things off my chest.

#1, I am crazy about animals, as in I'm crazy driven to provide them awesome care, even

if they're not my own.

#2, Animals are really, really, really messy, and it's really hard to keep them clean and

happy.

#3, I log everything. Like, seriously, everything; I'm walking along, going about my business

and I'm like, "Oh, hey, it's 10:30," I'm like, "Hey, it's snowing; better write it down."

"Oh, so-and-so pooped; better write it down." Yeah, I log everything. It's crazy.

#4, I can chop veggies like nobody's mother. Wanna race?

#5, There's never an instance when you cannot learn something more about something; nobody

knows everything. Well... wait, maybe somebody does know everything there is currently available

to know about something, but that doesn't mean there isn't something more to discover.

[Intro]

Okay, so I think most children come into this world with a natural curiosity about nature

and animals, and western society just inundates them with a barrage of animal images over

and over. So, maybe I was brainwashed by animals, or maybe I came over it naturally. Whatever

the reason, I'm consumed by a desire to help animals and care for them in any aspect. So

I even love seeing other people with their animals and helping when I can. If you have

a question about your animal, please, feel free, ask in the comments below.

Number two. Yeah! Animals don't clean up after themselves.

Ah, more than half the time spent caring for these animals is spent cleaning up after them,

like their poop and pee and ravaged toys and, ah, other bodily fluids. [dramatic DUM DUM

DAAHHH music] Yep.

Number three. Logging is essential to knowing and caring

for your animals. It's priceless to be able to go back three, four months, even years,

to see if you are dealing with an illness, or you're managing a seasonal behavior, all

those things. You need to know that stuff. For example, we have a bird named Oliver,

and he's a Sun Conure and he got really ill about a year ago and we were worried that

he had this wasting disease that was really contagious to other birds, and for the safety

of the rest of our flock we might have to a necropsy which is the only way to determine

if that was the disease. A necropsy is an autopsy except on an animal which means euthanasia.

I hated that idea so I wanted to see if there was another option so I scoured all of his

backlogs, and I found out that he was sick. About four years ago he got sick and he recovered

from that illness so it was unlikely that he had that wasting disease, so we were able

to save his life because we did those logs. So yeah, logging is like ingrained in my everyday

life. l could seriously tell you everything that I ate today and every time me and my

sons went poo poo in the potty. Yeah, life of the party!

Number four. I love introducing all of my interns to the

basics of animal care. It's so fun seeing them learn all these new skills and acquire

these basic life skills. The best part is teaching them all to chop vegetables. It's

both hilarious and also really annoying. It brings back all these memories of me trying

to learn how to do chopping veggies. It would seriously take me like an hour or two every

other day to chop these vegetables and it was, my hand would cramp up, and it was just

terrible, but, um, I just learned to pair it with episodes of Buffy so, you know, it

wasn't so bad. So even if my interns never take care of animals

again, or chop veggies for animals, at least they have mad chopping skills, right? That's,

that's pretty cool.

And number five. So I am so excited to be doing this channel,

because it has not only sparked my passion to teach, but also to keep learning. There

is always room for improvement in everything in life. So I promise to keep learning about

everything animal if you promise to keep asking questions.

If you want to keep learning more about animals and learning how we make caring for them possible,

then subscribe to Animal Wonders Montana and join us on an adventure every week. If you

have a suggestion for an episode or any questions at all, please ask them. You can find us on

our website, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook... links are below.