busy busy

kiwi care of wellington zoo trust

my week has been ridiculously busy ever since i got some captive institutions agree to lend me their kiwis! it's been a bit of a blur, but on tuesday i got my first kiwi dropped off by the vet from wellington zoo - puia. i am borrowing lots of equipment from my friend wayne's school so i gathered all of that up and after about 4 hours of setup my first kiwi was on the treadmill! he went pretty well and was due to go home the next day. but then heaps of storms moved in on wednesday so i decided to keep puia for one more day. which meant we got to run another set of trials on the treadmill and another run with the fluoroscope. thursday wasn't much better than wednesday - still lots of rain and the roads down to wellington were a mess with all the uprooted trees and slips. but, despite bad weather and bad drivers, puia made it safely home yesterday. bright and early this morning, i had my second kiwi. this one was from mt. bruce, but about as successful as the trial chicken that didn't know how to walk. we were a bit discouraged with a dud kiwi so early in the morning, but luckily we had a third bird arriving from wanganui. she was a big, hardy kiwi with a limb deformity, but she certainly walked well. couldn't quite get her running, though. then it was off to mt. bruce to drop the kiwi back. and it was raining - surprise, surprise!

and while i gained a new piece of hardware (500GB external hard drive - wahoo!), i also lost (a.k.a. dropped) another important piece of technology - my cell phone :(