Well, I am down to less than 2 weeks of my internship. A sad thought really. I can't believe the time is almost up and I still feel like I have lots to do and learn yet. I am starting to feel the pressures of getting my project finished. My presentation to the aquarium staff is on Friday so I have been working on getting that ready. I am excited to present my findings to everyone yet extremely nervous at the same time. There will probably be lots of people there since 3 of us interns are presenting projects. All my hard work and project observations during my internship have come down to this one day...so I hope it all goes well!
Other than frantically scrambling around trying to wrap up this project, I'm still having such a blast working with the whales. Kela has been in such an awesome mood lately and everything you bridge she does her 'weeeee' vocal. So stinkin cute! Her tongue rubs at duck pond window (where they do the Whales-Up-Close program) have been going amazing! I was watching one of the trainers do a program with her at the window and he had them all do tongue rubs. And sure enough, the guests reached their hands right over the glass one-by-one and Kela came right up to them so they could give her tongue rubs! It was so awesome to see something I had been helping work on become a success! I was so proud of Kela for doing that and it felt awesome to watch her do it -- I was like a proud parent! Naku is Naku...pretty much an amazing, solid whale with everything she does! She too likes to vocalize after everything behavior she does. And she LOVES doing tongue rubs after the feeding/training sessions. She would stick around all day for tongue rubs if she could! Its so funny during tongue rubs when she starts giving you her pec to touch and then she whips her head around for a tongue rub. I start to wonder if that has become a fun little game for her.
I had the chance to help with one of Junos 'lip sessions' -- the 'lip' where the encounter programs are. So I got to do some fun stuff with Juno in the water like his mimic spins, different vocals, and touch his squishy melon! And then I got to help with his hugs and kisses. For his hugs, he has a tendency to lean onto you when he comes up. I had to kind of stand with one leg behind me to support myself when he lunged forward. So I got him the hug Ds (cue) and sure enough he came right up and leaned on my body. It was a lot more force than I had expected! But it was cute -- I got to give June-bug a hug :) But thats not all...after that, I got to ask for his kiss behavior again. I was expecting a forceful pec on the cheek similar to what happened last time. I pointed to my cheek and waited for him to come bolting to my face. But to my surprise he came up nice and gently and very softly 'kissed' my cheek! Much improvement from last time when he almost took my jaw off :)
No comments:
Post a Comment