Original subtitles

You're amazing.

Pepper, zucchini, and broccoli.

I'll make sure you keep growing.

It's going to be super spoiled.

Casey!

Here he comes.

Casey is our resident sun bear here at Zoo Tampa.

They are the smallest of the true bear family.

They are found in Southeast Asia.

He's 19 years old, he's a little over 200 pounds, and he is the cutest thing

have ever seen.

We're heading to the front of Casey's habitat to throw him some enrichment.

It's nice mixing it up instead of having it in his yard every day when we shift

him out.

We're able to come public side and totally surprise him.

Casey came to us about a year ago.

Oh, Casey, you're adorable.

Oh, that's good.

He likes honey water.

Hey, buddy.

Casey is very relaxed, very chill compared to other bears that I've worked

It's been so much fun learning his personality. He's so interactive, he's

curious, and he just loves being around us. So anytime you get an animal like

that... that smart, it's a blast.

Got it?

Yep.

Hi, Casey.

Casey!

Oh, he saw it. He's taking his time.

So the first enrichment device we talked to him is a fire hose cube, and then

there are smears of peanut butter on it and pieces of romaine lettuce.

He's looking like he's really enjoying his breakfast.

He's getting a little frothy and he's making sure he gets every little bit of

peanut butter.

Casey's tongue is really long. It's unique to sun bears so he can stick it

like a beehive and get all the honey out.

That's my favorite part. That's when he sits and eats like a person.

Sun bears are known for their kind of a sunburst in the middle of their chest.

Each bear's sunburst is a little bit different so that you can tell them

Donut time!

I love the fact that Casey can just figure anything out.

He figures out super quickly how to get any food item out of all the enrichment

devices we have.

And there we go.

And I just pour everything on my stomach and then eat it.

He is like the perfect example of work smarter, not harder.

Well, I think it's safe to say that he enjoyed his treats.

Yeah. Definitely.

We can go back and start enriching all the other animals. That was fun.

Hey, girl!

What are you doing?

Hello, sir.

We have a critical care facility at Zoo Tampa, and we take in sick, injured, and

orphaned manatees from around the state of Florida.

Manatees are just really cool animals.

They all have a different personality, all unique.

When we're in the water, if we're scuba diving, we can hear them squeaking and

talking to each other.

Good morning!

I just think they're the greatest face to look at.

Here comes Verde.

He's grown quite a bit.

We got Verde in about a year ago, and he actually is from Tampa Bay. He was

found in Tierra Verde, and that's why we named him Verde.

He was found alone in cold water, and he was a pretty small animal, and at that

point he really should have been with a mom, and he wasn't.

So it was felt that it was best to come to the critical care center so we could

rehab him and hopefully make him better.

And if you want to go ahead and start raising up the floor.

Birday is doing really well in rehab.

He's not fully cleared yet, but we're hoping that he'll be the next manatee up

for release back into the wild. He looks really good.

Good boy.

Peduncle is 95.

95, Peduncle?

Today we're fitting him with a GPS tracking belt that consists of a belt, a

tether, and a tracking beacon.

This is so we can monitor him and make sure that he's going where he should go

once he's back in the wild.

The belt fits around just below his peduncle by the base of his tail, and

made to break away in case he gets into any trouble.

But we do need to make sure that we find the proper fit for him today.

He's getting his practice belt put on today so he can get used to it before he

actually gets his real one put on at the release site.

Here, should we go with this one?

Yep. Okay.

Go ahead and go down.

He looks great, and I'm really happy and proud of where he's come.

He didn't learn how to migrate to warm water. So we need to help him out.

We'll track him with a satellite tag and see if he leaves the warm water site to

find food.

And then ultimately he should come back to warm water when it gets cold again.

Our Manatee Critical Care Center is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

We've been able to rescue over 500 manatees, with about 60 % returning back

Florida waters.

We will continue to rescue as many that need us and really make a difference so

that we don't lose them.

All right. See you later, Verde. Check in with you.

Why are you so cold outside?

I don't blame you guys for being back there. Hi, Ryan.

Nyala are an antelope species that is found in Africa.

Hi. Can we be nice?

You still have food in your mouth.

Here you go.

A lot of people mistake them for deer.

We have an adult male with a few females, and we also have a few babies

That's a mouthful, sir.

We'll see which way Otis comes.

Otis is our younger male that we currently have. He's just under a year

Otis is definitely one of my favorite Nihala that we do have. He's really cute

and really spunky.

Look at his little horn. I know, he's getting so big.

I can't believe that he's almost a year old.

So there's a few different purposes of their horns.

The males out in the wild will be able to fight one another for females, and

they're also just used to really establish their dominance.

Otis is pretty stinking cute, for sure.

They're also cute, though.

A couple weeks ago, we did notice a very large lump pop up on Otis's side.

Yeah, I saw him the day before, and he looked totally normal to me, and then

of a sudden, overnight, it was there.

We suspect that the lump is some sort of abscess, kind of like a large pimple.

That infection grows, and it kind of just fills up with pus.

Hi, Otis.

How are you feeling?

Hi, handsome man.

Dad here has some pretty sharp horns on him. He could have just kind of come

down on him wrong and accidentally nicked him, or he could have caught

on, like, a branch in the yard.

We immediately started him on some antibiotics.

So we're going to go ahead and give him his last dose.

I might be able to get him right here.

Hi, buddy.

I know you want this too. I'll give you some.

They love banana more than anything in the whole wide world.

So we just slipped the pill in a piece of banana, and he has no idea that he's

being medicated.

There you go. You got it.

Well, at least it doesn't...

Seem too painful then. I mean, his behavior is still pretty normal.

Yeah, he's been licking it a bit, but that's the only thing that we've seen

it. I really don't want to see him in any pain, so hopefully it will kind of

take care of itself, and if not, we'll have to intervene.

Is he cute?

Yeah. Who likes glass the most?

You do?

Oh.

Hey, I just got a message from Lee, and we are actually going to be getting a

manatee in.

Okay, thank you for the help.

So we just got a call that we have a new manatee rescue on the way.

They said it's at the gate.

We're ready for them. Send them back.

It's a boat strike with some pretty severe wounds, and it sounds like the

respirations are pretty high.

Florida to hospital.

We're getting ready.

10 -4. See you soon.

So, unfortunately, almost every manatee in the wild have been hit by a boat.

They're local to Florida, and we have a lot of mortalities due to boat strikes.

When we do bloods, we'll get glucose first. Like, we do, like, off the line

we can get that immediately.

Right now these wounds are severely deep as I pull the towel off my stomach

thing.

This is bone right there. This is one of the most severe boat strike cases I've

ever seen.

Boat strike manatee is so young, I would guess that she's probably only a few

years old.

These are really nasty.

These wounds are huge, and they're incredibly deep.

A prop on a boat just completely sliced her through.

I'm just splashing a little bit of lidocaine on these lesions.

Yeah, look at all that necrosis in there.

Yeah, I don't think it's fresh at all.

I can feel bone right there, too, and bone there.

I don't see long, I don't feel directly, but, I mean, we're like one cell layer

away from it. My expectation is this has got to be penetrating in the chest.

We've seen these kinds of cases before, and the prognosis, unfortunately, is

pretty grave.

But we've seen manatees come through some tremendous diseases and survive.

They are so tough.

She's a really young animal and really didn't deserve this in her life.

She should be out there swimming.

I hope we can help her, and we're going to do everything we can to get there.

Okay, you can go down a little more.

We're actually going to stay and do watches on her throughout the night

to make sure she stays comfortable.

I absolutely love caring for manatees and making them better.

And it's really challenging and really hard when you see a case that you're

like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to fix this.

The Africa penguins, we love them here. They've got a lot of personality.

They're an endangered species.

They will come up to us and, you know, sit by our feet and just kind of hang

occasionally.

So it's really fun to work with them.

Good job.

Good job, girls.

Good job.

Today we're taking our African penguins, Palmyra and Taziri, out to the African

section of the zoo for the very first time.

All right.

Good job, girls.

Good job.

All right, guys, we're going to Africa.

This is a great enrichment exercise for our penguins, and it'll be fun to see

them explore and see new animals.

Nice, guys.

Little sister tuffle.

They're just super cute.

The whole zoo is our oyster, if you will, so we can take them out for any

adventure we want.

What will you see today?

Africa Circle.

I'm going to see some meerkat friends.

And go!

Yay! Whoa, where are you? I'm TT. Come on, Taziri.

Good girl. Oh, my goodness.

Enrichment is really important to give them opportunities to use their brains a

little bit more, different activities, sights and sounds. This is a whole new

experience for them. Out in the zoo, exploring with really no barriers.

What's going on?

Oh, awesome.

When we walk animals around the zoo, the animals in the habitats, they get

enriched, too. They get to see something they probably have never seen.

Two sisters, drone in the zoo.

Come on, Fred.

We're going to visit the tortoise.

What are you doing?

You guys ready to move on already?

Yeah, they're so cute. Come on, guys. This way.

Homira, it's a ziri.

Anything new, we tend to keep fairly short.

We were super happy with the result, and I think it was a successful session.

How is it not cute just to watch penguins waddle around anywhere?

You guys ready to go home?

See your other friends? We got to see Africa!

I can't wait to go on walks all over the zoo. I know, right?

That would be so cool.

That would be so fun.

He's been on antibiotics about a week now, right? Yeah, it doesn't seem to

resolve it. I mean, when you get a big abscess like that, you just got a

It's got to get out of there.

Oh, gosh.

Otis is a young male Nihala. He was born here at the zoo, and we just noticed a

few days ago that there was this lump starting to develop on this side of his

abdomen. We're going to meet with Dr. Lawrence and kind of get a plan together

for how we can get this taken care of for Otis.

Looks like it's ready to rupture.

Oh, yeah.

Looks rock hard.

Medicine hasn't really done all that much.

You know, we all think, I think it's time to move forward and plant it. I

it's an abscess, but of course you really have to get hands on and see what

is. It can't be comfortable to have a big abscess like that underneath your

skin. It gets inflamed, it's probably a little uncomfortable, maybe a little

itchy, so we want to give him some relief.

That's why we've all been fighting about who gets to do this.

We'll let you guys do it.

For vets, you know, some of us fall in a camp where we love rupturing abscesses.

It's super satisfying, and it's something that I actually really like to

It's just going to be so fun and so exciting.

No, you guys weren't with me on this?

The whole pimple popping and abscess popping thing, like, really grosses me

I know that we're doing it for Otis and his health.

I'm just not going to really enjoy the process.

What I'm going to need to do is get access to the area and then lance it and

then just hopefully disruptors. You know, that's my expectation going into

Cool. Well, we'll see you in the morning.

Excited.

Sierra is a silver crested cockatoo that lives here at the zoo.

Come on, Sierra.

Cockatoos have a lot of personality. They're known to be one of the loudest

birds, one of the quirkiest birds.

She was donated to the zoo by U .S. Fish and Wildlife because she was

confiscated. Birds can be taken from the wild and smuggled to other areas to be

sold in the pet trade, so we believe that was what they were trying to do

this group of cockatoos.

When Sierra came in, she had a broken lower mandible, so her lower beak had a

crack in it that doesn't ever connect.

Good girl.

She needs her beak trimmed regularly because if it keeps growing, she isn't

to eat her food correctly.

Good girl.

How we doing?

Good, how are you?

Doing good.

In the past, we used to just manually restrain her and hold her, and she had

seizures whenever that happened.

It's not uncommon for some birds to do that. They get stressed out, she will go

into a seizure. So we just try to keep that stress under control.

We decided that we would train her to put her face into a gas mask.

You want to try then to put that mask on her and see how she does? Yeah, I want

to see if she'll just stick her head in.

And there's a towel over there that once she feels, you know, slow, we can try

to do that. It has been a while since Sierra has done her mask behavior for

anesthesia. So I'm a little nervous. We're crossing our fingers, hoping for

best.

Hi. What do you think?

Hi. What do you think?

You're good.

Good girl.

Good job.

So right now, we are giving her oxygen.

Through that oxygen, we're pushing the anesthetic.

She's taking it amazing.

Good girl.

That's a good girl.

That was super cool.

Yeah. With Sierra and this training that she has, and the fact that she will

accept the mask and breathe something that doesn't smell good either, it's

amazing. You can see in here, you know, where it is, you know, split in half.

Normally this part will meet this one in here, and unfortunately she damaged it.

She has learned to deal really good.

I mean, she eats well, she does well.

That's why Sierra needs a big trim on a regular basis.

It might bleed a little bit.

Or not.

Of course it's better.

I mean, it's just separated in there.

That's crazy.

She looks good otherwise.

I'm hoping now that she wakes up like she normally does, no seizures or

like that, she should wake up okay.

Sierra surprises me on how well she did.

That made my day today.

Like a Muppet. There we go.

Sierra's moving to our aviary section. She was moving from a situation where

was an ambassador animal and would go out in the public. So now that she's

gotten older, she's retiring from that.

Being in the aviary section of the zoo, Sierra's going to get to live with a lot

of new bird species and a lot of new bird friends.

Really exciting move for her.

If only we could anesthetize every bird like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome.

Here at the zoo, we have a really big collection of different animals that are

native to Florida. A lot of them are rehab animals, which has been a really

great opportunity for us to show those animals off.

Go get it!

He's looking.

Here you go, boo.

I've worked here for a long time, and it's really rewarding.

We're constantly trying to help these animals who are injured and sick.

The fact that we can save.

The majority of them is pretty amazing.

He, like, hovers perfectly.

He's amazing.

We live in Florida, and we can help our species locally who live right in our

backyard and make a contribution back every single day of our lives.

And that's pretty amazing.

I hope we have lots of lady friends once he gets released.

Today we are performing Verde's pre -release health assessment.

He came to us a little over a year ago.

He's got algae all over him, and then we have some old wounds and some lesions

on him, so we want to get his skin cleaned up as much as we can.

This is a really exciting time. This is the exam that we perform right before we

release him out into Florida waters.

He's a little pudgy here.

Most manatees are identified by scar patterns, so we mark out their scars.

We took some photographs, and we're going to get some measurements.

There's a

really important number that we're looking for today. We want to see that

reached 600 pounds, which is the mark that we get animals to to approve them

release.

He was 735 with the stretcher. Now he weighs 610.

Over the magic number.

Bye -bye.

Time to go home.

So Verde looks really great. His weight is exactly where we want it to be. His

body condition is amazing. So we're really excited that he gets the

to go back.

Any time that we can take in a sick, injured, or orphaned animal and

rehabilitate that animal and get them back out there is just a second chance

them and really a second chance for the manatee population overall.

Verde has been so fun to have here.

Oh, he was all green when he came in. I care about all the manatees that come in

and definitely have really loved the time I spent with Verde.

I declare you releasable.

You're very good, Mother.

So Verde looks really, really good. He's ready for release.

He's done all the right things. He's hit all of his milestones the last year of

gaining weight and eating well and social.

I'm excited to see what he does. Me too. It'll be good to get him out of here,

go home.

Give more space for all the other critical ones that need to come through.

Exactly, yeah.

Hey, Lisa.

Hey. How has she been doing since arrival?

A little bit better, actually.

So our blow -strike manatee survived through the night, and we actually saw

pretty positive things from her.

She's surfacing well. Her respirations have gone way down.

That's excellent.

Some small improvements.

No interest in food yet.

I am shocked, but also really happy. I'm really impressed with...

Her ability to kind of resist her.

It doesn't look to me like, oh, I'm crazy painful. It looks like, I don't

to do this.

This is really still too early to say how this is going to go for her, but

is quite astounding.

The ones that we spend hours and hours with and those long nights with, they

definitely have a special place in our hearts. They are super challenging,

but... We just know as a team we're not going to give up on those animals.

You know, if they're still pulling through, we're still pulling through.

So right now I'm just doing what's called hydrotherapy. We're just kind of

flushing all the wounds out.

So we were thinking about naming her properly for her propeller wound, and

from Lee County.

It's cute.

It's had a lot of names with Lee in it, but I don't know if we've ever done

anything with a propeller.

Lauren, what do you think of the name?

I think the team always comes up with perfect names.

These are really tough cases, and it's nice to create some positivity, and I

think we all need that sometimes.

Honey is a really amazing natural.

that actually has antimicrobial function.

It's nice and sticky. Hopefully it'll just kind of coat those wounds and maybe

get a little more contact time when she's in the water.

Wound treatment in aquatic species is really challenging. The minute we put

back in the water, this wound is going to get completely drenched again and the

sponges and all that stuff get wet. But honey's nice and sticky, so my hope is

that it'll hang out just a little bit longer than some of our other front

antiseptics.

probably is still a highly critical case.

Always have to realize that there's still a lot at risk here, but I have

encouragement. I love that she's breathing more comfortably. I think it's

check in the positive box, but we've still got a long way to go.

How excited are you, Lauren? I'm so excited.

I hope this is a really nice, good abscess.

What do you think, is it really liquidy or do you think it's going to be like...

I think it's going to be liquidy. Stop ruining food!

Today we are going to do a full procedure with Otis, which is going to

fully anesthetizing him so we're able to get a really good look at his abscess.

We're going to make her watch the puss. I mean, I don't mind, it's just... I

don't love it.

Like, you guys are all like, yeah, I hope it's disgusting.

And I'm like, oh, it's going to be disgusting.

Otis is still really young. This bump is growing just as quick as him, so it's

got to be uncomfortable.

It's tough to see him like this, so we want to get this taken care of as

as possible to give him some relief.

All right.

I'll be back.

With today's approach, we're going to do a remote delivery of the medication and

make him nice and sleepy.

Otis has a beautiful induction. He goes right to sleep. It goes really, really

well. And so we're calling in the rest of the team, and we're going to get

started. Two and three, up.

I'm expecting that this is in fact an abscess, and when we do lance it, it's

going to erupt like Mount Vesuvius.

Now it's time to make the cut, and it explodes.

Otis is our young male Niala.

I see that abscess popping out the side, and we're ready to go.

Ugh, gross.

The pus is so satisfying to see just ooze out. It's so gross. Everyone's

disgusted. I'm in heaven. Oh, my gosh. Oh, God.

Y 'all, it smells horrible.

That's such a good one. Ew, that's chunky.

Really just started shooting out like crazy. Really disgusting.

It had a very pungent smell to it.

Oh, that's nasty.

I'm so sorry, Otis.

Hey, good breath though, right?

Yeah. Okay.

I think we can say with pretty, you know, high confidence, this is an ab.

One. So much better to not have that in there.

Nice level of relief.

I think this is trauma induced, you know, whether he got a little splinter

just kind of festered and became infected, or if when he was maybe

with Orion or adult males, he just kind of gave him a little horn.

So I'm hoping that this will fix his problem today.

It's really important that I completely flush and lavage out this abscess.

We'll clean him up a little bit here.

I'm going to keep a couple of areas open and actually aim our openings so there

can be active drainage.

It's going to be really important that we leave it open, and over time with

antibiotics and active drainage, it should heal up.

There you go, Brandi. That's good. You're good.

Poor guy.

Those infections can get really swollen. They can get uncomfortable and painful,

and so this is going to be a huge relief for him.

We'll keep an eye on him, make sure that this doesn't come back.

Did it meet your expectations?

Yes. Good.

Very satisfying.

Did it meet yours?

Yes.

Come on, poinsettia.

See, now they're kind of coming for it to eat.

Molly, are you guys going to let her out?

Yeah, we can. We can go down and then see.

Properly has been with us for a couple of weeks now in our critical care

hospital, and she's had her good days and her bad days.

I think she's eaten a little bit.

Not crazy.

She's a tough lady.

The boat shark wounds were really severe, but they're actually starting to

One thing that we are starting to see as time has gone on is that she's actually

starting to lift or lean down a little bit on her left side. Is she pushing off

with her back paddle?

I don't know if she's pushing off, but she's resting it on the floor.

She's breathing.

Now she did just have to push off the floor to get to the surface there.

The thing that comes to my mind immediately is that she has a collapsed

Is there fluid that's starting to pool up in her chest?

We are going to take the next steps in obtaining a CT scan for Prop Lee.

And this is going to require that we transport her off -site to an outside

facility that does CT scans routinely on humans.

On the left.

Sure.

concerned about probably at this point we really just want to make sure she's

comfortable but we also want to make sure that she's going to survive

have that strong survivorship drive i mean they're wildlife i'm always so

impressed with what wildlife can overcome so the team's definitely

properly

local hospital that's actually just for people and it's not for animals so it's

really great that they've accommodated us to help our manatee out.

Okay ready one two three.

One two three.

A CT scan is a really powerful imaging modality that gives you way more

information than a plain x -ray or an ultrasound will give you. I think we're

ready.

It's just a big machine, and it's room all by itself, and it's got a big hole

a big donut that you can scan the animal through.

We'll be able to look at her, in a sense, three -dimensionally. We can

out the bones, we can look for fractures, and really see the extent of

trauma that she's dealing with.

I'm hoping that the images are clear enough that we can know what's going on

internally.

I have a lot of faith that this is going to give us answers today.

We're starting to get images for properly.

You start seeing the gashes coming in. Yeah.

Wow. Already I'm starting to see things that I was really concerned about going

into this.

That looks really concerning. The way that lung looks to me is just not

I'm not even seeing any lung on this side at all.

So one lung is completely collapsed. You can barely even see any lung tissue. I

suspect it's along the wall of her body, so that's completely obliterated. One

of her vertebrae fractured off and was connecting into what we call the spinal

canal. So we absolutely expect that she's dealing with a nasty infection in

spinal cord.

I like to see that big gash here and the fractures there.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what I feared.

This is going to be beyond repair.

We make the tough decision to move forward with humane euthanasia.

I think it's the fairest, most kindest thing that we could offer for a

We don't want her to suffer anymore.

She's squeaking. I heard that little squeak.

This is the really, really hard part of rehab.

It's so tough.

Properly is a heartbreaker.

I'm really sad about it and trying to hold it together because the team looks

us for that leadership. But sometimes you just lose it because it shows how

we care and how much we love them. We fall in love with every Manatee we have.

It sucks.

Yeah.

You know, we just have to slow down where Manatees live so that they have an

opportunity to swim away.

She's less than two years old, and she had her whole life ahead of her, and

unfortunately, it was cut short by a boat.

She hasn't taken a breath in a little bit.

Thanks for trying.

I was up all night last night just thinking about her and didn't want her

suffer, and I wanted to make sure we helped her.

And I would do that again tomorrow, and I would do it again the day after. I

really just want what's best for these animals.

It's hard work, but it's worth every second of it.

Hi, buddy.

Have a good day, okay?

Stay warm.

You want to go outside?

I'm going to hand you off to the aviary team. Your beak looks so good.

You ready?

Oh, what a good girl.

Hello.

Today I'm dropping off Sierra, our sulfur -crested cockatoo, with Dani from

aviary team.

She just had a beak trim up at the vet hospital, and she is ready to go and

into her new habitat.

There you go.

You can always visit her.

She's going to be going from being an ambassador, where she lives behind

and comes out with us for guest engagement opportunities, to being out

side full -time, where guests are going to be able to see her beautiful self all

the time whenever they want to.

Lots of personality.

Yeah. You want something?

I have this.

Sierra, do you want to come play with me?

No. No. Okay.

She's moving with one of her best buddies, Sophie, and other silver

cockatoo. Oh, they're definitely spoiled, and you know that.

Yeah, and I'll visit.

I'll come say hi.

I'm very sad to see our cockatoos go.

They are some of my first birds that I ever trained, so I have a really special

relationship with them.

I'm also excited for them to get this big space.

and be able to be viewed by our guests at all times.

Bye, Miss Sierra. I'm going to miss you.

Whoa, look at him go.

She is having a blast.

We have Verde in the pool. We can see how he is in the stretcher if we want to

be able to set him down. But if he's a little funky, we could always go right

into the truck. I feel like we should just maybe try to go all the way to the

truck. Okay. Unless he is funky.

All right.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

Today's a great day because it's the release day for Verde.

Start him back further.

I'm at the line here.

One of those proud moments and exactly one of the many reasons that I am

involved in manatee rehab.

Losing properly was one of the most challenging cases I've ever dealt with.

Just watching how hard she fought and then we couldn't save her, that was

tough. But it is really nice to release a manatee just a few days later and

knowing that we've done some good.

Put a little pressure onto the...

All right. One, two, three.

Bertie was rescued as an orphan animal. He didn't have a family. He didn't have

a mom or anyone with him at the time of rescue.

He should be successful if he follows other manatees around.

So we will also be releasing another manatee back to the wild named Retail.

They've been together pretty much all of their rehab life at the zoo.

Since they know each other and have been social, that should help them when they

get out.

Bye, Retail.

Hi, Rudy!

Hope to never see you again.

Hello!

Alright, cutie patooties.

Time to go home.

Hi, guys!

Good morning!

You know, they know what's coming.

Yeah, they know it's breakfast time.

Awesome. So just coming in here to check in on Otis.

How has he been doing?

He's been doing really great. His fur is starting to grow back, and we haven't

seen any signs of an abscess reforming. That's great news. Hi, buddy.

Hi, buddy. Are you ready for your breakfast?

Oh, my goodness, your cute little face.

Otis's wound site is healed up. You can see where we clipped the area, but I

don't even see any evidence of swelling or that there was any evidence that

there was an abscess there before.

He looks great.

These guys, when they're so young, they look very much like mom. And then as

they grow older, they change their coat completely into this beautiful dark

color like Orion here.

His horns are coming in.

And his dark face.

Look at his nose.

He's going to start changing colors.

At this point, I'm calling this completely healed up. I'm closing his

I look forward to seeing Otis grow up into a beautiful male Nyala.

They're a beautiful animal.

I love these kinds of cases.

They're ones that we can come in, you know, make an impact, make the animal

better. These are the best kind.

And abscesses are just really fun.

Look at his face.

I know.

So cute.

Action.

There's definitely a lot of activity going on. I see a lot of, like, the

and the fish are moving around.

So today we're going to be releasing Verde out into the power plant, and

be sending out retail alongside of him. The power plant is local here in Tampa,

and it provides a lot of warm water that manatees can come to in the wintertime.

And generally when it's nice and cold out, there are hundreds of manatees that

use this power plant.

Here, do you want to take my spot?

He's going out with... A couple of friends, which is great news, that

he'll be able to hang out with them and acclimate pretty easily and then should

leave while it's still warm out and find some food.

And then we are going to have some more cold days ahead, so we're hoping he'll

migrate back to the power plant on those colder nights.

They're working on fitting him with a belt and a tag. The tag will allow

biologists to monitor his progress and be able to make sure that he's doing

everything he should.

The GPS tracker will only stay on him maybe about a year or less.

If he does well and finds food and he finds warm water pretty quickly over the

next few months, he actually may graduate even sooner.

Yes, we confirmed it on tag and seven.

If he is successful, is eating, and his belly is big, and he doesn't look poor,

then he'll get to graduate and be a wild man and see for the rest of his life.

Nice. You ready?

You ready? Here you go.

Okay, so Danielle, just so you know, when you're in the front, we've just got

keep walking in, so we're going to get...

bittersweet watching them swim away. Usually what I do is I picture when they

came in and that helps me remember everything they've been through and

everything that we put into them and the fact that he looks so good today shows

how much hard work can pay off.

Somebody's way over there.

And next up we're going to be releasing retail.

Being in the rehabilitation field, you do see a lot of injured animals that

don't ever make it past just being injured. They end up passing away at our

facility. And we're going to keep fighting, doing whatever we can for all

manatees that come into our critical care center.

Oh yeah, they're together.

Tags and movements.

Make good choices.

Release day is always amazing for all of us. We work really hard.

basically every day of our lives, and to see an animal turn around and get

released back.

It really never gets old. I've released a lot of manatees since I worked at the

zoo, and it's always special.

Especially in Bernadette's case, I know that he came in pretty sick, so I'm

really proud that he gets to go back out today.

Good luck, Bernadette. Bye. Bye, Bernadette.

Do good.