During my times of working at the Tulsa Zoo, I was recognized for one thing that I got a certificate for, Top Poop Cleaner. I got this reward manly because the guy I was working with in the Africa area that day, I think his name was either Eric or Chris, we were struggling to get through the smaller animals to get to the giraffe because a storm was coming in and the Tulsa Zoo has one of the tallest male giraffes in the country. So we had to hurry to get the inside enclosure clean so that we could bring him in for the fear of an eighteen foot tall giraffe getting hit by lightening. We got most of it clean but it got down to cleaning out the drains. He opened them up reached his hands in and said "This is a giraffe waffle, you'll never look at waffles the same, or at least everyone else hasn't, but we need to clean these out." At the time I was either completely oblivious to the fact that he was actually holding up wet, mashed together giraffe poop or something but I was like "Okay!" and reached into all the other drains bare handed and not afraid as I fished the giraffe waffles out of the drain and into the back of the truck. Now your probably either thinking, yeah I've heard this story before, so what? and then what does this have to do with being in Thailand working with elephants?
Well for starters I have also cleaned up elephant poop, and everyone thinks its the worst smelling poop out there in the world. Ha! Lies, tiger poop after the day they get their meet fresh off the bone, that is the worst poop out there, but it's because this morning and this afternoon (even though it wasn't our assignment) we picked up elephant poop. It was interesting to see the stalls we had cleaned out the day before with piles of chopped corn and piles of poop. We went around the whole camp of the enclosures, or at least the ones that I know of minus the male elephants enclosure, and cleaned them out. It was kind of weird, cause they normally group two groups together for this job, but there was so much of us there were moments where people would be standing around not sure what to do because everything was being taken care of or already over crowded. We were done at a decent time and I laid down to take a nap in the upstairs area of the Pavilion until lunch time, which I devour because I got up and arrived too late to sit down and eat any breakfast (luckily I was running on a lot of water so I wasn't dying of starvation until after we were done for the morning).
I wasn't as tired of the food, but I did shake it up a little by getting soup instead of sticky rice and the potato curry that I have been having for the past week. I still had fries and watermelon, but those I thin are things I won't get tired of.
We had asked Mix in the morning what we were doing for the afternoon but he wasn't quite sure what cause none of the groups were assigned to anything. But while we were waiting for people to do...things...there was a guy who was selling popsicles and boy am I glad I got one. It was refreshing and it was good. It was two colors of red and orange and both flavors I have no idea what they were but I liked them. Though I liked the red a little bit more than the orange and hope that he returns tomorrow or Sunday so I can enjoy some more before we leave.
For the afternoon we were assigned up cleaning up the park, which in the beginning was confusing cause we weren't quite sure what that meant until Mix had us all get rakes and we climbed into the back of the truck. We took a five minute drive to land that ENP owns, but a little separated from the rest of the park (ENP is always looking for land to expand into) and cleaned up so really old elephant poop and corn stalks. It was very similar to the morning routine, but we kind of avoided the elephant food? I wasn't quite sure why cause we were cleaning and was told to clean up the piles, and there was elephant poop in the piles so who knows.
We were done at about three where we returned and I rinsed off (though you can see where the dirt still is from where the water reached the top of my legs and no father up), crawled into my neatly made bed where Doppellump hung out from the cleaning ladies that morning and read.
I was better today, but only because I had my predicted mental breakdown yesterday after writing the blog for yesterday. I wanted to talk to my mom the most, wanting to hear some sort of familiar voice who happens to be half way across the world right now probably just getting up. So to hide from people and be able to cry openly I went to the elephant stalls we had cleaned out earlier that day and watched the elephants swing their heads back and forth and eat as I cried. Though one stopped what she was doing and watched me until I couldn't cry anymore and got annoyed by the buzzing of a bug that wouldn't leave the area and left to return to the room. With this my emotional battery meter is a little bit under 50% because of today, but Saturday afternoon and Sunday I'm taking all the time I can to sit in the shade, alone to fully recharge my emotional battery cause it's not as easy as plugging in my computer or phone, who hadn't been charged for a while because someone always kept unplugging them and plugging in their phone over night this past week. Again, google drive does not want to work with me so images will not be on until probably once we return to Chiang Mai where I will like promised post a blog page filled with just images and descriptions.
Well the dinner bell has been rung and I have been still typing. I might get an alcoholic beverage tonight in celebration of feeling better and cheering to the elephants for tomorrow morning is our last day and we will be having a small powwow tomorrow to talk about projects possibly. I have settled on my and hope to get some more images of elephant eyes on our elephant walk on Sunday and then try to withstand the pain of the tourist elephants on Koh Chang for I have decided to focus on the eyes of the captive elephants versus the free for I feel you can probably read the emotions within both strongly.
-Claire
P.S. I wore my Zoo Teen shirt from the Tulsa Zoo in honor of picking up poop today
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