Original subtitles

I wouldn't say I'm the lorikeet whisperer, but I am the person with

their best friend right now.

I'll take it. Too much?

I'm not ready.

Good girl.

Wendy, jealous girl.

In Bali!

We're pretty, girl!

Okay, Kira.

Opening.

Let's go.

We're just going to get the elephants separated out for trunk washes, and then

Melissa will be here in just a minute or two, and we'll go ahead and get

started.

Here at Zoo Tampa, we have six African elephants. We have one male, three adult

females, and two younger females.

Everybody has different personalities and different things they enjoy.

Oh my gosh, I missed this bite.

Hi, Owl Bell. Every year we run trunk washes on all six of our elephants.

And this is just to make sure that they're healthy. It's a voluntary

So everybody gets a syringe loaded with saline.

Basically, we're just collecting snot.

Let's do it, team.

Good morning.

Hi, good morning.

We're going to start with Ellie.

Okay, perfect.

Ready? Okay.

We squirt the saline down their trunk.

It will hopefully collect all the sloughing cells inside the trunk. It's

basically like blowing your nose. It's also not painful. I mean, they're just

having to stand there and let us collect their boogers, basically.

Oh, wowzers.

There you go.

Yay!

That is one good sample.

Good job!

Yummy! It looks so good. It's got nice little sputum in there. Good job,

sweetheart.

Perfect. Thank you so much. Beautiful sample, Ellie. Thank you.

Although it looks like we're just blowing their noses and collecting it in

bag, we're actually doing a diagnostic test to screen for any sign of a

bacterial disease called mycobacterium. Although it's uncommon in the elephants

that we work with, we always want to make sure we're looking for that and

screening for it. I'd like to say it's water, but it's not.

Oh, my gosh.

Moppy is just so petite and cute.

That is a dirty nose.

Good job!

Oh, that's disgusting.

Oh, yeah.

They're going to love that one at the lab.

If you're around a lot of dirt all day and you don't blow your nose, you're

going to have a dirty nose.

He's huge.

And he's the last one.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, you're good. Oh, my God.

I don't know what that was.

You got all six?

That's all six. All six.

Yeah, everyone did great. Six out of six. Breakfast time is what they've been

waiting for.

Not my bag, but hey.

Thank you.

Breakfast and scratches.

Where's Mr. Mickey?

Hi!

What are you doing?

Looks like we have a participant.

So we have three Florida Panthers.

All of them were rescued animals for various reasons.

Mickey, come!

We have Micanopy. We call him Mickey for short.

He got into a little bit of mischief as a wild Florida panther and was making

his way into neighborhoods and coming a little bit too close for comfort for

people. They decided to rehome him here.

Go.

Oh, boy.

We're doing a few different things with the Florida panthers. We like to keep

them active and engaged in training sessions.

Oh, boy.

They've quickly become one of my favorite species to work with, and I

really lucky that I get to because there aren't that many left. They've

estimated anywhere from 120 to 230 individuals left in South Florida, and

it. So those numbers are really shocking, and without our help, they're

going to go up.

Lucy, come.

Can you come down? Are we so excited?

Oh, my goodness.

Lucy came to us as an orphaned cub.

She was hand -reared. So she's been here almost her entire life, and she's now

13 years old and fantastic.

Walter, come.

Next, we're going to be training Walter.

Hi. I'm coming over.

Walter came to us after he was caught in a snare trap that caused so much damage

to his paw, he had to have part of it amputated.

Good boy!

Without having part of his paw, he would not be able to hunt and survive on his

own in the wild. So he was deemed non -releasable and is here with us still.

Walter is really quickly becoming one of my top five favorite animals that I've

ever worked with in my career.

Good job, buddy.

He's extremely smart and very quick learner.

He's a really, really great animal.

How can you not love him?

Oh.

I thought he saw it. Yeah.

Get it.

Get your melon.

Oh, well, that is a cute face. That is a cute face.

I think the panthers live a pretty good life here.

Show us your soccer skills.

We're able to share their stories with the public and the guests who come to

visit us so that they can understand the plight of the panther and help really

support us in their conservation.

Exhausted.

Good job.

Hello. Hey, I'm coming up.

Hi, cuties.

Want some broth?

Want some of this?

Our new female, the side giraffe, has been here for a little bit. Seems like

she's getting really comfortable with this space.

She's definitely the cutest little giraffe I've ever seen.

She has already met our male, Sakani.

It went really well. They seem super comfortable with each other. And it

like, yeah, the sparks were flying.

Our hope is that they will eventually breed when she gets older.

I love getting to hang out with her more than anything. I wish I could do it all

day long.

How's it going, Blaine?

Pretty good.

How's our little girl doing?

She's doing well.

Are we going to be able to go take a look at her? Yeah, absolutely. If you

want to go ahead and walk up on the catwalk. Okay.

So my goal today is to do what I call a visual assessment.

Not super hands -on, get eyes on her, just look her over, her body condition.

Hi. Hi.

She's a good girl.

She's adorable, isn't she?

She is.

Good girl.

Good girl.

Hi. Can I touch on your tongue?

She's pretty comfortable.

Blaine, she's doing great with you.

So far, my impression is that she's settling in.

I'm really encouraged that the animal care staff is able to hand feed her.

She's a tiny girl.

She is incredibly tiny.

She still has fuzzy ossicones, which is adorable.

She's got that sort of cute kind of calf -like face still.

She's beautiful.

She's going to be a phenomenal addition to the family.

Chris, would you be okay if I came up on the ladder and just tried to offer a

few strikes to the face?

You want to get up on the ladder? I would love to.

Okay. Perfect.

I'll take a look.

He's right up there.

He's waiting for you.

He's like, get that wheel over here, girl.

Hey, Munchkin.

Hi.

Hi. What are you thinking about?

I'm up on the ladder. I'm handing out the browse as best as I can, and I get

rejected.

It hurts my pride a little bit.

I'm a veterinarian. I want animals to like me. I want them to come up to me.

Mind if I give a little shot?

Yeah, go for it. Did you want to try with brows or with something else? Give

a little something.

A little something else.

If she comes up to Chris, it's because he's got grain.

A little grain?

A little grain? Oh, my gosh. She's like, oh, I don't mind if I do. That's a good

girl. It's the grain.

It is.

You can give it a whirl with the grain, too.

So Chris got grain and had more success.

So, I mean, I'm not saying it's the green, but it's the green.

I won't tell Blaine that I'm your favorite. We'll keep that just between

I, all right?

There's never been a female giraffe here at Zoo Tampa.

She's really the animal that we're going to be building the future of our

giraffe program here at Zoo Tampa around.

She's incredibly important.

When she really gets settled in here, she's going to be fantastic. I

agree. Next step, we'll be moving her out into our habitat or our public area

that everybody can see how cute she is.

Treat her like gold. Spoiler.

She's our new superstar.

I don't think that'll be a problem.

I don't think it'll be a problem for you guys either.

Florida is known for its wildlife. We have all different kinds of critters

like to live here.

Everything from small birds and snakes all the way to big alligators and

manatees. I don't think a lot of people realize how many animals get into

trouble, even in the state of Florida, and how it's nice to be able to make a

direct impact on their lives.

We found out in the last week there's been a manatee in Crystal River with

really severe cold stress. It's on its way, so it should arrive here very soon.

Yeah!

We've been really busy. We've actually gotten three manatees in in the last

week. They can't survive in cold water below 68 degrees, and they actually

to get lesions all over their bodies.

One, two, three.

But we definitely know how to handle cold stress.

She's in the right place for her care right now.

All right, good?

Oh, my gosh.

All right, let's get their stretcher so they can go if they need to.

She looks like she was probably out in the cold water for quite a while.

Her lesions and abscesses look very severe.

This is a wreck.

This is the worst cold stress case I personally have seen. She's got cold

-type lesions all over her body. She's just completely ulcerated.

I'm really happy she's here with us now and that we can give her the care that

she needs.

Just all this fluffed tissue.

Yeah, these are rough.

Her pectoral flippers are completely stiff and rigid.

I don't really have my normal landmarks and areas to go for a blood draw.

You look so rough.

Everything's just solid. I can't really palpate for it. All right, let me get a

syringe.

I would say anywhere from 40 % to 50 % of her body seems affected with these

cold stress lesions.

So one of the concerns that I have is that if these get severely infected, she

could go septic.

Oh, buddy.

Oh, buddy.

This manatee is probably one of the worst cold stress.

cases I've ever seen. She's got severe wounds. You guys have any betadine? We

can go ahead and pour some betadine on some of these open wounds.

All right.

I think we can give her some warm fluid to start.

She's going to be here for a while.

One of the things we're also going to do is two -person fluids. I want to keep

her nice and hydrated, but also the gastrointestinal tract on manatees is

really, really important, and I want to help it start to flow and start to move

because in cold stress, their gut gets severely impacted and starts to shut

down. All right, let's put her in the water and let her warm up.

How warm is the water right now?

87 .5.

We're going to lower her into a really nice, warm pool. This pool is in the mid

to upper 80s. That's going to be a huge relief for her.

The warm water is going to be super beneficial for her to slowly warm up her

core body temperature.

We're good for today, and we'll start tomorrow morning, 500 mils in the

resorb. Okay.

We'll start that with her twice a day.

Prognosis for this animal is very guarded right now.

What we need to do is give her time. We're going to keep pushing forward on

wound care, giving her antibiotics.

Manatees are really tough animals. They are amazing at healing, so hopefully

this is a successful plan for her.

All right, you guys, I'll check in with you all later. Okay, thank you.

Welcome to Expedition Africa, everyone.

So let's turn the corner into elephant territory and check them out.

Over here, this is Ellie.

She's our oldest female elephant.

Today we'll be doing a trial with Ellie and Mpumi, two of our African elephants,

for our cooperation study.

Christy to Mike.

Go ahead.

We're going to move elephants in. Let's go, Ellie.

Go ahead.

Our elephant cooperation study has been something we've been working on for over

five years now.

It originally started with Ken to elephants cooperate on a novel task.

We set up the sled in the front with a rope that kind of feeds through on both

sides. So they both have to pull on the rope at the same time together to bring

that sled within reach so that they both can get a reward.

Good job!

We proved that they can cooperate, but now we're making it a little bit more

intense. We're stepping it up a notch.

Ellie, are you going to succeed today?

Yeah, you're going to get 100 %?

I believe that.

We've gotten to what we call our delayed trial.

You guys good if we set the rope? Good.

Our next step here is we're introducing that five -second delay for the

elephant. Originally, we would just let the elephant go at the same time. So

now, by being delayed, we're going to have to wait there five whole seconds

before the other elephant is ready to join them.

Now this is a true test because they really have to understand that they have

wait for the other elephant to be successful.

We're going to see how well they can do it.

One, two, three, go!

Hold on.

Not a great start.

So that first one, they were unsuccessful.

A failure just means we need to try again. They are elephants, and this is a

complex behavior.

You ready?

Elephants are incredible problem solvers, so they're learning right now.

actively thinking about what they need to do, what adjustments they need to

in order to get it right this time.

One, two, three, go!

That was good. That was awesome.

Good job.

That was like an adrenaline rush, and I'm not even doing it.

That was so good.

They figured it out. Definitely tells us that they are understanding that the

delay is not really throwing them through that much of a loop.

We'll see how they do next time.

These elephants have continued to surprise us, and we just can't wait to

where it heads to next.

Good girl, Ellie.

We have the ophthalmoscope out.

We're right there.

It's over here on the intubation table.

How much ketamine are you thinking?

Sort of depends in my head how awake he is. We have a sub -adult male

panther coming in. He was found on the side of the road. Looks like it was

probably hit by a car, but we won't really know until we examine him.

Here's a bunch of catheter tape for a big paw.

We're hoping he's not a euthanasia, but if he did get... Hit by a car in the

face, it could be really bad.

So we'll see how he looks when we get here, and we'll hope that something we

do to help him.

I'll never forget when Walter came in.

Walter's my favorite cat that I've ever worked with. The panthers are really

struggling in the wild. They have a lot going against them in the wild.

They're critically endangered.

All we can do is try to help, and that's what we do.

I have a gentleman bringing in an injured panther.

This is hospital. You can send him back. All right.

Panther is here.

Yep. Let's get him in.

Can you hear his breathing?

Yep. I'm watching him breathe.

My God.

Yep. Get him in.

He's making a lot of noise, and I can't tell if that's just him breathing or if

it's him trying to hiss.

It's moving.

We can pull him out, and if you see his head move, we can just hold him there

while I get him a dose of ketamine.

Okay. Just in case.

We have a sub -adult male panther. He was found on the side of the road.

Looks like he was probably hit by a car, but we won't really know until we

examine him.

Okay, I'm letting go of his head, but he's not moving at all. Yeah, there's no

response. I'll get the... Oxygen going.

There we go. Perfect.

Beautiful. All right.

Let's do a quick exam.

If we can turn on the light, Stacey.

That's not good.

Something crunchy right here, Melissa.

First thought when I saw him, I was really worried because where those

are, there's a lot of important things like your brain in that area.

A lot of swelling on this left side. That's the only, this area right here is

the only crepitus that I feel so far, just gently.

You want to go ahead and intubate?

There's a lot of blood in the back of his mouth.

He's so beautiful.

He's gorgeous. Like his body condition.

I know, he's gorgeous. He's just gorgeous.

What happened?

When I first looked at his wounds, I went, this doesn't look like a hit -by

-car.

So many puncture wounds.

He's got a bite wound back here, too. This one's deep into the muscle here.

got a puncture. Yeah, there are a lot of punctures.

Maybe he got in a fight.

I just thought, wow, this is a fight. That was a heck of a fight.

But you always have to wonder, did he get in a fight and then get hit by a

And maybe it's, you know, we're just not seeing anything external.

So really concerned about the severity of these wounds. The next step is to get

some x -rays to see what the skull is looking like.

Oh, yeah, this is good. This looks like probably multiple fragments, and that

looks like it could just be.

Yeah, push down.

I've never seen a smashed sinus that bad.

I'd love an orthopedist to look at this.

Pumpkin, your head. My God.

On her x -rays, it's collapsed the bones of his sinus.

And it looked like there was a tooth that went into his skull, but we don't

that the skull around his brain is affected, which is good. He can heal

sinus fractures much better, obviously, than if his skull was fractured.

That's another male bit him right there. Yeah, he'll crush the skull. Wow.

Did you hear that, Melissa, that another male will kill him by crushing their

skull? Really? For the bite. Is he about the age that he would be trying to,

like, explore territory and figure out where he wants to go?

Yep, this first male.

Yeah.

Because he is a young male, the most likely scenario is that he was

away from his mother and that he did encounter another male panther and it

result of a territory dispute.

There isn't a lot of territory space for these male panthers to go to so that

they can have a thriving population in the midst of all of our human

settlements. Oh, buddy.

Oh, your poor face.

So bad.

You just got food to feathering.

So the next step is to clip and clean all those puncture wounds so that he has

chance at healing from those.

I'm going to clean him up. I love this part. It's immediate gratification when

you can, like I can't fix his sinuses right now, but we can get in there and

clean these wounds.

Bite went here, pulled apart, and that's the end of his toe bone right there.

Oh, yeah.

There's a lot going on with this panther. He is in really rough shape.

Although maybe the other guy looks worse. I don't know. Yeah, we don't

don't know.

He could be.

I hope not.

I hope not, too. He's not getting care.

Okay, I think that's it.

We have clipped and cleaned all of his wounds.

We've given him antibiotics, pain relief, fluids, taken a bunch of blood

samples. So we've done everything we can for the panther tonight. So we'll be

moving him to a recovery stall and monitoring his recovery.

We're going to shift him forward onto the stretcher.

One, two, three.

Nice.

Oh, he's going to be heavy.

All right, good.

We got this.

I know. I'm just trying not to give any of you guys a flat tire.

We all got it.

I just want his head towards the door so I can stand there to excavate him.

I'm going to need you to not just be right there because I'm going to have to

get out really fast, potentially.

He's waking up. I mean, he's not moving his head yet, but he's swallowing. Okay.

Legs are starting to move a little bit.

His eyes are coming up.

We have a very guarded prognosis on him.

He did well during the anesthesia. We think his brain is okay, but we won't

really know until he wakes up.

Such a baby face.

I know. With a little black around his little whiskers. I know.

He's moving his head.

Let's all go out.

I just don't want to stimulate him once he's aware at all, if we can't help it.

We were able to put a camera, so we're going to be watching him very closely

while he recovers from anesthesia.

He's probably going to sleep it off all night, and that's fine.

He had a long anesthesia. He's breathing great. He's very stable. He's moving

around a little.

All right, let's head on in.

Let's do it.

You want some bananas?

They're yummy.

My favorite thing about the Nyala is whenever you walk into this yard, you

of just feel like Snow White.

Hi, Azu.

Are you hanging out with me today?

We spend a whole lot of time building relationships with our animals and

them know that good things happen when you're around will kind of allow them to

associate you with positive things.

Come here, bud.

Good boy.

Hi.

Trust in something that takes time to build. We definitely have to earn it

all of our animals.

It's definitely one of the most rewarding things about the job because

their progress and my hard work pay off.

What if it's a good hippo? You know that?

Good hippo. Yeah.

I'm so excited for her. Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. I know. I feel like

just got here.

Now it's so exciting.

Big girl.

So we've had the new giraffe for a few weeks now. She's cleared her quarantine.

And today we're going to be shipping her out to the habitat for the first time

so she can go out and explore and see what the rest of the zoo has to offer

Today is a very big day.

We've been working for it for a really long time now.

Giraffes are definitely a little skittish. They are prey animals, which

that they're constantly on the lookout.

They're always checking in for potential danger. So entering into this new

habitat with a lot of unknown objects could be really scary for her. So she'll

definitely need to be brave.

I'm going to hop up there then. All right, I'm going to go to the door.

Hi, pretty girl.

It's a big day today.

What are you doing?

The yard is a much bigger space.

There's Marabou Yard out there. There'll be zebra, giraffe landing. She's going

to interact with guests, so it'll be a totally different experience from here

moving forward.

Yeah, we're going to open the door.

She's coming your way.

I'm going to pop over to the chute.

It's okay, buddy.

You're okay, Sukarni. Just a heads up, a new giraffe has access.

There you go. Hi, girly. Let's try and walk her down. We'll walk down with her

anyways.

How cute, though. Oh, my God.

Good girl.

She's making great strides towards the habitat. She looks really comfortable,

but then she abruptly stops right at the threshold.

She hasn't been through these gates at all yet and just want to do it on her

time and allow her to be as comfortable as possible entering this new space.

There's like so many people out there.

She's playing the floor is lava.

She's definitely conflicted because she wants to see the new space. She wants to

be out there, but she's definitely hesitant to take that step.

She's thinking about it. Yes, you can see the wheels turning.

That's the confidence, Romaine.

Oh, there she goes. There she goes.

Oh, there she goes. There she goes.

All right, cool.

Good job.

She kind of all at once just ran. That was the hardest part. Now that she's

that, all she has to do is just go straight into habitat.

Oh?

Oh, my gosh.

You can do it.

That's another threshold.

And she's on up.

Good job, guys. Oh, my goodness.

I'm so proud of her.

It took her a second, definitely, to cross through the threshold.

I think she is ready to explore.

She's so brave.

Look at her. The guests are going to lose their minds. I know.

You are doing.

So good.

I know.

Wait till we put a zebra out here with her too.

She's like a new roommate.

She's just having so much fun.

She's doing great. She's doing much better than I even expected.

There's so many new things out there that she hasn't ever seen before.

And she's never been in that space before. So the fact that she is calm and

kind of taking her time exploring everything is exactly what we want to

conquered the habitat in the big leagues now.

I mostly need you this way, though.

Our latest rescue manatee that is a cold stress case now has a name.

We decided to name her Citrine because that is a type of orange crystal.

She's a little bit rough around the edges right now, kind of how crystals

out within a rock. You can go up.

I know, boo -boo. It's okay.

Good little manatees. We did it.

You're okay.

Citrine looks...

A little scary when you first look at her. She has a lot of wounds all over

body. These are all wounds as a result of cold stress.

And so she just has a lot of these patches of skin all over her face, her

her pectoral flippers.

I know. I'm almost done with your face, and then we'll leave your face alone.

She's definitely one of the worst cold stress cases that we've seen.

The extent of her wound, how sick she is. But we have a lot of experience

treating cold stress. It's one of the things that we see pretty commonly.

Even with how severe Citrine looks, we are hopeful that she has a really good

shot at recovering.

All of those wounds are starting to just fluff, and that dead skin is peeling

away. And underneath is the good, healthy skin that will eventually heal.

So that's what we're trying to do is just help her get to good, healthy

All right, let's do her hydrotherapy.

There's a good breath. Okay, good.

Most of her wounds are coming along really nicely.

The amount of tissue that it's fluffed is really deep, so you just have to

her bone exposure on that and keep doing the hydrotherapy for her.

Ow.

Let me know when you're ready to go down. You can go down. Okay.

We can get the thermometer and see what this one is. This morning it was 89.

This is probably like a spa for her.

Usually when they come in with cold stress and once they're in this pool.

You can almost see them relax a little bit just because they do feel a lot more

comfortable.

Next step for her is just getting those cold stress lesions healed up nicely.

We're hopeful with her prognosis.

She is very lucky that she could make it to our hospital.

She was in need of some help and we are happy to give it to her.

I did it.

Good job.

Good job.

I have this memory in my mind I will never forget. It was my first day at

and I knew that they had these two Florida panther cubs.

And Dr. Lauren was showing me around, and she said, so do you want to see the

cubs now?

They were rescued from the wild last year when they were two weeks of age,

we started with them at two months here at Zoo Tampa.

The Florida Panthers have definitely defined a big role in my Zoo Tampa

experience. Cypress, Pepper, where's my boys?

Hello!

Hi!

We're able to train Cypress and Pepper and able to place them at a wonderful

conservation center just a few hours from here.

Being able to help an animal that's struggling in the wild, it's an

feeling. It's that conservation aspect of what we do that...

I feel very, very lucky to be a part of.

Let's all go out. I just don't want to stimulate him once he's aware at all, if

we can help it.

When we left our panther in recovery last night, his recovery looked

initially, but then he stopped moving on with his recovery and he wasn't getting

up and he wasn't moving. He was still breathing really well, but he wasn't

progressing.

And so I came in in the late evening to just come see how he was doing.

Oh, buddy.

When we left our panther in recovery last night, initially it looked

The minute I turned the lights on, I knew just from looking at him that he

gone.

It was heartbreaking to find him.

It was really sad.

It was a really tough case. You give him everything you've got to try to get him

over to the other side, but he was just too in too bad of shape and too severely

impacted. It wasn't something he was going to be able to recover from,

unfortunately.

You know, I have to say, I kept thinking about Cypress and Pepper while I was

looking at this guy.

He just really reminded me of them because they're about the same age.

They would have tried to go find their territories and encountered all these

obstacles just like this cat did. So they are animals that are in human care

because we have a problem in the wild.

Our goal is to have them have an amazing life.

So I love being involved with the Florida Panthers.

The negative part, obviously, is when we don't win the battle, like this case.

You never get used to it, but you have to dust yourself off and pick yourself

and keep going and help the next animal.

This big moat houses our American alligators.

We have two male and one female. We've got one that's over in the duckweed over

there, and there's a nice big male sitting up on land right here.

Crikey, he's a huge one.

Oh, he's on the run.

We see a lot of wading birds that have established some nests. We've got a nest

right up here.

These birds poop everywhere, and they're constantly dropping stuff into the

water. We have to clean this moat every month to get all this muck and poop all

out.

This is our big gate valve that'll open the drain in the bottom of the gator

moat. And once we get this open, so hopefully we'll see all that water start

flush down there. There you go.

You can already see the water line going down.

Hey, we're going to start cleaning our gator moat.

We got one there and two over here.

If the alligators don't leave the habitat for this, they'll be out there

we clean.

Jason, there's one right below here, just so you know. Right underneath?

Right underneath.

Okay.

Come on, buddy.

The sound they're making is a hiss asking me to leave them alone.

We go right in with our alligators. You just don't get too close to them.

Sometimes they get a little grumpy. Keep moving.

When we drop that molt, it takes them out of their element.

And they're just not real happy about it.

Ready, Jason?

Yeah, I'm good.

Kick it on.

So we're seeing a lot of bird poop right now.

On top of that, we're also getting tons of the duckweed plant. So we've got to

get all that out of here as well.

It's kind of like power washing, you know, where it's like real satisfying

watching everything get clean.

And while I work the big fire hose.

We need to make sure that no alligators creep up on us.

Gator moving behind you.

I have a healthy respect for alligators.

Alligators are ambush predators.

They have a great crushing jaw that they can use to crunch down on things like

turtle shells.

Watching the tail.

Excuse me.

Need to make sure that we stay out of their bite zone and their tail slapping

radius, kind of known as the death circle.

She's cocked and ready.

Just keep going.

Come on.

I won't let you get bit.

Hey, there's our snapping turtle.

What's up, Scooter?

Scooter is our alligator snapping turtle who lives in the moat with all these

alligators. We only have the opportunity to feed this animal when the moat is

dropped.

Clean her off a little bit with a light spray and I'll move her out of the way.

Sure.

Today we just want to get eyes on Scooter and make sure everything's okay

her and make sure she has a good body weight.

All right.

Lift with your legs, right?

Lift with your legs.

72. 72.

She needs to lose some weight.

Definitely.

She's about 30 years old. Don't really have a hatch date on her.

We only get to see her when we drop the moat once a month.

We can tell she's a healthy animal, maybe too healthy in spots.

She needs to maybe cut back on the twinkies a little bit.

But other than that, looks real good. Nails look good.

And she's pretty feisty. So she doesn't look feisty right now, but put your hand

in her mouth. Thank you. There you go.

Go hang out with your friends.

I'll give you $10 to stick your finger in there.

All right, done.

Not bad for a morning's work.

No, that was pretty good.

I think the pool is officially cleaner than I am. Probably.

Time to close up the drain and let the pool fill.

It's starting to fill. Yeah.

Smell the well water.

And as soon as I'm done, the birds are already pooping on it.

But for us, that's just job security.

Good morning.

How's she doing?

Good. Really good.

Citrine's been here for a couple months now. She's actually doing really well.

Her cold stress was really severe when she came in, so it's really incredible

how much she's progressed just in this short amount of time.

She's eating really well. When they're feeling good, they're going to eat

as much as they can, so we're really pleased.

And we're still doing wound care on her every couple days just to help keep her

wounds nice and clean.

So just wound care for her today, and then she'll be good to go. Okay, sounds

good.

Ready. Do it.

It's so beautiful.

Do it.

Satrine has been doing great.

I can knock it over how beautiful she looks. I know. She's like a little

Woman. I know.

Well, she even got, like, little Wonder Woman headbands started.

It's like, leave that alone.

Okay. She's a little more resistant to us, so she's doing a little more rolling

and tail clapping, but that all means that she's feeling better, so it's a

thing. She's feeling stronger, too. I know.

Well,

that's what happens when we call her Wonder Woman, right? Uh -huh.

She's like, I've got to act the part.

Remember when she came in, like, her entire face was just one massive wound.

Yeah. It felt so bad for you.

When she came in,

She had so many abscesses all over her that I even felt bad touching her for

wound care.

And now pretty much every single wound that she has is either completely healed

up or almost there.

When she came in, basically this entire outside was just one giant abscess, so

much that we even struggled to get blood.

She still has a lot of movement in those pecs, even with that scarring, which

tells us that it's actually healing appropriately. Even her tail.

Looks really good. I know, right?

It's incredible how resilient the manatees are.

I know.

Sorry. You're okay. You're okay.

I like how her personality is coming out too lately. Yeah. She's so sassy. She

is. Bunky girl, that's for sure. Feeling better.

I think we're done.

All done? All done.

Good girl.

Okay, going down.

All right.

Katrina's doing amazing.

Soon she won't need any wound care and we'll just let her finish that healing

process. There will be nothing for us to really clean out. And then she can go

into the front pool and be ready for release.

It's great to see them start to recover. You know, that's what we're here for.

We just want to help save them all. So to see them pull through and start to

recover really means we're doing our job.

So we're on our way to White Oak. We get to see cypress and pepper. It's the

first time we've seen them since they left to Tampa.

It's been a year. Yeah, I can't believe it.

I'm excited to see how big they are. I know, I cannot wait to see them.

White Oak Conservation Center, it's just an incredible conservation facility

with acres of natural habitat of wild land.

We're here!

Yay!

Let's go see what those boys are up to.

Hey guys!

Hi. Oh, we're so excited to be here.

So if you guys want to come this way, we can check them out. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my gosh.

They're huge.

So they're so grown up.

When you guys dropped them off, they were like 58, 60 pounds. Yeah. Now

120 pounds.

Wow. So they've like doubled in weight and obviously you can see a lot of

muscling. I was going to say their physical condition is incredible.

My first reaction to seeing the boys was, wow, look how big they are. They

like wild panthers. They are so muscular and agile.

Just really blew me away.

They look good.

Let me try. They look incredible.

They definitely utilize this habitat like all aspects. Okay, can you tell

too? Here's a challenge. How well do you know your cat?

Baby.

That's got to be Cypress.

Is it? Oh, we're the worst. We don't even know our own kids.

The last memory we have of them, they were small little cats.

So it's hard to believe that they're the same cat that we brought here. Are they

getting along fine still? Oh, yeah. It seems like there's no competition about

food. They sleep in bed together every night.

And it's awesome to see, even when you're a part of their lives from the

beginning, that they still have all of their natural behaviors.

Oh, yeah. We had to be involved in their lives because they didn't have mom, but

they're completely normal cats.

It's so rewarding to see them.

See how great they turned out.

I kept thinking about him. We had a young male come in who didn't survive an

attack from another male. And I just kept looking at him and thinking how

life in the wild is and how lucky these guys are to have each other and not have

to, you know, fight those battles. Oh, yeah.

You guys have no idea how lucky you are.

Cypress and pepper are incredibly important as ambassadors for

When we had them at the zoo, people would constantly be talking about the

of wild Florida panthers while they were looking at cypress and pepper.

And the same thing is still going on here at White Oak, so they're continuing

doing their work to help their species.

All right, I have it now.

Cypress? Yes.

And pepper.

Yeah. You're good.

Baby.