Louisville Zoo Docent Graduation Day

Yesterday was finally Graduation Day!  I received my Diploma, Shirt, and Badge and am now an Official, Decent Docent.

Here I am getting my 'Diploma' from Doug McCoy , our instructor.

There were 25 of us. A couple of them were not able to make the Christmas Party.  This was a fun group to work with, and the Mentors who helped us get through all our projects were all nice and always available for support.  I'd never notice until the whole group got together that the men were a very small minority.

My official Docent Shirt and Name Tag.  I still have to stop by the front office and get my picture taken for my badge. 
While I'll learn a little more every time I work, my official training will be over this afternoon when I handle my last 2 animals for the Meta-Zoo Animal Keeper.  I have to go over at 2:00 today to handle a Milk Snake and a Chinchilla.  This will just involve getting them out of their enclosure, presenting them for someone to touch, then putting them back.  I've done this in class but she wants us to handle the animal for her so she can sign us off on her list and then will let us 'Sign Out' animals, for either classes or Outreach programs.  This is just the final step for me to be allowed to sign animals out.




So, the whole program has really been fun and interesting.  I can't believe how much I've learned about animals, and it's made me aware of how much more I need to learn in order to teach the different classes offered at the Zoo. 
This past Saturday I worked at the 'Santa Safari', manning one of the check in stations.  For two hours I worked at the Orangutan table, talking to people about the Orangutans.  I worked with another Docent who was very knowledgeable about them and learned a lot.  Then I worked for an hour at the Herpaquarium, presenting a 'White's Tree Frog' to the people and telling them about it.  That little critter was wanting to jump and was hard to handle.  After a while I finally just left him in the container and showed him to people that way.  He was satisfied just to be left alone in his container, so I left him there.  At the Santa Safari, children and their parents get to meet Santa upstairs in the Gheens room, then they leave there and make their way to 10 checkpoints throughout the Zoo getting stamps on their 'passports' at each location.  That way, each checkpoint can tell them a little about the animals at that location while stamping their passports.  It was pretty interesting, and I got to learn a lot.  Santa Safari continues through this next Saturday and Sunday, but I'm not signed up to work that.  I may sign up for some of it while I'm at the Zoo today.  We'll see.