My Normal Life

Woke up this morning, and headed to the zoo - running behind agian...

on the way to the zoo I take a side road instead of the main one through town and see a dead squirrel** in an intersection. I stop, go back and snatch him up - of course I checked him to make sure he was in good shape first. Pulled his hair, none came out. I decide he looks good and stick him in a plastic bag I had been keeping in my car for just this purpose.

A minute later I'm talking on the phone with my step-dad, letting him know he doesn' t have to shoot me a squirrel anymore.

By ten I'm scrubbing away black gunk in a spider monkey's enclosure, being serenaded by the sound of gibbons and lemurs, while the two spider monkeys play in the enclosure next to me.

At noon it's off to subway to pick up lunch for Aram, the other keeper at the zoo I worked with today, and meanwhile I talk to my fiance in Germany, for a quick hello before it's back to work.

In the late afternoon I'm up giving a bottle to one of the spider monkeys, and feeding the others before giving hay to the Elands and Zebra...

Then it finally occurs to me as I walk up the stairs to my apartment, carrying my dead squirrel and feeling it's fur in awe - my life is anything but normal.

And do you want to know the funny thing? Other than having a dead squirrel - this was a normal day in my life!


** Just so you all don't think I'm crazy - the dead squirrel is for my mammology class. I have to make a study skin; which means I get to skin it and stuff the skin.