From Space Odyssey to Office Space

Behold, the water tight gate!

Today I realized that my job is essentially just like some of the best movies on the planet.

Deep cleaning habitats is an undertaking all zoological personnel (be it professional or amateur) must endure.  It is a crucial task to keep the animals who live in said habitats comfortable and healthy.  As we all know, some habitat cleaning is not as messy as others.  Cleaning a cat litter box is featherweight cleaning; scooping elephant poop like my dear friends Maura and Matt is on the "OMGGGGG" end of the spectrum.  

Nonetheless, whether we have adopted pets or work as animal care professionals, we find ourselves performing tasks that are mildly hazardous, disgusting, tedious, and/or physical demanding so that we can maintain a healthy and happy animal family.


In the dolphin training world, we don't have to worry about cleaning dolphin poo up in the way essentially every other zookeeper or pet owner has to.  One of the most charming aspects of dolphins aside from their intelligence and cute looks is the fact that their, ahem, "output" dissipates into a cloud and is usually filtered out quickly from the water.  


The biggest villain in the dolphin training world is Algae of all types.  All forms of algae are the cockroaches of the Protist* world in that algae never dies.  I am convinced that a perfectly clean pool filled with nothing but mercury could host seven different species of algae when exposed to sunlight for approximately 9 seconds.


Luckily, a little algae in a habitat is no problem. Algae is merely "seaweed" and so is not as a) disgusting and unhygienic  and b) gross-looking  as a cockroach.  However, if left untouched in a manmade habitat (not a natural lagoon with its own natural tidal filtration), it will grow into a wild meadow of seaweed that can trap the more solid pieces of dolphin poop that would normally be taken up into filters.   Trainers have to stay ahead of the algae before it grows its long tendrils.

See how the algae laughs at us!

In some cases, it is necessary to drain habitats to blast the little algae jerks right off of their feet with a pressure washer. 

Recently, I had the pleasure of helping deep clean all of our dolphin habitats. In the case of the facility by which I am currently employed, we must drop 300lb metal bulkheads (herein referred to as "water tight gates") into gate channels that separate the dolphin habitats from one another.  Once all water tights are in place, our dedicated Life Support Staff (super heroes, really) can safely drain the water out of the pool and we can begin a dirty but fun job of erasing budding algae off of the walls in quick fashion.

I should also note that no, of course the dolphins aren't in the empty habitats.  They are safely in water-filled habitats, making sure we don't break anything as we clean one of their rooms.  And they never tip.

After our pressure washing adventures have ended and we fill the pool back up, there is the great task of  removing the water tight gates.  They are 300 pounds and in the water.  Sometimes, we need to wedge them in the gate channels with crowbars.  It requires at least ten people...no wait, let me correct that: four very strong (and/or stubborn) men, and six girls to lift and install or remove the gates. 


In the case of the water tight gates near our med pool (the magical pool with a floor that can be raised to the surface of the pool), we can lift the floor up high enough to aid us in pulling up water tight gates straight up, resting for a second, then tilting the gate until it looks like a tabletop that the ten of us can carry to its appropriate storage place.


So today as I was looking at us lifting the first water tight gate straight up out of the gate channel, I was suddenly struck by the image of the Great Monolith in the opening scene of the incredible Stanley Kubrick gem 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

Mysterious Monolith or Water Tight?

As the trainers, burly maintenance guys, and life support crew look onto the Great Water Tight Gate as it towers towards the sky, we ponder the potential of it blowing over in the wind, squishing all of us beneath its massive weight.  There are no dolphins around for it to smush, but plenty of us bipedal apes are at its mercy.


Once we have seen our Death By Water Tight run through our terrified minds, we all begin to reach our arms and hands skyward to receive the gate as it is tilted towards us in the tabletop fashion described above.   Kind of like this:

Here, the trainers receive the water tight gate as it is lowered into the "tabletop" position.  Ooo ooo ah ahhhhh!

As it is lowered into position, we are reminded of the magic of weight distribution.  It whisks us momentarily to junior high slumber party games of "light as a feather, stiff as a board".  For mere minutes, the water tight becomes an ethereal object of little to no weight.  The relief that none of us resembles Flat Stanley after the removal of said gate floods over us as we move the gate to its final resting place.  Or rather, until we need it again in four months for more deep cleaning.



So is that it?  Of course not.  Recall what happened to the apes at the Monolith. It made them violent and irrational creatures.



As the trainers perilously remove the remaining water tight gates, they become increasingly uptight.  They are understandably frightened of the Potential Smash that all water tight gate removal/installment risk.  


All of this nervous energy has to go somewhere.  Luckily, this energy is directed to the next Space Odyssey parallel at my job.

OUR TERRIBLE COMPUTERS.

Here is a picture of our Computer:

 Wait, did you see it?  Did you look closely enough?  Why don't you look more closely this time?

Our computer, HAL 9000.  HAL has a mind of his own.  He is intelligent, he is cunning.  He doesn't work for anyone but himself. 



Trainers use this computer to send daily updates of the dolphins' activities that day.  They use it to read important emails from bosses.  They use it to make sure they know how many people will participate in interactive programs. 

We can be guaranteed at least 38 Blue Screens of Death, 52 random computer restarts, and one rather lovely rendition of "Daisy Bell" before we are allowed to check our email.



So at the end of today, as we finished our Water Tight Removal Task, we found ourselves yet again in the role of the Enraged Ape in Space Odyssey.  While we left the computer in tact, we certainly had this running through our mind as we read once more about the Physical Memory Dump, and Failed Logins:

This will be me beating you, HAL.  One day....

HAL 9000 will one day meet his demise.  And on that day, our dolphin training lives will cross from Space Odyssey to the next best Space in the film industry:

 

I'll keep you posted.
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*Kingdom Protista: "Protists":  Tiny little organisms that can be one-celled or many-celled.  They have to have some kind of water-based environment to live in be it marine or freshwater.  They can grow in any place where there is water, such as locker room floors. 

A Portrait of the North American River Otter

The North American river otter (NAROs) can best be described as the Poster Child for ADHD. Not only do these adorable mustelids* have an admirably terrifying ability to move at speeds that register on speedometers as "blurry", but they have bite pressure that leaves pit bulls feeling embarrassed.

So why are they one of my favorite animals?  Well, look above! They are extremely cute, especially when they sleep...and sleep...and sleep...

After a busy 15 seconds of swimming 60 laps in a pool, digging 19 holes in the sand, rearranging logs, standing on hind limbs to catalog every scent detectable within a 10 mile radius, NAROs find themselves awfully sleepy.  Similar to my own sleeping behavior, NAROs essentially pass away when they fall asleep.




I enjoyed walking into the exhibit of the slumbering two older NAROs at one of the aquariums I worked at.  Cooper (pictured above) was a slightly lighter sleeper than his older and larger roommate, Webster.  Cooper is also partially paralyzed thanks to an unwary driver twelve years ago, so as he begins to greet my presence with a toothy yawn, he wiggles his shoulders and begins to slide his chubby self towards me and his food.  



If I was lucky enough to rouse Webster from sleep, it was the only time I can recall that he did not exhibit the classic hyperactive insanity that is prevalent in otters of any species.  Like a sleepy teenager, he lifts his head before his little eyes open.  I suppose he is sniffing around to ascertain if whatever has rudely ignored his seventh nap of the day is worth acknowledging.



Webster's sleepy eyes slowly open, revealing not the deep, bright eyes of your alert otter, but cloudy, How-Did-I-Get-Here eyes commonly seen in 20 year old males illegally frequenting college bars.

Should he decide to participate in whatever I had planned for the session, he would slowly walk to me and eat his first few fish begrudgingly.  But if I'm being honest, Webster often gave me the cold shoulder.  Even if his favorite fish was offered within millionths of a millimeter of his sensitive nose, he would dramatically throw his head in the opposite direction, purposely saunter to the water's edge, and wash his face.   Toilette routine complete, he'd slide into the water and swim to the furthest point away from me and face away from me until I left.

After their recharge naps, NAROs become loose cannons.  They are very intelligent, very fast, and easily startled.  It is the disadvantage to working with an animal that is both predator and prey.  Their predatory cunning and problem-solving make them wonderful training subjects and delightful to watch on their own time.   Their paranoia that at any time, Scary Noises May Eat Them make them relatively perilous to handle.


The latter is often lost on the Average Joe.  Average Joe is disarmed at first look at the NARO's large, cartoonish nose, their beady yet expressive eyes, and their fat rolls.  Instead of killing machines that can shred muscle tissue in seconds, NAROs are Pillow Pets.


It is easy to warn guests to enjoy observing NAROs from a safe distance.  Guests are not usually keen on smooching a wild animal (albeit a cute one) whose bite pressure is pound-for-pound the same as a wolverine's.  They are content to acknowledge NAROs as wild animals and go on their way.   The same cannot be said about Movie Crews.


I was put in charge of working with two female NAROs (Bella and Bogey) who were slated to become movie stars.  The night before the second unit camera crew was supposed to get footage of our resident NAROs for the Movie That Shall Not Be Named Due to Copyright Infringement I Barely Understand But Still Signed the Contract, I was informed that the gargantuan camera and its equally massive crane would be dipping into (and REMAINING in) the otter exhibit at otter-eye-level to obtain shots.

This is essentially what the 3D camera and crane looked like, except the camera had a massive, rectangular housing around it and about one zillion more cables and wires.

Flabbergasted, I responded with a professional "UH, NO" and confidently informed the second unit crew that Bella and Bogey would have absolutely no problems rushing over to the camera, up the crane, chew through all of the wires three times, and unscrew 58% of the machine's hardware in 0.75 seconds.


"But," the second unit director rebutted.  "We can pull the camera and crane back in five seconds."


"In five seconds," I replied.  "Your multi-million dollar camera will be completely destroyed and the otters will be halfway to the Bahamas."


No one believed me.  They were understandably frustrated, because they had planned on getting a certain kind of shot.


"Can't you train them to stay away from the camera?"  No.  The camera is shiny.
"Can't you just lure them with food away from the camera?"  No.  The camera is shinier than the food.

I desperately tried to make them understand: Otters are drawn to new objects in ways that can be predicted in physics.  Newton's Fourth Law of Motion states: 


"Every shiny object in the presence of an otter tends to remain the sole object of said otter's attention unless presented another shiny object, or the otter is abducted by aliens."


Still nothing.  Several well-known animal trainers-turned-movie-people attempted to help me articulate my point.  There was no feasible way to build an impenetrable shield (think a giant squirrel-dome on a bird feeder) over the crane and camera housing, and there was no way to get the camera down far enough to get the shot they thought they needed.  The older otters who would not be able to jump onto the camera couldn't be involved, because they were in the wrong habitat and it wasn't possible to move them.


We were at a standstill.  I peered down at Bella and Bogey who already were perched on their large back feet and chubby tails.  They chirped curiously at the group of people huddled around the equipment near their habitat.  It was easy to understand their otter conversation:


Bella: Chirp.  Chirp.  Chirp.  (If they dip that Shiny Thing in here, I'm going to run headlong at it and jump three feet into the air, grab onto the housing with my paws, pull myself up, and look at my reflection in the camera lenses for a second and try to bite them, then I'm going to crawl around the top of the camera housing, biting through whatever cords get in my way.  At that point, you will be clear to jump on the camera housing too. I'd suggest that I take the top part of the crane and I'll aim for the guy with the mustache.  You can crawl up the underside of the crane and aim for the guy in the khaki shorts.  You can chew on any of the cables that are in your way.  I'll stick with the ones that are in my way.)

Bogey: Chirp. (Sounds great. Where should we meet for naptime?)

We were all quiet.  I ran through every scenario I could think of to come up with a solution that would be safe for everyone involved but still allow the camera crew to get the shots they needed.  

Me and the other animal/movie guys were stumped.  I finally said, "You absolutely cannot put the camera down into the exhibit that far.  That is the fact.  I can't risk an otter escaping or anyone, person or otter, getting hurt.  Nor can I risk your camera equipment getting damaged.  These animals look like they sleep all day, but they are really, really smart, and they are really, really fast."


I paused.  "They are like wolverines on Red Bull."


Apparently, this highly educated phrasing was enough to sway popular opinion to my side.  


"Really?" the camera operator said. 


My minority of supporters chimed in in support, suddenly recalling countless stories of NAROs causing permanent damage to handlers' film and set equipment within a period of seconds.  Slowly, we gained ground.  


The next day, we figured out how high to hold the camera to get decent shots and be out of the jumping distance of Bella and Bogey.  The otters did very well with their required tasks, but spent a lot of time checking out the camera and testing how high it was.  We were all very pleased at the end.


How did the footage turn out?  Check out the scene in Dolphin Tale!  

The author with Bella

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*Mustelidae includes: weasels, sea otters, river otters, and Lindsay Lohan

The Middle Flipper Is.... (Part 1)

 ...the look on my face as a young dolphin refuses to do anything but a footpush.


If I approached dolphin training the way I do driving, it would involve a lot of expletives, explosions in heart and respiratory rates, and wondering frantically about the future of humanity on this the planet Earth.

Luckily, my patience is rarely tested with dolphins or other animals*.  Call it my devotion to yoga, a deep-seeded love for all creatures that do not sting or have formic acid in their abdomens, or maybe my intensely cathartic road rage, but when a dolphin decides they want to do something that is totally opposite of what I am asking, I'm okay with it.  You simply cannot argue with a gigantic, heavy, and intelligent animal. 

So in the moment my dolphin friend in the above photo became fixated on pushing my disgusting Dolphin Trainer Feet, my goal is to calmly and expeditiously exit the water and allow the little dolphin to do whatever is she does (play with footballs? socialize with other dolphins? plot the end to the looming nuclear war in the Koreas?).

All kidding aside, I have learned a lot from Middle Flipper Events.  I've learned you should not let those moments get to you.  It's not about your "pride" as a trainer.  It's about what the animals are communicating to you, and how it will make you a more effective trainer and caregiver in the long run.  No matter how the trainer feels after a dolphin has told them to go fish** and peaces out from The Important Show, or The Training Session the Boss Is Watching, or The Routine Husbandry Behavior, having a dolphin tell you to fly a kite is what makes this job incredible.  Does it not support what we know as trainers to be true?  That this is all voluntary?  That the animals with whom we work have a mind of their own?  That they can say, "My, what pretty feet you have! The better to push endlessly on, my dear!" 


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* This does not extend to my sun conure Cher.

** Haha, get it?

Antface, and Other Naming Dilemmas

The author colliding with a dolphin.

Let's begin this the first entry of a dolphin trainer blog with a simple question posed to my readers:

How long does it take you to name something?

Let's just for the sake of argument define "something" as: anything.

I can't really reply to my own question with one answer.  That shouldn't surprise any of you who know me, as I suffer from Incessant Talking Disease (ITD, as defined by the general Medical Community).   However in this particular case of Naming, I find myself lost in a world with no rules, or sense.

Let's discuss the first pet I ever named ("pet" is loosely defined as "animal that is within five feet of me").   My loving father woke me from one of several naps I was accustomed to taking throughout the day when I was but four years old.  Due to my borderline narcoleptic tendencies, I was not happy to be roused from unconsciousness.  My dad insisted in that way only parents can, that I Must See This. 

"I want to sleep, dad."  My best argument.

"But Cat!" he exclaimed.  "You Must See This!"

I stumbled after my father, thinking that no matter what it was he was going to show me, I was going to hate it.  In fact, within the five seconds it took me to walk from my bedroom to the living room in our two bedroom Chicago apartment, I decided to feign apathy.  Maybe even disdain.  It depended on whatever this phenomenon was that was about to be unveiled to me was.

My father and mother crowded around one of the living room windows of our 13th story apartment.  They pointed animatedly at the window.  I spotted a large spider relaxing in the middle of a web that spanned the entire size of our window, and a small egg sac hanging near by the (now obviously) female spider.

It was literally the coolest sight my four year old eyes had ever beheld, but I did not forget my groggy grumpiness.  I shrugged my shoulders and decided on an initial apathetic front.

"Isn't that great, Cat?  All the way up here?  We are THIR-TEEN stories high! In the air! And the spider is up here! With us! On our window! And see? She's going to have babies!"  My dad pointed to the egg sac.

It was truly amazing.  What a feat of biology! My little mind was completely and happily blown, but my face betrayed my emotion.  I shrugged again.

"This could be your first pet, Cat!" my mom said, ecstatic that my first pet did not expel large poo, and was outside, and required no human care whatsoever.

"What do you want to name it?" my dad asked.

Name my FIRST pet?  This Spider That Can Climb Really High and Have Babies Too?  Oh my GOD.  What higher honor can be bestowed upon a four year old?

Nonetheless, the naming problem occurred.  I had great names in mind.  They would pay tribute to this raw feminine power embodied in this arachnid.  People would cry when they heard of this legendary spider and her equally legendary name. All of the strong female characters I'd ever known came to mind.  Mary Poppins the Spider.  Dorothy the eight-limbed maternal wonder.  But there was this matter of an interrupted slumber, and my promise to feign disinterest.

I just had to throw this compliment back into my parents' faces.  I had to come up with the most disgusting, insulting name known to man in any language.  That would surely teach my parents an important lesson. 

I clenched my fist and teeth and muttered the most hideous name I could conjure.

"ANTFACE.  ANT. FACE."


And so Antface, my first pet, was so dubbed.  Like any four year old, I failed to predict the consequences of such a name would follow in the decades to come.  For example, my father penned an "Ode to Antface" for me for one of my birthdays.  It showed up in my high school graduation scrapbook my parents made me.


Despite my snafu with naming my first pet, all pets thereafter were named rather easily.  I followed the following formula: Any pets with names after food are cuter.  While many people consider the personality of their pet before the formal Naming Ceremony, I consider what color the animals are, and how hungry I am.  It's better if the pets come in pairs.  My favorite names for pets were two mice I had named Dunk and Donut.


Regardless, naming inanimate objects proves a more difficult task.  Naming this blog brought me more anxiety than such events as: High School Graduation, Trips to the Dermatologist, and Common Symptoms That Seem Like Normal Body Functions But WebMD Says They Indicate I Have Bubonic Plague. 

Let's just say that in my line of work (and ultimately, what many of my blog posts will describe) often puts me in unusual situations with marine mammals.  One of my good friends and mentors would always describe dolphins* in a bad mood as giving us the "middle flipper".

And so, welcome to The Middle Flipper.

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* Some of the dolphins' names include:  Alvin, Sundance, Nicholas, and Betty.  No, I am not making this up.