Zookeeper for a Day at the Santa Barbara Zoo Part 2

Here is part 2 of my Zoo Keeper for a Day experience at the Santa Barbara Zoo. You can catch up and read Part 1 of my experience here.

After lunch we headed out to the Capybara exhibit with Melanie. These animals are the largest rodents in the world, and are very skittish -- we had to move slowly around these guinea pig relatives. Of the three animals in the exhibit,  only one was interested in eating the romaine lettuce from our hands.

I even got to pet him---he really enjoyed it.

After the rodent experience, we got to go into the barnyard with--you guessed it, barnyard animals.

Melanie showed us how she was in the process of training some baby goats, and we even got to feed them out of our hands.

Our last stop of our day was the elephant exhibit. I had sort of added the elephants in because  I thought it would be cool---the penguins and giraffes were definitely my top priority.

We got to interact with these Asian elephants in ways that I couldn't imagine. Something really cool we got to do was to hose down the elephants. The elephants really loved the water, and it was such a unique experience. I never thought I'd ever get the opportunity to wash an elephant.

After we washed the elephants we got to feed them. Watching how they use their trunks was just amazing. There are no words to describe being next to these huge, amazing creatures.

Thank you to the Santa Barbara Zoo for offering this amazing opportunity, and thank you to the awesome keepers and staff for making this a memorable and wonderful day!