Ooops, missed Wednesday and it's already Monday!

Not quite got back into the swing of posting a blog after each day I work at the zoo, so I will try and catch up today.

Wednesday last week was pretty much quiet job-wise. After spending a goodly portion of the morning on the computer typing wordy stuff I spent a good portion of the afternoon in a Guest Service Training session arranged which all members of staff have attended over the past week. This ties in with the Guest Charter the zoo has recently implemented. After that I had a look at the photos of the squid mural and started mapping out the rejoining of the tentacles and thinking about the practicalities of getting the job done.

Before the building work

After the building work

Monday 11th

This morning has been all about the squid. I have been up to Bug World to measure the line of the old wall to get the length of the body for the squid as the mural has been brought forward into the room and making the body quite a bit shorter.  I will need to extend the body back, which is really a complete repaint of said body. I have been talking to the Maintenance Dept regarding a scaffold platform being made available and looking at paints and trying to match colours using a book of swatches. 

Body before building work

Body after the building work

This afternoon I popped over to the Forest of Birds aviary to add a sign that got left off one of the ID displays when I replaced a few of them last week. The birds in the warm aviary house were active and noisy with various melodic calls and songs filling the air. And sadly, as is usual, a high proportion of the people who walk in go through without stopping and really seeing all that there is in there; so many little treasures of feathers. They leave muttering that there was nothing to see when there are at least 18 species and numerous individuals all around them.

It's now quite busy with people outside, being half term the number of visitors has gone up this week, despite the drizzly grey cold weather which is good to see. 

Back with the squid; I settled on my colour choices for the mural and wall and sent my order to Maintenance. In Bug World I used a piece  of string, cut to the length of the squid body, and marked where it would go round the walls back from the new head position. I also traced the tail fluke to save time drawing it on the wall later. More discussions with Benn from the Estates Dept, Mark from Bug World and Eddie from Maintenance regarding what needs still to be done to the walls and tanks to finish that side of the job off before I can start my work on the actual mural.

Hoping the paints will be delivered tomorrow so I can get the work underway. The builders said they hoped to be finished sometime in the morning, if all goes well, I should be able to start drawing up the alterations after that and maybe even slap some paint on. 

Making Signs

After last night's lashing of wind and rain the zoo is bathed in beautiful clear sunshine today. But I can't go out and enjoy that yet.. I have the signs to put together. The 21 ID signs that I printed yesterday now need to be made ready to go on show. For display both inside and out the preparation is pretty much the same. Once each paper sign is trimmed to the size required I then encapsulate it in plastic laminate.

We use two thicknesses of laminate, we usefully decribe to ourselves as Thick and Thin. The thicker is basically double the layer of laminate on both sides of the 'sleeve'; outdoor, long term and high 'use' signs get this laminate, which actually covers most signs. Many years ago the Graphics Dept invested in a good quality laminator and this has stood the test of time and use, over and over again, out lasting numerous cheaper models used by other departments.  I have hopes that one day we get to replace the method of using laminate, as it doesn't sit well with me being a relatively high use of plastic.

Once laminated the sign is then trimmed to size again, leaving a small border of laminate. Then certain signs need double sided sticky tape put on the back and once done they are good to go and I can take another little walk around the zoo to replace them with the old, damaged, missing or faded signs.

Some signs are more involved than others, such as the ones we have for the tropical bird house called The Forest of Birds.  The ID signs are presented in a book form and ID's are sandwiched in laminate back to back so that they form the 'pages' of the book. When I laminate these signs I have to leave a border of about 3cms on one side, holes are punched into this border and metal eyelets are hammered into place over these holes to stop them ripping. The sign is then threaded onto the two U-bolts  standing proud on a backing board and the book is done. Today I had 8 of these 'pages' to put together.

I finished all my cutting trimming and banging holes and eyelets in by lunchtime, so this afternoon I can  put them all up.

All signs were put up with no problems, even the Forest of Bird IDs were installed without the usual hassle of awkward nuts not going back onto the U bolts properly. Whilst out I took photo's of the giant squid mural.... there's a slight hitch in the way it has been put  back together, nothing can be done now, it just means there's a lot more work involved in patching it up than was planned.

Whilst I was in the Reptile House I couldn't resist taking this photo.....

Life imitating art, eh?

Back at the Zoo

Today is my first day back since just prior to Christmas, so I spent this morning walking around the zoo checking all the identification signs and noting those that need replacing. At the same time I gave those that needed a quick clean a bit of a wipe over.

In the South American tapir paddock there is a set of four signs and I used to be able to climb up over the sturdy fence to get in to attend these sign, but these days my limbs can't quite manage the climb back out as there are no handy foot holds. So I found a keeper and waited whilst she finished sorting out the golden lion tamarins before unlocking the paddock to allow me access to the signs.
The advantage of climbing over the fence used to mean that on a day such as today I wouldn't have to wade through several inches of gooey mud, but as my older limbs aren't as agile as they used to be I now wade through the mud to get to the signs. Once cleaned I negotiated the mire again and locked the padlock on my way out. Good job I always wear walking boots to work.

On my walk around I get re-aquainted with the zoo and some of the staff I see. I had  a couple of lovely catch-up chats with staff that I knew and I met a volunteer called Pat who has been here for nearly four years each Monday, but I have never bumped into her before. We had a nice chat in the tropical bird house where she was stationed.

There is some work going on around the grounds on various exhibits - there's a bit of a revamp going on in Bug World which involves my giant squid mural; so I will need to do some work on that very soon to patch it up after the builders have finished. The gibbon island climbing frame is also having some structural work done.

By lunch time I had finished my 'sweep' and so the next job is to print out and replace those ID signs that I made notes of. So the afternoon was spent in front of the computer printing 21 new ID's finishing just before it was time to go home.

As it was my first day back at work since before Christmas I had my Secret Santa Christmas present waiting for me and a note saying 'Welcome Back Su' on my desk, which was lovely to come back to.