Day Two: Jungle Joe in the industrial zoo

Okay, so I'm up to date, I just hope I can keep this up. Today I met Jeff at the mysteriously hidden local zoo. The zoo happens to be in the same county as my grandparents and I had never heard of it. When I drove over, thank you Mapquest, I realized why I had never heard of it: it was in the middle of an industrial center where buildings were rising.

Sure enough when I got there, early, there were families making their way to the zoo. I spent a good fifteen minutes just looking around at all of the signs in the small lobby. I talked to one of the workers, Dina, who told me about the zoo's goal for a 200 acre plot of land to expand the zoo in a more permanent home. She and I also shared common ground because both of our names started with D. I got a good chance to look at two large world maps, one of prehistoric animals [dinos, extinct animals] and another of modern day animals. I loved seeing all of the herbivores' friendly faces and the toothy grins of the carnivores.

I met up with Jeff and was introduced to Jungle Joe, former police officer, wildlife conservationist extraordinaire and Batman fanboy. [I hope that's alright to say, because he really was]. The interview was about Joe's recent trip down to the Gulf of Mexico. He took it upon himself to go down with a group of people and learn what exactly people were doing to help ease the situation.

BOOM

Boom is what is used to keep oil off of plants and shores, there are three layers of plastic and it was a little confusing to learn about what with the word BOOM always coming into play. Joe talked about the pelicans and how they are being affected when the oil gets on them. Actually so much was discussed in this interview I cannot cover it all. He talked about how fishermen were being paid to skim, communities and the Fish and Wildlife services working to clean the beaches and animals. He even mentioned how they are trying to trick some migratory birds into going to Texas.

Just above in that picture I'm holding a SPOT tracker. Joe uses it so that the people who read his SPOT blog can see where he is and where he has been, this was useful for when he was down by the gulf. He estimates that down there alone they covered at least eight thousand miles.

After the interview we got to look inside the zoo where I got to pet a small, big eared Australian Fox named Frankie. I was surprised at how many diverse animals such a small zoo could have. There was an Eagle Owl that had imprinted [eh, eh Jacob fans] on Joe as a small baby bird and was hooing at us. There were lemurs! I love lemurs, so cute. It was a great experience and thanks to my AP Environmental class I knew all about what Joe was saying.

If this crisis should teach us anything it's this: oil may have occurred naturally on Earth but it was not meant to be used by humans, we only do selfish things with it. Alternative energy is the way to go, the way to be. Generations of species may be altered because of this event, let's make sure that we do our best to teach the next generation not to make the same mistakes so that whatever is left of these species is not lost forever.

XDara

Hour Tracker: 7:30 hours