Jeff the Zoo Guy’s Blog

Wow!  It has been so long since I wrote!  It has been a roller coaster the last few months.  First and foremost, I have to say, being a dad is incredible!  I never really thought I was going to have kids, but now that I do, I cannot imagine myself without one!  I find myself getting so excited to come home from work to see my little guy.  He is growing so fast and I must say, he’s a great baby!  He is sleeping great and never really cries.  I’ve heard we are extremely lucky.  Alright!!

On a sad note, we lost our beloved pug Poncho, pictured above.  This guy was one of our favorite dogs and he will be missed.  He was rescued from Pug Rescue of Florida several years ago.  My wife Sarah and I love adopting the older pugs that are often looked over.  We like to give them a nice home to retire at.  We get them knowing that their life may be limited, but it’s worth it to us.  Poncho lived a great life with us.  He traveled with us, welcomed the baby and always greeted us with a great howl.  Things seem much quieter now that he is gone

On the zoo front, we are just rying to get through the summer.  The outreach program has exploded, so we have been off grounds everyday doing school programs.  We just brought in a beautiful new two toed sloth.  She is a large female and I can’t wait to start working with her.  We also brought in a Rock Hyrax, which is a small rodent like animal that is related to the manatee.  Wierd, I know!  On top of that, we adopted a crow who lost a wing in an accident.  He should be fun to train since they are so smart.  My young Bald Eagle is doing unbelievable.  She is flying nice 100 foot flights and is in the beginning stages of crate training.  I am so impressed with how well she is doing.  There is nothing cooler than seeing her fly.  Quite impressive.  See you soon!

Jeff

Phew!  It has been so long since I have written, but being busy is an understatement!  First off, I took an incredible trip to Amsterdam.  I went there to attend a bird training conference for the zoo.  The conference was great.   I met so many new people from Europe and learned some amazing new training techniques.  Over there, they have fewer rules in regards to the birds they can utilize for education, so I was able to see some amazing species.  The conference was hosted by a bird park called Avifauna.  They had an incredible collection of birds from humming birds to Stellar Sea Eagles, (pictured above).  The hotel was situated right in the park, so it was incredible waking up to the sounds of crowned cranes and Nicobar pigeons.  Throughout the week on our free time we ventured out to the city.  I must say, Amsterdam is an incredible place.  Not much is banned there, and it lives up to its reputation!  I loved the history too.  I did go to the Ann Frank house which was very sobering, but a great experience.  The week ended with a 2 day 4 zoo tour throughout the Netherlands and Germany.  I was blown away by the zoos we saw.  The most memorable was the Koln Zoo in Germany.  They had the most unbelievable elephant nighthouse I have ever seen.  It was large enough to house 30 elephants if needed.  When you walked into it, it was like a palace. A lake, waterfall, wooden ceilings, it was unreal. Quite an experience!

My other great adventure is the arrival of my son!  Holy cow, what a moment.  He was 7lbs 14 oz and 22 inches long.  He has the feet of 4 month old!  He is absolutley amazing.  My wife had to be rushed in for an emergency c section which was a bit scary.  Everytime she would push, the baby’s heart rate would drop.  Once they got him out, he had a few issues with blood sugar, but quickly made a recovery.  He is doing great now, eating and pooping like a champ!  It is such a thrill having him around.  Not  much sleep, but it’s worth it!!

 Jeff

I often talk about how fortunate I am to do what I do.  That is clear everyday when I go to work and see my incredible animals.  But that point really hits home when I get to go on a manatee release.  At the zoo where I work, one of the great things we do is rehab sick, injured and orphaned manatees.  We get them in, help them recover and then hopefully send them back into the wild.  This past week, we were able to get a young manatee back out.  In 2005, we recieved a fraile, near death manatee that we estimated to be only a few days old.  After several tense days, the baby, dubbed “Muddy Baron”, started to accept a bottle. Two years later, that  tiny baby is up and over 700 pounds.  His great weight gain and sassy behavior won him a pass back out to the wild.  Because he is a”naive” manatee, meaning he has never been in the wild, he was fitted with a radio transmitter so we can track him over the next few years.  I had a film crew there to tape the release for a future show we are working on.  We rented a boat and were able to go out into the bay and see Baron released.  I love seeing manatees swim off after spending several years with us at the zoo.  This manatee program really is a class act!

I went up to Gainsville today to speak at the University of Florida.  I spoke at a public speaking lecture and talked about interpretation with live animals.  My Condor came along.  He’s always a crowd pleaser!  Tomorrow, I’m taking my staff on a team building day.  We are going tree climbing.  It’s a really fun process where they strap you in harnesses and you can pull yourself in and out of the tree.  Should be fun.  It’s a great way to end a hectic week!  I then get to go home and pack for my huge trip to Amsterdam.  I leave Monday.  AHHHHH!

Jeff

Happy love day!  I must say, I’ve never been a huge fan of Valentine’s day.  My wife and I never really do much to celebrate it, but 3 years ago, my love of the day changed.  That is when I co-created a new event for the zoo called Wild at Heart.  It is an awesome event where couples, or singles, come to learn all about love and sex in the animal world.  Along the tour, guests are treated to a progressive dinner.  They get appetizers, salads, dinner, deserts and even an open bar.  These eats are placed along an exclusive path throughout the zoo.  At each stop, my staff and I have animal encounters and tell stories about animal behavior.  I love this night, since I can say just about anything I need to to get the point across.  I can say things I’m not aloud to say the rest of the year!  It’s great!  I talk about size, amounts, styles, etc, etc.  You need to come with an open mind, but I assure you, you won’t be disappointed!

Jeff the love guy

Phew! 

It’s been some month.  Sometimes I think I’m too busy!  Ah, why complain though, it’s fun stuff!  I have some exciting news.  Nighthawk Entertainment, my production company, ( www.nighthawk-ent.com), has been hired to produce a television show!  I will go into further detail when everything is set in stone.  I am thrilled though, since this has been a long time dream and goal of mine.  And yes, the show will revolve around animals and I will be hosting it.  Talk about a dream come true.  I am also so lucky to have a great crew to help make this happen.  Keep posted for more details.  Good stuff.

Things have been hectic at the zoo latley.  My bird of prey building is being renovated.  Excellent, yes, easy, no!  In order for this to happen, I have to take out all of my birds, 20 in total.  So I have to play musical chairs, (birds in this case), to find places to put my birds during construction.  Tough thing is though, birds of prey hate change.  Any change they encounter has dire consequences for my training.  So sure enough, I have had fly offs all week! Don’t worry though, all the birds have come back.  On the positive side, my building looks fantastic.  It was in need of some upgrades!  I also have been eagerly awaiting the completion of a new enclosure for my New Guinea Singing Dog.  And finally, it’s done!  The dog, Buca, loves it.  I am also getting another singing dog, so Buca can have a buddy.  My Bald Eagle is beating her foot infection, so I am slowly getting her back on a training program.  And the best news of the week?  After an extensive  exercise plan and diet, my 900 pound pig, lost 100 pounds!!  Quite a milestone!  Congrats Arnold!

On the family front, the baby is coming along very wel.  All looks great.  My  wife looks stunning as ever.  Getting a little sore, but overall, doing well.  We had a great surprise this week when her students and their parents threw her a surprise shower.  They cleared our registry!  Unreal.  We now have everything we need for the baby.  We feel so fortunate to have such a great circle of friends and family.  We are truly a lucky couple.

See you soon!

Jeff

I came to work the other day to find I had some new babies.  Naked Mole Rats!!  I have a colony of 14 and after Sunday, that colony turned into 33.  Yes that’s right, the mother had 19 babies!  That’s a record for our zoo.  Mole rats are so cool since they live the social lives of bees.  They have a queen, soliders and workers.  When the babies were born, the workers immediately took them and cleaned them.  It was so amazing to see them all work together.  Be sure to check out my video of them under jeff the zoo guy on You Tube.

We made it back from our trip up north safe and sound.   We were able to see so much snow!!  I miss it, but I don’t miss those cold temperatures.  The morning we left it was a frigid 5 degrees.  Brrrr.  It’s official, I am heading to Amsterdam in March for a bird training conference.  It’s an annual conference and this is the first year it is outside of North America.  I’m so excited to go check out Holland.  We are scheduled to tour six european zoo and we are going to go to an international raptor breeding center.  It should be an amazing experience.  This conference is a great place to meet contacts and learn new training, presentation and animal husbandry technniques.  I aways come back from this conference pumped up!!  Until next time…..

Jeff

Happy New Year everyone!  I am writing from the cold state of Michigan.  I am on a nice Christmas vacation with my dog and wife to see family up north.  We spent half of it in Cleveland and the other half in Essexville Michigan.  It has been a great trip!   In Cleveland, we had a great Christmas with my family.  It’s the first time in a long time we were all together.  We received a lot of great stuff, especially for the baby.  Later in the week, we all went to the house where the movie Christmas Story was filmed.  For those of you who know the movie, you know how cool it would be to see the house in person.  It was awesome!  The picture above is my wife and I posing in front of that infamous leg lamp, with the gleam of electric sex.  After that we spent some time in downtown Cleveland, had some lunch with my brother and sister in law and then said our goodbyes

 Our next stop was Michigan to see Sarah’s parents.  On the drive up, we encountered one of those great northern snowstorms and ended up with 4 inches.  It was fun for us to see the snow though, so we weren’t too upset.  The next day we had our baby shower.  We had a great turnout.  That is going to be one spoiled baby!  A great party followed and now we are all having some relaxing downtime.  We did go to the bay and see some Bald Eagles today, always a bonus in my book!  We are planning on heading back to Florida on Wed.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate giving us a nice drive home!  See you then and be safe tonight!!

Zoo Guy

I was able to do a fun Jeff the Zoo Guy interview this week for Tampa’s local CBS station.  I interviewed Santa and Mrs. Claus.  I had live reindeer in the background and interviewed them about their big night coming up.  It was a fun story to report and once it airs, I’ll be sure to link to it.  The reindeer we currently have at the zoo are doing well.  They will only be with us for another week, but as always, we ‘ve loved having them!

I was bummed today to find that my new Bald Eagle has the beginning stages of bumble foot.  That’s bacterial infection found in birds of prey and rodents.  It is often caused by sitting on flat surfaces where the foot can’t breathe.  I’ve always taken pride in the fact that I have never had a problem with bumblefoot in any of my birds.  So to see that she has it really stinks.  Luckily I know what to look for and caught it early and we have already started treatment.  I’m confident we’ll have it cleared up in no time.  Speaking of birds, I did get a new one today, a chicken.  I can’t wait to start training her.   Everyone loves chickens!!

My wife and I leave to go up north Friday.  We are going up to see our parents and to have a shower for the baby.  We are both so excited for our parents to see the belly.  It is the first grandchild for both sets of parents, so it is so exciting.  We are also excited because while in Cleveland, we are going to go to the Christmas Story house.  It is the house where the movie was filmed.  How cool is that?  We are driving up so I’m hoping the weather will be good!  I may actually have a white Christmas!!

And finally, my wife and I toured the birthing unit at the hospital today.  We got to see the suites and nursery.  It made everything so real.  Seeing a the newborns was incredible.  We saw one baby going into the neonatal unit that was a premi.  I’ve never seen a human so small.  Just incredible.

 Happy Holidays everyone!

Jeff the Zoo Guy

I’m excited about a new project that I’m working on at the zoo.  We are looking to team up with the Tampa chapter of Meals on Wheels.  We plan to follow volunteers on their delivery route and visit with the homebound folks that need the meals.  The cool thing is, we will have one of our animals along for the ride so they can meet the person.  Meals on Wheels caters to homebound patients regardless of age.  This is a great opportunity for us to reach more residents and more importantly, enrich the lives of these residents.  How cool for a homebound individual to have an animal  encounter come to them right at their own house.  I am attempting to secure a grant so we can cover our costs and make this happen.  What a great opportunity.

I also started to plan for our yearly Valentines day zoo tour called Wild at Heart.  This is a fun event where we talk to the guests all about the sex and power in the animal world.  You may now about birds and bees, but how much do you know about the love life of the birds and the bees?  This is so much fun for me since I can say just about anything I want.  And being that it is an adult only event, I can really dirty it up!!  It was so popular last year it made national headlines.  Good stuff.

My wife and I are getting all geared up for a long road trip up north.  We are hoping the weather will hold out.  All that ice is worrying us, but we’ll go slow.  I can’t wait for our families to see how big Sarah is getting.  Her belly is huge!!  I think she’s going to give birth to a football player!  That’s my boy!  Talk to you soon……..

Jeff the Zoo Guy

Hello everyone!  I began this week by going to an old Florida attraction in St. Petersburg called Sunken Gardens.  It was about 20 years since I have last been there, and as a kid, I of course didn’t appreciate it.  So I didn’t have high expectations, but boy, was I impressed!  It was great!!  What a hidden gem.  It is located in an old sink hole and is several acres of incredible gardens.  You really feel like you are in the rainforest.  They even had several parrots, Kookaburras and Flamingos.  The birds looked great too.  I even caught a glimpse of a well hidden Alligator Snapping Turtle, the second strongest biting animal in the world.  He blended in so well, I think my wife and I were the only ones to see him! 

On the zoo front, it was actullay a pretty quite week.  I needed one of those.  That new Eagle of mine is doing great!  Flying like a gem.  She did punch me with her beak though giving me a nice fat lip.  She lunges out in aggression and I wasn’t quick enough.  Ouch!  That crazy Condor, Quito, is molting.  That means he is losing a lot of his feathers to regrow new ones.  Problem is though it requires a lot of energy and diet requirements to get through it.  So I havn’t been able to have good training sessions with him this week, setting him back a bit.  No worries though, he’ll be back!  And finally, we got in 6 new Reindeer.  They are part of our zoo’s holiday celebration.  Talk about neat animals.  They are a type of Caribou, and have incredible adaptaions to survive the harsh winter conditions they live in.  My favorite is their snapping tendons.  When they walk, you can hear a clicking sound.  It is their tendon snapping against their bone in their leg.  This helps them stick together when the visibility is poor.  How cool is that?

I started a new hobby today, disc golf.  A friend of mine, nutty Swede boy, is an old pro at the game.  He took me out today to a great little course.  I must say, I loved it!  It’s hard!  Those discs are nothing like frisbees.  It is such a challenge to get them to go where you want them.  I felt like I did pretty good my first time out.   I look forward to getting out more and getting better.  One day I’ll beat that Swedish wonder, one day.

Zoo Guy