Original subtitles

Hey, handsome.

Here's the lady of the hour.

Oh, I like this one. Yes.

He's cool.

You're feisty, too, huh?

You got to use your brain for this.

Here is New Tampa. Our manatee program is one of the few critical care

facilities in the state of Florida that deals with manatee calves.

When a manatee calf is found by itself in the wild, we know that there's no

chance of survival.

So in many cases, that's overnight care, all -day care, whatever it takes to get

them healthy.

Hey, bud.

So right now I'm feeding Tober. I'm waiting for one of his... Pool mates.

Pickalina to come over.

Pickalina has been here for just over eight months now.

She was found in the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota County by Florida Fish and

Wildlife with no mom in sight.

And Tober, it's going on about five and a half months.

They're two of the smallest calves that we've had since our hospital's been open

since 91.

They came in at 42 and about 40 pounds.

which is about 20 pounds less than a typical newborn manatee, so they were

pretty malnourished.

Manatees all over the state of Florida are in a troubled state, and that's

primarily due to their main food source disappearing.

This past year, we lost about 15 % of the state's manatee population, which

unfortunately caused a lot of orphaned calves.

Don't fall in!

Sober looks good.

Yeah, he was ready and waiting for his bottle, but Piccolina is kind of off

eating some of the natural diet, which seems kind of like her trend lately.

She's slowing down a little bit on her bottle, but she's definitely getting

bigger, so to be expected.

Getting a baby manatee onto a bottle is not an easy feat.

No. I wish.

You know, they don't come in understanding the bottle. They don't

going on. Obviously, just the whole situation can be a stressful environment

them. Hi.

Good morning, Remy.

It's very challenging. It definitely takes good communication and teamwork.

The biggest thing is patience, persistence, and really just taking your

with each animal.

He's been doing really, really well.

I don't think he ever misses a bottle.

He was waiting right here.

Our ultimate goal is for them to gain about a pound a day. So you're thinking

about 30 pounds every month. And that's important for their brain development,

overall health, and making sure that they're going to make weight to

get released in the future.

You want any more of that?

Are you done?

Done? Okay.

You think so?

I see a baby.

You see the little foot sticking out?

The one time I, like, fall into the water. Right.

Right now we're setting up some treats and enrichment for our Saimeng family.

I'm really excited to see if Suzuki likes the beauty brow.

Yeah. We've got Huton, who's our female, Sensei, who's the male, and their one

-year -old daughter, Kazuki.

Maybe a couple of banana spears.

I think Saimeng are some of the most interesting animals that we have here at

the zoo.

They're found in the mountainous regions of the Malay Peninsula, and they're

also found in the monsoon forest of Sumatra.

I'm going to put some of this good food in here. Okay. Our favorite ham egg.

They live such a hard life.

Kazuki was a little bit of a surprise. We came in and found a little Saimeng

baby last year.

Hey, happy parents. How are you doing?

Congratulations.

Oh, hello.

Baby was happy, healthy, and clinging to mom, so we're really happy that she's

part of the primate loop now. Wow, very alert.

Isn't that the most adorable face you've ever seen?

It's been really rewarding to see baby Kazuki over the last year.

Such a cute little family. Yeah, it is.

She's growing and developing, and it's been really rewarding to watch her hit

different milestones every day.

It seems like Kazuki's almost ready to shift out on her own. I agree.

We're really looking to see Kazuki come out on her own and show that she's

starting to get a little more independent.

I feel like sometimes she's like, do I have the courage today?

So she definitely wants to, but I don't think she's there just yet. I've seen

her come out like in the doorway and she's sick.

And she thinks about it, and I'm like, is today going to be the time? And then

somebody comes back, and they pick her up and bring her across. So it's usually

traffic.

She's the best dad.

Saimeng live in pretty cohesive family units. So it's a male and a female who

are monogamous and bonded together, and then their offspring.

I'm going to put a little food, like, in her eye level. Okay.

Kazuki level.

All right, well, what do you say?

Try it? All right, let's see what she does.

I mean, I don't blame her. That's kind of a big, like...

Jump down.

I've seen people fall in before, so I don't blame her.

It's a big leap into adulthood.

You ready, Sensei?

All right. Have a nice time.

Here they come.

Ah, she's on Houtan this morning. That's okay.

Hanging out with Mom.

We opened the shift door to shift out the Simons, and Houtan carries Kazuki

right out. And then Sensei helped himself to the apple pizzas that we put

Habitat for her.

That's it.

courage today.

Hanging on tight to mom.

They flew out so fast, I barely had a chance to see, but I saw that Kazuki

didn't have time to get off. No, she didn't. I feel a little bummed out she

didn't shift out today, but it's on her timeline, so it's whenever she feels

comfortable to really cross those rocks on her own.

She's such a daredevil besides those rocks.

I know. Like I said, the way she throws herself around out here, and like she

plays a sensei, it's just like mind -blowing. Yeah.

Typically, Simon will be with their parents for about five or six years.

So in the wild, she would still be with her family unit. They're a little bit

more independent around one year old where they start to be a little bit more

confident and off of mom a little bit longer.

It's like every time I see her, she's doing something different. Like she's

climbing on her own or she's like running on her own.

And now she's just being a little terror.

We know she can do it. It's just her becoming a little bit more confident to

cross the rocks on her own.

Awesome. Well, maybe tomorrow. Yeah, we'll try again tomorrow. We're going to

try again every single day.

Have a good day. Enjoy your breakfast.

Hi, sir.

We have a large male family here at Zoo Tampa.

Come get some, for dad eats it all.

They have dimorphism, which is really cool in mammals, so the males and

look totally different when they're mature.

So Ryan is dad.

He's the darker.

one with the big horns oh it's a buffet he's out here with his

two girlfriends autumn and sahara hi autumn and then everyone else are his

so we have sunny we have frank and we have norm am i forgetting

anybody nope that's it

our one -year -old Nyala, and she is about to leave our facility to go to a

one. Oh my gosh!

Usually Nyala gives birth in the barn, so I thought for sure that's where it

would be, and then I got a call saying she was out under some bushes in the

middle of the yard.

Great. Let's go see if we can see this baby.

Whenever I'm in here and I see that palm tree, I will think of Sunny.

Cute Sunny.

So wobbly.

Sunny was just a little one when I started working here.

When I was first here, she didn't really want to eat from me, but we've built

our relationship up over the last year.

Come in.

Okay, everyone likes Molly. Oh, hi, everyone.

Do you like pepper?

I'm really excited for Sunny to be able to meet some new friends, but also...

A lot more sad than I expected to be. All right, now come straight back.

the Africa team is getting ready to do Sunny's pre -ship exam. Perfect. Which

are a series of tests that we're going to run just to ensure she's healthy

before she makes her move.

Sunny! Our breeding program has been extremely successful, which is one of

reasons why we're moving Sunny to a new facility.

She'll go on to breed there, and we'll have more room for new babies here.

Africa to hospital.

Go ahead.

We are transporting a Nyala from holding to HS2.

M4, we copy.

Anytime we're doing an exam, especially on a hoofstock species, we want to keep

anesthesia as short and as safe as possible.

How are we doing?

That should be good.

That's good?

One of the things that we can do is actually dart her while she's in the

trailer.

It's going to be a very low stress situation for her. It sets us up for

So let's get the blood, let's get the vaccine, get everything going.

We're going to do a physical exam.

We're going to get blood work, make sure that everything looks healthy. We're

going to update vaccine.

Let's see if you guys want to see if she'll kick out that leg, get blood from

the back leg. Not getting that. Did you confirm ID?

Yes.

Rabies vaccine?

Yes. All vaccines, and I feed her in.

Clostridium, hexene.

Great. She is in great condition, and really there's no concerns on her exam.

We're going to get a couple of final lab values back, and as long as everything

looks good, she'll be cleared to go.

I'm going to give her.

Another five minutes, if we can, to burn off this ketamine, okay?

I'm super proud of Sunny. She was calm the whole way through it from start to

finish. All right, you can probably take the towel off.

She woke up really well. She stood up on her own, held her head up really well,

and she was solid when she stood back up, which is what we want.

Okay, everybody just stay as quiet as possible.

We'll give her a few minutes, and then we can quietly take stuff out.

Now that all those pre -ships are done, it's just waiting for Sunny to get

picked up and move to her new facility.

Side by side. Perfect.

Best friends.

Good boys.

When you first enter into Zoo Tampa, The first thing you see is our manatee

circle. It's the center of our zoo and also the center of our conservation

mission.

This will definitely help keep that cold air off of them. Oh, yeah.

Ready, Bubba?

Rehabbing manatees is a lot of work. It doesn't matter what the case is. We're

going to give them the best care possible. And in many cases, that's

care, all -day care, whatever it takes to get them healthy.

It's okay.

Our critical care facility is very important to Zoo Tampa because without

wouldn't be able to save this amazing species.

Our team is very dedicated to the work we do here in hopes that every animal

that comes through our door is able to be released back home.

I have no other bottles for you.

Till 2 o 'clock.

Hang in there, dude. Go eat some greens.

I don't know if there's much things cuter than a baby manatee eating greens.

Morning. Today we are doing a health assessment on our manatee, Bellissima.

is a very large, beautiful girl that I'm getting distracted by because she's

right there.

I can't pick a favorite manatee per se, but I will say that Bellissima is

probably one of the most amazing rescue and rehabilitation cases that I've ever

seen. You can go on probably up though if you're ready to get in the water. She

was stranded in the middle of an island. Nobody knows how she got there.

She was found by a hiker who just happened upon her in the mangrove.

And I'm only doing level one sedation, Jamie.

Okay. So try to keep her from throwing her head.

Bellissima, get your face down, girl.

She got to us about 3 a .m. on the day she was rescued, and it was probably one

of the most horrific rescue cases that any of us have ever seen.

You can see, like, how desiccated her skin is.

It's just...

She was so emaciated. Her skin was very dried out from not being in water for an

undetermined amount of time.

We really didn't think she was going to make it. I don't know how she survived

as long as she did out there, but she surprised all of us, and she's healed

amazingly, and she's made the biggest comeback ever.

Okay. On three. One, two, three.

Felicima has been doing really, really well, and we are very hopeful that she's

going to be cleared to be released back to the wild.

Today, the biggest thing we want to make sure is that we reassess both of her

flippers. See, I don't know if we can fit it a little more proximal, see if we

can get it to her shoulder. That's where she starts getting really thick, too.

All right, going again.

Everybody's clear.

You're good.

So when she came in, her wounds on her flippers were...

Really, really startling. This flipper was completely one big open wound

exposing bone.

The most important thing we want to confirm is that everything is still

and smooth and there's no sign of any infection that's coming back.

We just want to make sure that she's still totally healthy to go back home.

All right. Everybody clear?

You're good.

So as you can tell, it's still a little bit thickened. It doesn't extend all the

way, but she can still move it a little, and her other flipper is perfectly

functional. So it's not going to hold up for release.

Honestly, that's really what I need, so I think we're good.

So our official guesses are?

I'm going 1 ,530. Okay, I was going to say 1 ,400, but I'm going 1 ,450.

Okay.

Okay, hands off.

15? 15, 1, 5, 8, 5.

Is this stretcher the 175, is it? 140.

140.

How much?

1445.

Dr.

Melissa. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited.

It's always an exciting day to be able to see how far they've grown and how

we've kind of achieved our goal to get them healthier and back on track to go

back home.

I love it.

And then we'll get her blood work, and as long as that looks good, she'll be

ready to go home.

She knows how to eat well.

She's a great eater.

Thanks, Melissa.

All right. Thank you, guys.

I'm 100 % going to, like, bawl my eyes out when she swims away in the wild.

When did she shed?

Sunday. Sunday? Yeah.

Monday, Tuesday. So go ahead and dig it up. Let's see if we got any eggs in

there. Cool.

All right. Awesome.

We're checking on our female indigo snake.

She bred a month and a half ago with our male.

It's about time for them to start laying their eggs. So we're hopeful.

Oh, there she is. Oh, there she is. Oh, my God. She's so cute.

We decided to call her Pepper because she can be a little bit spicy.

She's like, get out of my house. And she's all black, so kind of like black

pepper. Go ahead.

All right.

She's all right.

Indigo snake is the largest non -venomous snake in the United States.

They're an apex predator, which means that they control the population of

non -predators out there, mice, rats, venomous snakes.

All right.

Let's dig up the box.

Our indigo snake breeding program is part of our species survival plan. We've

been breeding here for a couple of years now and have never gotten any viable

eggs out of them. I'm sorry, girlfriend.

This year we had a new female come in.

She's a little larger than the old female, so hoping that she'll produce us

nice fertile eggs.

All right, Spence, do you think you'd be able to help me get this lid off? Yeah.

Is she still sitting there? Yeah.

In the wild, these guys will use gopher tortoise burrows to lay their eggs. Good

job, good job.

So what we've done here is we made man -made burrows.

We bought coolers, and we bury them into the ground.

All right, boys, moment of truth.

Dig around in there.

If we find eggs, we'll raise them up to a point, and then the species survival

plan will decide where they head off to in the future.

No eggs.

Bring her out here when you're done. Okay.

Here, do you want to grab her?

She's pretty big. She's thick. She's girthy.

We can definitely tell Pepper has eggs inside of her. You can almost see the

shape of the egg.

which is extremely interesting.

It's almost time for the eggs to come out, considering how large they are

of her. So we're just going to give her some time. We're going to give her full

access to her burrow to go down there, and hopefully we will have some indigo

snake eggs in our near future.

Fingers crossed.

I'm extremely excited.

If we do end up getting eggs and we get baby indigo snakes, that's going to be

one of the greatest milestones in my career so far. So I'm extremely excited.

All right. Bye, good mama.

Do you hear Kasuki joining in?

It's hard to see. I can't tell if she's singing with us.

She's right there with her dog.

Saimengs are known for their very loud vocalizations. Each Saimeng pair has

their own unique song.

Their songs are booming. You can hear them through the whole zoo.

It draws guests from all over the park.

Normally what they don't realize is actually how much goes into it and how

important it is for their relationship and for their territory.

She's like, slow down, Dad. She really wants to go with him.

Climbers are amazing climbers. They move in a distinctive movement called

brachiating. It's a hand -over -hand motion that allows them to swing like a

pendulum and move freely through the trees.

Today we're going to hopefully see Kazuki shift out on her own. She's

lot more independent on everything out here. I've seen her at the very top

looking like she wants to try to imitate what Sensei does.

Yeah. Which I don't think she's quite ready for that.

I would love to see her cross over those little rocks by herself.

Yeah, me too.

We all really want to see her do it, but at the same time it's a little bit sad

because that means she's growing up and she's not going to be our little baby

anymore. But we're optimistic that pretty soon she'll be doing this by

Morning, cutie.

You ready to go out?

Kazuki, you're going to be a big girl today.

You're going on your own?

Have a great day.

Here they come.

She's my little mom.

Aw, I think she's on Thursday.

As I open the shift door, Kazuki is on her own. But then as soon as she hears

that shift door move, she took a ride with Dad this morning.

We've had a couple of full -grown interns who haven't been able to make it

across the air.

I experienced that once, yeah. A little bitty, tiny kusuki, like, she's gone

right on sunset today.

Oh, yeah, she was holding tight.

He's too good of a dad.

One of my favorite things about signing are the way that they parent their

offspring.

They actually co -parent for the first year.

Sometimes you'll see the baby clinging to mom. As that baby starts to grow and

develop, dad also takes care of their offspring.

It's just really been so much fun watching her as she grows and changes

seeing them as a family because they're such a good set of parents. Yeah, and

just seeing her little personality coming out too.

Yeah. All right, Saimeng.

See you later, guys.

Have fun with your tubes.

Hi, good morning.

It's Molly here, yeah.

What's going on?

This morning I actually got a phone call from a Manatee rehab facility in Puerto

Rico. When was the last time that you guys had some success with feeding a

bottle? They have a little calf that they rescued.

Her name is Nanichi, and she did start to take the bottle when they first got

her, but then she went off of it. You know, this case actually reminds me of

Tober, who we just hand -raised this last year, and he was a challenging one

get on the bottle.

I mean, it sounds like...

You guys have tried a lot of different things.

So we have a calf protocol that we've written here at the zoo. So if I could

helpful, I would love to come there and help you guys.

I was able to give them quite a bit of guidance over the phone, but it's one of

those things that I can talk through something over the phone, but actually

being present and working with that animal, it can make a big difference.

Okay, I'm looking forward to it. I'll see you guys soon.

So the plan right now is for me to try to get to Puerto Rico as quickly as

possible. I'm going to spend a few days with their team and see if I can help

them get her onto that bottle.

You good?

Today we will be doing...

a pre -release blood sample on Bellissima.

She'll be getting released soon, and we just update blood work before they go

just to make sure there's nothing else that might pop up that might need

attention before she goes back home.

Okay, ready?

On the clock.

Okay,

coming out.

I'm extremely excited for Bellissima to get released. She is one of the most

amazing rehab cases that I've ever seen, and she's come a really long way.

She has over -doubled her weight. She's overcome, like, every odd that has ever

been stacked against her, and so it's a really big deal that she gets to go

home. All right, let me get this off the floor, and I'd love to take our usual

photos of her flippers and her sides and everything.

Sounds good.

Her release is scheduled for a couple of weeks from now.

And then I'm just going to get a side photo as well.

Right before she goes out, we'll update all of her measurements and photos so we

have a picture of how she's looking at the very last second and send her back

home.

It's exciting.

She's definitely ready.

I think we're all ready. Yep. Even though we love you. That's true.

It's a little easier to pick him up because he's a heavy snake.

When I used to go to the zoo when I was a kid, I could have stayed all day in

that reptile house up there. These are such unique animals. They move in

different ways.

You know, it just caught my attention.

You let it go, dude.

There you go.

I actually started out as a volunteer at Zoo Tampa in 1998 and worked my way

into the horticulture department.

And as I was working in the horticulture department, I would get off of work at

the end of the day and run down to the reptile area and volunteer in that area.

That's where I wanted to be.

You're going to have to go pretty far under her because she's trying to go

forward.

Reptiles in general are things that people don't really understand because

are a different... type of species.

A lot of people don't identify with these types of animals.

We try to change everybody's perception of reptiles and amphibians in general.

So yeah, it is fun to help and teach.

Damn, I'm good.

Go do it.

We're checking on our female indigo pepper to see if she laid any eggs.

Let's check that box right there first.

All right.

Definitely saw eggs and swelling down by her cloaca a couple of days ago, so

we're going on an egg hunt.

Was she in there at all?

Not this morning when I checked.

We got eggs a few years ago, but they weren't fertile.

Anticipation. The worst part.

Yeah. Hopefully we have eggs. That would be really exciting.

Moment of truth.

We got one egg. One egg?

Yeah, she still looks pretty full.

Let me come in and take a look at her. All right. This is very exciting.

It's right down there near the entrance.

Oh, yeah, nice.

We finally have an egg, and we got to still wait and see. Don't want to count

your chickens, or in this case, you don't want to count your snakes before

hatch, but this is a really nice step.

We'll start incubating that one.

Mark it, weigh it, date, and we'll check again tomorrow.

That's awesome.

One egg.

Hopefully it means she's in the middle of laying them and we'll get more.

We'll continue to monitor, make sure she's doing well.

Sweet. Yeah, that's cool.

What mark that is?

One.

The next step for this egg particularly is incubation, which should take roughly

90 days.

Temperature in there between 79 and 80?

Yeah. The incubation for reptiles is the best way to go, just to get a constant

temperature and to give it a higher chance of viable eggs to hatch.

One down, more to go tomorrow.

Yeah.

I'm going to go say hi to Miss Sunny.

Yeah, I can't believe she's leaving. Stop it. It's not true.

Today is the day that Sunny will be leaving Sioux Tampa so she can make the

journey to her new home in Ohio.

That's not true. I don't believe it. Kind of give her a last goodbye. Give

some extra goodies and love.

Hi. Hi.

You're okay. I know. There's a lot going on.

But you're really, really brave.

Are you ready to meet all your new friends?

What do you think?

Do you think the Nyala at Toledo are going to be good?

Are you?

Dana will be the boyfriend.

This is definitely a harder part of our job, watching animals leave, but it's

also an exciting part of our job because we know that they are moving to places

where they're going to thrive.

Christy, to all animal units, we're going to start loading our Nyala from

Last days are weird because I still have a job to do, so I focus on my job, and

my job is to get them to their next destination safely and stress -free. You

cannot let emotion get in the way until she gets to her new zoo.

Okay, everybody's ready?

Good girl.

Go, go on.

You can do it, babe.

She went on easy, quiet, but that's how she's always been. She's never been the

problem child.

She's just a very good girl, and so I would expect nothing less from her.

Hi.

We just need you to sign these.

He's taking our Nyala.

Moving Sunny is going to be great for her. She's going to get a family of her

own, be able to have her own babies, hopefully.

So while it's really sad for me and the rest of the Africa team, it's really

exciting that an animal that was born here is going off to do exactly what

supposed to do.

There she goes.

Bye, Sunny!

It's time to do our morning check of the indigo snake, see if she has the rest

of her eggs. All right, fingers crossed.

Pepper laid her first egg a few days ago.

It looks like she's in this box, so she made it very easy for me this morning.

We still have not seen any eggs, which is pretty concerning.

All right, so this is the moment of truth.

And we do not have any eggs.

Unfortunately. Just from looking at her, she looks the exact same. I can still

see those eggs are inside of her. I can tell that she hasn't laid any eggs

overnight. So we will have to call Dr.

Kendra and get her involved to see if we can get these eggs out of here. At this

point, I'm going to get down to the hospital as soon as possible with

We are concerned that she may be egg bound, and that's actually when the egg

gets literally bound and attached inside of them and can't come out.

If untreated, that can result in death of the animal.

Hello. Florida indigo snakes are a native species to this area, and they

declining in the wild because of habitat loss.

So it's really important that we get these eggs out safely, not only for the

eggs, but also for this mom that has the potential to create many more of her

species for Florida.

All right.

I'm going to try to give this IV if she will allow.

So we are going to really lightly sedate this snake. The reason for that is that

I want her muscles to be as relaxed as possible so that we can try to get these

eggs out.

I know.

Anytime a reptile has to go under anesthesia, it is a little bit nerve

-wracking. They can hold their breath for a really long time and can take a

time to recover.

But this is the best thing that we can do for her right now since she hasn't

passed them on her own.

You want to find a heart?

Good to go.

The first thing that I'm going to do is a really thorough exam of the opening of

her oviduct as well as that last egg there. I really want to make sure that

there is no adhesion to the wall and that that egg is intact and able to come

all the way through before I attempt to remove it.

Definitely feel the end of it. So it's coming out. I really don't think that

there is an adhesion because I can move it this way. Entire way.

So it seems like it's probably just too large.

If this one is too big and we cannot get it past the opening, I'm going to have

to drain it so you won't be able to incubate it afterwards. That'll be like

last resort.

Understood.

Oh, no.

Wow.

That's quite large. That's a big egg.

That's a very big egg.

Wow. It's a big egg. Definitely intact.

We got the first egg out, and it was ginormous.

You want to put it in the box?

Wow. Yeah. It was a weird shape, and that definitely was blocking her,

the other eggs and all of the fecal.

She's probably been waiting to defecate for a little while.

I'm going to look inside her cloaca and just make sure that there is no trauma

in that area before we move the rest of them down. Dr. Kendra, she is constantly

palpating Pepper's body and kind of just pushing out those eggs the best that we

can without tearing any tissue.

We'll definitely give her some pain meds and antibiotics for this.

Okay.

There we go.

This one seems a little better. That one does look a lot better.

Yeah, that one definitely looks more appropriate.

Yeah. The next few eggs were smaller and they were a little bit easier to get

out. How many more are you thinking?

One, two, three.

I think three more. Three more.

This one's a little bit smaller.

Room in there.

Barely. These are big eggs.

Okay, I think that was the last one.

The total number is eight eggs.

Oh, wow.

Wow. The majority of them do appear to be fertile, so we'll put them in the

incubator and see what we get.

Okay, so she's just going to wake up.

I think we got to her in time.

Absolutely. Yeah.

I am extremely relieved now that we have the eggs out just because we can start

focusing on...

incubating them sorting out which ones are fertile which ones are not and more

importantly making sure she's okay and that she's healthy and comfortable also

this is the coolest experience of my life six months ago i was a receptionist

and now i'm helping remove indigo snake eggs so it's kind of amazing i'm so

excited to be a part of this breeding program good morning good job hon

This is an amazing snake that everybody should know about, and they are

struggling in the wild. So for us to have a breed and release program like

it does mean the world. So my dream is to hopefully get out there and release

some indigo snakes that I hatched out myself.

Good job, baby.

Good morning!

Everyone's a sleepyhead.

Yeah.

I am at the Caribbean Manatee Conservation Center in Puerto Rico.

This is Toni and Thomas.

Hi!

I am here to

help their team with a manatee calf that they are trying to get onto a bottle.

Oh my goodness.

On Easter weekend, we got a report for a teeny tiny manatee that was seen near

some boating docks.

That first sighting, we think that this is the day that she was born.

So we think that maybe a boat scared the mom away after giving birth and

abandoned the calf.

She had all the features of a newborn, the umbilical sheath, brand new skin,

hairs were long, everything that tells us that this was our Easter Sunday baby.

I've been working with the team very closely to get her to take that bottle.

When I first arrived, she was really chewing on the bottle a

lot and flaring her lips.

You need to be able to get that bottle into their mouth, and you do need to

on to them.

And so the biggest thing is trying to figure out what makes her comfortable.

Like, yeah, I'm not doing anything.

I'm not holding her mouth. Awesome.

I was able to come from a different angle and be a little less hands -on

actually was really just kind of cupping her face instead of holding around her

lips. She seemed to really like that better.

I love hearing that foot noise.

And once she got a little bit of that taste, she started to take the bottle.

And...

That's an amazing feeling when you figure out what that animal wants and

you're going to be successful.

They were relieved and excited and they had been so nervous for

that animal and put so much time and love and effort into it for her to take

that bottle.

I don't know if there's really anything more incredible.

am extremely grateful for all the help Molly and the people at Zootampa have

brought to us.

Molly, I love you!

Nanichi has a long way to go. It'll be really great to hear she is gaining

weight. And once they start to feel better, you really start to see their

personality shine.

She sleeps a lot right now, which is kind of expected of a baby, but she's

adorable and I really feel optimistic about her.

Being able to share my knowledge and help this team was an incredible

experience.

Who wants to come to Puerto Rico?

We're going to have an exchange program.

I'll take it. Every week we send one, you send one.

All right,

Kazuki.

Today's the day.

It's kind of like grown hog day here. We keep coming over to watch Kazuki come

outside. All right, I'm going to go inside and go ahead and ship these guys

Okay. We've seen Kazuki grow and change so much in the last year and a half. I

mean, Kazuki's doing everything else by herself.

Yeah. She's swinging from the very, very top props. She's joining in on the song

when mom and dad sing along.

So this crossing in and out across the entryway to the night house is really

last big milestone.

Kazuki, are you going to go out like a big girl all by yourself? You look

Moment of truth. Moment of truth.

I fell leg.

One. Aw.

Belle, maybe she'll come from there.

Kazuki, you can do it.

You can do it, Kazuki.

Oh, my God.

Yay!

Look at her. She looks so little doing that. That's a big jump.

Kazuki jumps off of Dad, and she takes the leap down the rock and runs across

out on Habitat, and Jane and I finally see it.

You did it.

You're a big girl now, Kazuki.

Kazuki didn't disappoint. She did exactly what we were hoping she would

now nothing can stop her.

That was awesome. That was.

I'm glad I saw that. Yep.

All right.

Off to Orangutan.

Oh, hello.

Hi, Orion.

Sunny left us a couple weeks ago.

She's doing great, which I would expect.

So all good things, all green lights for Sunny. So this is Sahara up front, who

is Sunny's mom.

And Daddy's coming up right here.

Good boy.

Where's your baby?

Sahara actually just had another baby. So the circle of Nyala kids continue.

Want some green?

Where's your baby?

Orion is an excellent breeder.

He does it very well.

Where is your child?

Why is he hiding?

Our new baby is another boy.

Where's Bill?

We have actually named the baby. His name is Bill Nyala.

It's just so funny to me. Hello.

I have always wanted a Bill Nyala. And now that I have one, I'm going to say

name constantly because it just makes me giggle.

There will always be a place for Sunny in our hearts. You never forget the kids

that you have. But now we really need to focus on the kids we have here. So lots

of love and attention is going to go to Bill.

Bill, Bill, Bill.

See?

Fun. It's all about the little things here.

to release our manatee, Belissima.

Her blood work's normal and she's been doing really well.

She's gained a ton of weight. She's strong. She's beautiful.

She's ready to go home.

The people that are here today for Belissima's release are a true

of the number of people all over the state of Florida that it takes to help

these manatees. I was hoping that you guys like... Everybody who was there

be here today. Like, this is such a big one.

We have members from law enforcement and from FWC that were part of her initial

rescue and are going to be part of the team that, you know, monitors her and

gets reports of her and lets us know if, you know, things are going well. She's

a miracle manatee, kind of.

Have you seen her since?

I saw her one time when we talked about it. Okay, that's what I'm like. Every

time you guys come, I was always like, you have to see her.

It's very powerful being able to connect to all pieces of this rescue and

rehabilitation and now release for this animal that has made such an impact on

so many people across the state of Florida.

Hello, Angel Face.

If we could get her in the water kind of quickly, she's just warm. Warm? Okay,

sure. Just watch her tail once we're in the water.

One, two, three.

The island where she was stranded is not far from here. And last time we were

here, when we released the manatee, there's a lot of food right there.

So she's going to be very happy about that.

Are you a gold?

Good girl. Good job,

everyone.

Seeing her swim off gracefully and peacefully back into her home waters is

really amazing thing. And it's something that I think.

Very few people are lucky enough to be a part of. So it's a very special moment.

There she is. See her?

Oh, yeah.

It is a very emotional thing to see her go off. We have just really become

invested in this animal.

It feels really good. There's a lot of emotions.

Really cool.

You got it. You got it.

It's happy.

It was a huge honor to work with Bellissima. She's definitely the most

turnaround story I've ever seen in a rehabilitated marine mammal and not

something. So it was a huge honor to be able to be a part of her team that was

so dedicated to getting her back to healthy so we could send her back home.

She's going to go make babies. She's going to stay away from boats and

No more islands. No more islands.

Ciao, Bella.

I'm my angel.