Not your average patient
First off, my cell phone is shut off (and has been shut off for a couple day), so if you leave me voice/text messages I can't get to them. Steph? I saw a new text message on there, is that from you?

Anywho, ended up getting to the park a few minutes after 9 and it's a good thing I did cause Discovery Tours showed up early. They were suppose to be there at 10 and when I got there I saw them waiting in line for the park to open and I got out of the car and ran to guest services. So anyway, we had to wait for everything to open and then went through. Was only 28 instead of 44 like they had said when they booked it. Had a hold up at lions cause the carnivore rangers were busy, but it was nice really cause when they let the lions out and opened the gate to the compound Kieno and Sadie were running around and flopped down on the ground and were rolling and stuff. It was cute. And I could have had a beautiful shot of Keino if I had my camera with me (it would not be the last time today I wished I had my camera). I think I might go through one day right when the park opens and hope it's like that again.

The tour folks were a little dissapointed that the brown bear compound was closed, and it wasn't until I saw the signed that I remembered that one of the bears was getting a root canal today and that's why it was closed. The antlers of the elk were shedding and so there were bloody strings of velvet hangin' off 'em and I was a bit thrown off when we got in Asia to see llamas out there. At first I only saw one and so I thought it got out, but then 2 more were spotted. Would have been nice to know about it beforehand so I didn't have to worry. And we had another set of baby rheas it looks like. Aww. Such cute little birds. I want :E

After the tour (nobody tipped! boo!) I went to the vet clinic where they had the bear already sedated and lying on the floor. There were the carnivore rangers, Modesto (our vet), a couple more vet staff and then a bunch of interns in the room. Plus the dentist. And we don't just have one of our vets do dental work on our animals, it's actually the dentist in town there. He works on people and animals :> For the most part it was a lot of standing aroun, watching and talking. They not only did just a root canal but an extraction as well and one of the interns was all "oo yeah! I've never seen an actual dentist do an extraction before! I've just seen vets where all you do it break the tooth and pull out the pieces". We all took lots of pictures of the bear and with the bear X) I didn't have my camera since I forgot about it but I did take pictures with the camera on my phone. Touched it's feet and played with it's rump X) See bears have fat stored up in the rump area, and so you shake their fur back and forth and it honestly feels and looks like a waterbed. Some of the people were joking about how they wanted to lay on the bear X) There was a little problem when the fillings wouldn't dry in the tooth, so the dentist had to call his office in town and bring out some sort of calcium powder and that was put in there. Just too much puss in the tooth for the other stuff. Couple of hours later the procedure was done, and so we all gathered round the bear and pushed and pulled (1000 lbs of dead weight x.x it took many of us) until we got it on it's side so they could make an imprint of it's foot in some plaster. The bad part was that the big fellow peed when we were moving him so it was a mess. Afterwards we loaded up the trucks and went over the checklist, gave him a rabies shot and then got him ready to be put back on the trailer. Much more pushing and pulling, but he got on there. Some of the interns got on the trailer with the bear and everyone else piled in the truck so they could take him back to the bear huts and wake him up and such. I didn't go, cause it was 1 by then and I needed food and to get back.

But yes, much fun. I will post pictures once I have my phone service back and can get them off my phone. Big 'ole bear. And saitenyo, I tried to get you a pic of one of our carnivore rangers, Jay, who was doing all this in his kilt X) He's indian but he's got scottish heritage.

Josh is funny. He went to get gauze, and had this big container of it and was all walking around going "jug-o-gauze!" And whenever they'd do x-rays, we all had to clear the room and jump outside and Josh would yell "Fire in the hole!" as we got out X)