two weeks of non-official school reopening has finally passed, and we've been bombed with loads of lectures daily, although with lengthy breaks in between. lectures have proven to be rather useful so far i guess, at least they've motivated me to start revision and to catch up with work which i've long forgotten, no matter how useless they might turn up to be. i'm still hoping this will keep up, so i'll be able to perservere till the end of two years with good results (:

today's a day off from school as well, probably cause of posting results. however, all the bio olympiad people had to go visit the zoo early in the morning when everyone, animals included, were all sleepy D: i lazed in bed for fifteen minutes, causing everyone to wait for me :X

we reached the zoo at 0810, which was even earlier than the zoo's opening hours. it didn't help that when our half of the group was heading around to the proboscis monkey, all of them were still asleep somewhere and out of sight. fortunately, some animals were already awoken, thus it wasn't that monotonous.

oh and we were privileged enough to visit the usually out-of-bound areas of the zoo, namely the animal kitchen and the animal hospital/research centre. was quite cool i guess, possibly the most interesting portion of the visit itself. i'll describe the place here, since photography was banned within the premises ><

the hospital's only used for smaller animals, although animals as large as a leopard have been brought in before. the animals are sedated with isoflurane, before treated their wounds in the surgical theatre. the door is supposed to be shut at all times to keep whatever germs inside within, and to prevent other bacteria to be brought in. the irony was that the door was opened for us to peek within, which is totally the same thing as walking in :X (OMG thank God for blogger's autosave, else this would have totally disappeared when i accidentally went back) oh, and there's an xray room as well, where the images can be stored in an internal database in the computer as well for easy reference. in other words, it's just like our hospitals (:

there was also a post-mortem room, where the vets investigate the cause of death. two animals died today, while another three died during the CNY period! apparently they have this whiteboard where they update the gender, species and id (if any) of the animal, and the cause of the death. there was this poor bird which crash landed head first and died, possibly cause its neck broke D: the fridge where they store the carcasses was also opened for us just to take a peek, and the smell was rather pungent, and could be smelt even from outside the PM room. apparently the internal organs under suspicion will have a small fraction sliced off, before being imbued with wax and further thinning it to be able to be scrutinized under the microscope.

animal wards (segregated cages) were also present. there was this cute cotton top tamarin inside one, and it was running around D: apparently it was reared illegally by an owner, and so it thought itself to be a human. when the owner found it too difficult to rear and donated it to the zoo, it couldn't blend in with its peers, thus it had to be isolated D: poor thing. some cages also have movable walls, for larger and more dangerous animals like lions. this wall allows the vet to investigate and apply medication to the animals, without the risk of being attacked.

last but not least, there was also a viewing gallery which provided a birds-eye view of the hospital, as well as some information on the type of darts for tranquilizers for different animals, as well as vaccination and other random rubbish (: after i reached back to school, i totally had no appetite so i nibbled some lunch and ko-ed on the way home :/

Labels: jc

ENCHANTED
hidden beneath, in those eyes of mine.

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nel
hwa chong institution
16 years old
nov 06 1992
christian