Wallaby cuddling

I have a long weekend, the last of my furlough days and a birthday gift for myself. I LOVE not going to work. I couldn't sleep in really but it's 10:25 and I'm still in my pajamas, so to me that's a good morning. Instead of calling clients, and desperately waiting for lunch hour, I am relaxing, watching Star Trek Nemesis (it's better than talk shows...) and playing video games. I may go shopping later, but then again I may not bother. It's bliss! Anyways, I unfortunately didn't really participate in anything for Remembrance Day because we had an interesting presentation at the Zoo on Wednesday morning about a conference 2 of the Keepers went to. There were a lot of fundraising and enrichment ideas and they wanted to get the Volunteers involved. During the meeting Boris, an African Spurred Tortoise, was walking around, enjoying a change of scenery, and he started getting into a bit of trouble under the Bird-eating Spider enclosure so I got to hold a Wallaby while the Keeper pulled Boris out. Lucky me, I got to keep holding Disney during the rest of the presentation and fed her some leaves, and cuddled her a bit. It was awesome. Apparently she really likes cuddling, and was really comfortable in her blanket. My arms got really sore, but I persevered till the end, not wanting to give up a wonderful opportunity like that. It is moments like that that make me so happy I started volunteering. Most of the time it's cleaning, walking around, occasionally really hard work, and of course the varieties of poop clean up. And, it's all completely worth it for those moments when the animals seem to recognize me and come over to say hello, or I get to touch or hold them. I even touched my first tarantula, not quite as nice as the Wallaby, but I was proud of myself for not completely freaking out and running away. Volunteering there is one of the best activities I've ever been involved with.