands of torrential rain and winds steady at 25-30 mph and gusting into the 50s. We had incentive to get this little guy in. Also, I was not a part of the storm ride-out crew, so I would be driving home after we resolved things with the rhino. I had a truck, so I knew I'd get through flooded streets if necessary, but still not a fun drive. In the end we succeeded. Little guy came in, vets gave excellent treatment and he grew up, moved to another zoo and is making babies. It is still one of the most vivid and scary situations I've experienced. What I've been bitten by - This one can be a tricky question because any time someone receives an injury there was a failure somewhere on the line. Either I misread the animal, or a co-worker misread/mishandled/slipped, or equipment failed. Yes there is the possibility of random chance and it's not a blame game, but when it happens the next question must be, how do we prevent this from happening again in the future? That being said - here's my list: * milksnake (non venomous) - I thought I had good restraint but he could still put a top jaw into my hand. * duck - I didn't think it could break the skin. Turns out they can give a nasty blood blister if they catch a thin skin with the tip of their bills. * Box Turtle - ok I was 5, holding it up to look at it, and it bit me in the shoulder. I was 5. *Parrot - while this cockatoo was friendly on the perch, he was a demon on the ground, I did not know that. I learned quickly. That's really about it. I've never broken a bone, needed stitches or even have any good scars from working at the Zoo. My LARPing on the other hand... So that's a few stories and some stuff that didn't make it onto the podcast. I would happily go on the podcast again and am exceptionally appreciative to have had this opportunity to share my excitement and joy of both WOW and of animals. p.s. May the 4th be with you! Here it is!
p.p.s. it is very strange to go back and listen to yourself talk and be interviewed. Alrightie... Garrosh, not disappointing in the bloodthirsty asshole department starting with the first cut scene. Cool Airship. <-- nice send off.
Oh, hello again my Horde peeps, how are you doing? What, you did some scouting? That's cool. Oh, who's this you've got here- OH MY GOD DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT IS!!!!! No, no you don't, hmm...I'm at a quandary. This toon's heart used to beat with that of a Dwarf. In a past regeneration she knew Stormwind well. I'm definitely for the Horde, but this kid is kind of the redemption for humans and for the Alliance. How can I get him out of here....
Ok, seriously now, what does Blizzard have against raccoons? What, just to make a point to this "young alliance soldier" you're going to mark a raccoon and have it killed. No, don't show off with a 400lb tiger coming at you, pick on a raccoon. That'll show him. Just remember, it's all fun and games until the raccoons rise up and take over the world in their bloody apocalypse. My direct quote the moment it happened - NO, NOT ANOTHER RACCOON! YOU BASTARDS!
What is this? ...I feel bad killing the alliance scout with the Jinyu. What is happening to me? Shooting into the Jinyu village? I remember that place. I liked that place. It was peaceful and beautiful. I am...conflicted.
I then took him to the Ren Faire and it was a great success. Also, an interesting observation based on strictly anecdotal evidence - there are either far more Horde players who attend Ren Faires than Alliance or Horde players are more vocal and enthusiastic. I loved hearing the distant cheer of "For the Horde." I responded with my best "Lok'tar ogar!"
It just might be possible that I've added all (most) of the new MoP animals and have brought the site up to date. I hope you enjoy! -Here are some of the things I have been doing that kept me from finishing my updates- It's nice to be besties with all of the Tillers. They love me in the Valley of the Four Winds. Did you know that you can plow and shoot the vermin or hawks that get in with the planted crops. It's nice to multitask. It is important to pay attention to your surroundings when you are getting screenshots and are completely zoomed in to FPS range. It also helps to have your volume up. This guy snuck up on me and thought he had me by surprise. Glad I can shoot at point blank range (Thank you Blizzard!!!.) He was fish food in three shots. My Troll Hunter is just chillin', waiting to go to Azuremyst Isle. I needed a battle pet and decided to make it more interesting and not switch to an alliance toon. And of course more Pet Battling. I've had good luck with weather this past week.
Came across the Blue Spirit porcupine in Kun Lai Summit while I was pet battling. I looked up the taming challenge, took these pictures and then continued on my way. I mean, he looks very cool, but at the time I was not up to the effort required to attain him. I collected all of the pets required for the Pandaria Safari and Outland Safari today. I'm one away from the Northrend Safari (need Oily Slimeling - have a toon camped over the Scalding Pools.)
Side note: When switching between toons and factions for pet battling, it is a bad idea to land at an enemy flight master because you thought you were horde but suddenly the Orcs and wind riders are attacking you AND now you're flagged. So, what was supposed to be a few intensive days of updating this site has become about a month's worth of work. Life had taken me away from the game for a little bit and as I waded back in to work at updating the site I may have gotten distracted and re-immersed myself in the environment of Azeroth. Let me give you an example of almost every time I sit down at the computer to work on this site - 1. turn on computer (a vital step) 2. bring up website where I work on my website (Weebly is an awesome host, I highly recommend.) 3. research biology information and gather facts and figures on the real life animals. 4. bring up flickr creative commons site (I adore the idea of creative commons and am going to upload my pictures for others to use. SHARE ALL THE THINGS. MAKE GOOD ART.) 5. realize I am missing the picture of an in-game animal, start up WoW, log-in, enter world and jump on a flight path towards an area with the animals I need. - here's the moment where the game drags me in - 6. realize I need to harvest my crops and plant new ones on my farm in Halfhill. (I'm besties with half of the Tillers and I love the pigs, chickens and Miss Fifi who wanders the farm.) I've got a question - why do the Golden Lotus need so many white turnips? 7. decide I have time for a few Tiller dailies (Decide if I have time for the Isle of Thunder dailies.) 8. while on my way to the decided upon dailies spot a battle pet I've yet to capture. Land, battle, win (most of the time) - cheer when it's a blue, curse wildly if there are 2 blues, or I already have 3 of them or my pet accidentally crits and kills them - and then figure I have time for one more, and then one more fight. And hey, I should do my pet battlemaster dailies. ((as I edited this blog post, I read this and headed out to do my pet battlemaster dailies.)) 9. Hearth back to the Shrine of the Seven Stars, portal to other lands. And hey, while I'm over here I should check and see if it's snowing in The Storm Peaks, or if there are any miniferals up in Felwood, or if it's raining on Jaguero island or if there's a sandstorm in Tanaris. (I've just stationed alts at all of those locations ready to log in and just check to see if conditions are right.) p.s. I started back into the game and back into pet battling on literally the first day of spring, missing getting the snowy owl in Wintersping by a matter of a few hours. Zookeeper title you will be mine come Winter!!!!!!!! So, I'm working on it. I'll just get back to work here... hmm, Game of Thrones is about to start. Peace.
So, I spent the first half of the day getting into the Patch 5.2 content and getting through the dailies. An interesting experience, I am excited to unlock the rest of the island, hopefully see some more dinosaurs.
I spent the second half of my day working to update this website for the new Mists of Pandaria animals. There are a good number of new animals and while I tried to take screen shots as I leveled, I found I had to go back and get better ones or verify behaviors before being able to add it to the site. I'm probably 1/2-2/3 of the way done, so hopefully tomorrow I will have time to finish up and get this site up to date. It's been nice to get back into the game. But, it's late and I'm tired. Time to log off. So, I was working my way through Kun-Lai Summit completing quest lines and I saw these paw prints on the ground titled "Heavy Footprints" when I moused over them. I realized I had stumbled across the new rare spawn tracking introduced in MoP. I tried following them both ways - first I followed them as they appeared to be going (with the paw print facing forward) and several flares later, and after watching the prints slowly disappearing in sequence, I saw that they are still backwards. I followed the tracks back to the other end, dropped a flare and there he was - Stompy. A frost trap and tame beast later he was mine - easy peasy. I love that we finally have hoofstock as a hunter pet, because, let me tell you - deer, antelope, giraffe, goats - they can mess you up. Their hooves and attitude can make them just as dangerous as many carnivores. Just look up deer attack on youtube and you'll see what I mean. |
AuthorI'm a zoo keeper. I currently work with Rhinos and it is awesome. -Banya Archives
February 2015
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