Back together again!!!

6 more hours until we're all done with this stupid long-distance thing! Just thought you'd like to know.

Perks of the job

The two African elephants at Western Plains Zoo are in training, which is a lot of fun for all the employees. They're being trained to go on walks, but to fully appreciate this, you have to picture the scene: we are out in rural Oz, and the zoo has a ton of property - several acres of which aren't even used for anything. So the elephants go for a short walk through the zoo

and then get to roam around this huge expanse of grassland. They aren't on leads or anything - just under voice control of the keepers.

For now, only employees are allowed to tag along, so the other morning I went on an ele walk. I can't even explain how cool it is - you're hanging out within touching distance of these 2 elephants that are, for all practical purposes, free.

The 4 ele keepers and I spent about an hour letting Cuddles and YumYum do their ele thing - which mostly involved eating.

Two of the keepers have this push-up contest going, so that morning they decided to take it to a whole new level. Literally. One of them got Cuddles to boost him up with her trunk, and he did push-ups on her back. It's such a surreal thing to be watching these huge elephants peacefully grazing in the distance one second, and then be hoisting a full-grown man around the next.

No matter where you fall on the debate of whether wild animals or captive animals are better off, I think these 2 elephants are the luckiest in the world.

It's a boy!!!

...and I totally called it! I got the gender and the delivery time right! Yup - Australia is celebrating its first Asian elephant birth. Our lab is monitoring all 5 Asian elephant pregnancies in AU ...well now just 4. (So yes, you could say I cheated a bit, but does that really matter?) So a little boy was born at Taronga Zoo (the sister zoo to the one I work at) at 3:08am on July 4th. You can see more pics here - it's really cute.

(one year)

Ben has now been in Australia for a whole year, and Ani will reach her 1 year mark in 2 days. However, I have made the executive decision that we will celebrate our 1-year Aussie Anniversary together, so it will be the day that the 3 of us were reunited (i.e., when I arrived in Oz). I figure that's fair since Ani spent most of that time in quarantine and Ben didn't do too much exploring before I got here. So you can save your happy anniversary cards for a little longer.

Life with Emmet

Emmet is getting bigger and more alert and is spending more time out of his pouch, which is fun. He generally gets a bit of an exercise during his pouch changes. Sometimes he's really into it, sometimes he just wants to get back in his pouch. He's getting better at this whole hopping thing - he'll do laps around his mum (Kristie). But sometimes he'll shake his head and throw himself off balance and start doing this out-of-control zig-zag jump. And sometimes when he's making a tight turn around Kristie, he'll end up running into her, instead. But he's getting better and better at it!

AND, I got to do my first feed this week (quickly followed by my first and second solo-feeds)! It's a lot like feeding a baby - you mix up a special formula, put it in a bottle, warm it up, and feed him. And every time you feed him, you also have to toilet him, which involves getting a wad of tissue down there and "tickling" him until he takes care of business. The poor roo moms have to do this orally. :b I have decided, as much as I like the idea of giving birth to something that's the size of a peanut, I'm glad I'm not a kangaroo.

Happy Winter Solstice!!

Woohoo!!! Longer days from here on out!! This is a very comforting thought for me as I bike around town in the dark. I have good lights on my bike (as long as I replace the batteries), but it's still just nicer to have daylight.

Penny for your thoughts

So I’ve realized that there are two topics of conversation that Ben and I repeatedly revisit when we have time to just chat – while we’re walking Ani or driving long distances or taking train rides. Neither of them actually move us towards any particular outcome or resolution – they’re just things to talk about.

So the first is about our future and what we’re doing with our lives. And not really in a practical way (e.g., should I take this job or not), but in more of a whimsical way (e.g., maybe we could get jobs running a biological field station on a remote island; maybe we could learn Spanish and go live in Spain; maybe we could both get jobs with a pharmaceutical company and see what it’s like to get a real paycheck; if we have kids we should have a toffee-making weekend every fall; wonder if we’ll ever own a house). They pretty much cover any possible direction our lives could go, and are entirely shaped by something we’ve seen/heard/felt recently and not so much shaped by reality. But it’s fun to imagine.

The second topic of conversation is guessing who will actually come visit us while we’re in Australia. We generally agree about most people, so making bets isn’t that interesting, but there are a few people we debate about. So will you prove us right or wrong??? [Reminder, plane tickets are still really cheap right now… :)]