My first week at WFFT was spent with the wildlife portion of the rescue. The wildlife had a few different sections that could be assigned, there was primates 1 & 2, bears 1 & 2, other wildlife, nocturnal, and quarantine. I spent my week 2 days in other wildlife, 1 day in primates 2, and 1 day in bears 2. My favorite was definitely other wildlife because this portion I really got to have experience with a variety of different animals.
In the morning we start with food prep for all the wildlife which includes a variety of birds such as a cassowary “bernie”, parrots, a one winged crow, a blind kite, peacocks, and then the turtles & tortoises, iguanas, porcupines, a 3 legged cow “simon”, deer, goats, sometimes otters, muntjacs, and pigs. It was a pleasure feeding these guys, but WFFT has a hands off policy because most of these animals can be released back into the wild so they don’t want them to get to used to humans which I agree with but still being close with the animals and feeding them was an experience.
There are 2 animals that this rule doesn’t apply to in the wildlife section and that’s the pigs, and one of the deer named “Florence” who would come up to you wanting food and some attention and the pigs were fantastic to hang out with.
After morning feedings are finished afternoons would consist of either a special project of some kind, or making enrichments which in Vet tech school is something we talk about ALOT (ha, ha) some of these enrichments were quite clever and really fun to make like for the birds we would cut the bottom of romaine lettuce so we would have the hearts and then stuff the creases with sunflower seeds, watching the animals interact with their enrichments was always satisfying to watch. The mixture of handling and dealing with bears, primates and other wildlife was great and anyone interested in zoology or wildlife medicine this is somewhere I suggest going to see and experience first hand on caring for the wildlife!
Click here to read other stories from the SPC Thailand Study Abroad program.