Volunteerism

Today I took Riley to his first volunteer activity. I think I could have picked a better event. We went to the zoo to help with Enrichment Day. Enrichment Day is where they show the general public the basic care they give the animals. That part was interesting. We saw how monkeys picked food out of a wading pool filled with shredded paper. They were so cute. They would reach into the pool, grab a handful of paper and hopefully a treat, then climb up the fence to a branch, where they would roll the paper and the treat between their hands until all the paper falls to the floor. Sometimes they would roll all of the paper out and be left with nothing. They looked so disappointed. We also learned that these same monkeys are given lemon wedges. They love the lemon wedges and not to eat. They rub the wedges all over their bodies to clean themselves. How amusing is that? The woman who is in charge of these monkeys found this out by mistake. One day she thought she would try sticking lemons into their food. She thought they would be good for them. When she came back around the cage smelled of lemons and she saw they were using them to bathe. Monkeys are weird and super cute.

We also saw the komodo dragon eat. Boy, that's something that gets your gag reflex going. The zoo keepers intermittenly place dead mice around the habitat, the lizard, or dragon if you will, then goes around and gulps the dead mice down. One bite, one gulp. Ewwww!!!

Okay, I'm completely off my subject now. I take Riley to volunteer with this event. Our activity is to set up little wading pools, fill them with shredded and paper, and hide candy in them so the kids can come around and forage for treats. You know, like the monkeys do. I think there was suppose to be some kind of organization to this event, however there was not. There were about 7 or 8 pools set up and two adult volunteers to supervise the candy finding. It was just a mess and it was slow because it's somewhat dreary outside. So it basically consisted of the adult volunteers standing around not doing much and the kid volunteers running around to the other booths and activities and looking at the animals. Not too much fun for an 8 year old. Not to much fun for a 28 year old.

Next time I finding something with more substance. No more sissy activities. I may be a princess, but I do not want to stand around a zoo doing nothing. I want to see the results and actually feel like I'm making a difference. That's what's going to teach Riley. He won't learn anything by what he did yesterday. It was fun, but I won't be doing that again. Next year, I'm going to pay the couple of dollars and take all the kids to Enrichment Day because it was actually very interesting. Much, much more interesting than standing around in front of the monkeys, chit chatting.