We have a visitor this week. Sheri Myler, a student from the North of England is doing a week's placement with us. She is already very keen on cryptozoology and eager to learn. I confidently predict that she will be an asset to the cryptozoological community in years to come. However, we decided to put her to work, and each day she will be blogging about what she has been doing...
The last day of my placement has been the shortest but, by
no means the least eventful. The first of my tasks was to take part in the
animal rounds, which, at first, seemed the usual. It was not until we began
feeding those in the conservatory that we realised that there was an emergency
situation.
One of the fish tanks had been completely drained. The cause
of this was not immediately obvious as there were no cracks visible in the
glass. The caecilians are amphibious and, so, were in no real danger. The fish,
however, were all presumed dead.
On further inspection, it was seen that many of the fish
were still moving. A bucket of warm water was fetched and the fish scooped up, largely
individually, though as many as possible were moved at a time, to attempt to
prevent the time delay causing more deaths. Only a few died before we got there
and none seem to have died, from stress, in the transfer.
After alternate tanks were prepared and the rest of the
animal rounds completed, I first set to work on my blog, before heading off to
retrieve the trail cameras that were set out on my first day. It did not take
very long at long and we were back at the centre, checking the photos fairly
swiftly.
One of the memory cards was missing, which was a
disappointment. The current theory is that someone was doing something they
shouldn’t be and, on realising that they’d been caught on camera, took the card
with them. The rest of today was spent editing Karl Shuker’s big cat book, before my
last day came to a close with the writing of this blog.
