Internship Journal
Title: First Day
Date: May 12, 2014
Today was my first day of internship and it was quite interesting. I met my mentor, Erika Nilson, and the rest of the people I would be around during my time at internship. The first thing I did in the morning was go with Pacifique to go get my uniform, I.D. and name tag. After I got those items I changed and I had my first experience performing a necroscopy, which is an examination after death.
The first necroscopy I observed Ms. Erika do was on a seal. The seal was badly infected with pneumonia. We had to cut the seal open and make sure all the organs looked fine. I learned a lot about anatomy and where the organs go. Once we made sure the organs were saved we saved the standard organs they save for every animal, which are the liver and kidney. In special cases they save the blood which later becomes serum. On this seal they had to culture the liver and stick a Q-Tip in it which was sent back to the lab for test. We continued on another seal that was still a pup and performed the necroscopy. I had never seen what fresh organs look like from out of the body.
The last seal we did of the day was special. It had to be euthanized because it had a bad gunshot wound to the head. They gave the seal a large shot that had the euthanizer and stuck it into his chest which poked the seals heart. When I saw the procedure happen, I did not know they were putting the seal down. I realized that he had been put down when we had to perform a necroscopy on him.
The seal laid on the floor and we began to cut him up. Everything looked normal inside, he had a few parasites, but it was rare to find an adult sea lion that did not have them. When we got to his head there was a large gunshot in his skull. It was hard to believe that he had survived after that, he must of been in excruciating pain. His eye ball socket was swollen and his eye appeared to be blown out. When Ms. Erika saw the wound this poor animal had, she got emotional and began to cry.
This first day was a lot to take in, but it showed me how important it is to be kind to the animals in our environment and how important research is. Ms. Erika also told me that I would need to pick my favorite organ.
Title: Bat Ray Siblings
Date: May 13, 2014
My second day of internship began with filling slides of tissue. Although it wasn’t as lively, it showed me what they did with the tissue they saved after they performed microscopy. Seeing all the different slides was kind of fascinating, but the only thing that brought down my fascination was having to file them and re-organize the others.
After I was done filing the slides and Ms. Erika was done with her emails, we went down to the lab and performed a necroscopy on another seal. Once we had finished with the necroscopy, we moved on to the other animals. This was very exciting because Ms. Erika and I tag teamed on two Bat Rays that were born dead. I was also nervous because I had never cut open an animal before. We cut open the Bat Rays and began to check them and compared the organs because one was malformed and the other one was not. After we did the Bat Rays, we moved on to birds. We tagged teamed on these birds, but the only difference was that they were not the same species. I had a Brown Pelican and Ms. Erika had a penguin. This was quite interesting because I saw the difference between a land bird and a bird that flies.
When I cut open the pelican it was strange because the inside of its skin was kind of like bubble wrap. Ms. Erika explained this to me and said that it was because the bird swoops down fast and that is what helps it float. I had quite an interesting day and I began to love my internship more that I already had!
Title: Livers
Date: May 14, 2014
Today the day started off with computer filling, it was hard but it became tedious after repeatedly doing it. When I was filling, I got to see what the slides I had filed the day before actually looked like through a microscope. I was filling through files from 1997 of slides from all different species of animals. This wasn’t the funnest thing to do, but it gave me an insight to Ms. Erika’s job. That day started off with no dead animals, which was quite exciting for Ms. Erika.
I was filling slides until lunch and when I left for lunch, I uncovered a really nice spot to eat at. It was by the marina and it had a view of the bay. It was very peaceful and relaxing, until I was overwhelmed with the 100 degree temperature and had to go inside.
When lunch was over we had gotten news of a dead seal that was picked up from the beach. While Ms. Erika began to perform a necroscopy, I began to trim the tissue that was already prepared from the formalin. Formalin is a chemical that the stored tissue was preserved in, it kept it the body parts the same as it was the day we took it out. Trimming the tissue wasn’t hard, but it was something you had to get used to. The biggest problem I had was separating the organs and using the bag sealer. Once I had finished trimming the tissue, it was stored and ready to be shipped off to the company that put them onto slides.
I had a good day at internships and I am excited for what is to come next! Today I also realized what my favorite organ of the body was. My favorite organ in the body is the liver because of its texture. The only downside is the horrible traffic to and from my internship, it takes me about an hour to get there and to my house.
Title: Good Monday
Date: May 19, 2014
Today started off really well because there was no traffic on my way to Seaworld and I got there twenty minutes early. The day began with so computer filling, and I received my first box of slides that I trimmed. Trimming is when you take the body parts out of the formalin and you cut each one into a small piece and then put it into a cassette with holds about five other parts and is placed in formalin again and then sent to the lab to be put on a slide.
When I received it back, Ms. Erika told me that she would have to go over trimming with me again because I didn’t do some things right. I didn’t really group the tissues right or cut them right, and they weren’t the quality she expected. This was a lesson because I felt disappointed in myself for not being able to get the job done right.
Later that day we began to trim more tissues and I actually completed it right because Ms. Erika and I tagged teamed on the trimming. I was asking her questions will she was right beside me trimming. This was very helpful because I had trouble telling apart the different pieces apart. She did a mini lesson and I began to recognize the parts by myself.
Today I also watched Ms. Erika do a necropsy on a Harbor Seal which was different because it only had two liver lobes and not five like a sea lion, they’re also smaller and cuter. The Harbor Seal had really bad pneumonia and its lungs were horrible. Itls pneumonia was parasitic because when we cut into the lungs there were worms. When we placed the lungs in formalin they didn’t float which meant that it did not have any air in it at the time of death. Lungs are supposed to have air even after death so that was a bad sign.
Later that day we both tagged teamed Brown Pelicans side by side. I had to cut out its internal organs which was difficult because it’s lungs are really delicate and they're attached to the bones. Once I finished taking out its organs, I had realized I have been over my time to leave by thirty minutes. Which made me realize how quickly time passes when you’re doing something you like.
Title: Thoughtful Tuesday
Date May 20, 2014
Today I began with filling on the computer again, but luckily I finished all the filing today! After I finished the filling we went down to the necropsy room and started to investigate why a female sea lion died. The sea lion looked fine from the outside but once we cut it we saw a large spot in its neck that looked like an explosion. This was really weird because it had nothing on its outside to tell that it was like that on its inside. We took pictures and samples of each organ and a piece of the mini explosion.
For the rest of the day we trimmed tissue. I was getting better at trimming because I could actually tell apart the pieces. My favorite thing to trim was the seals and sea lions because they’re pieces were large and very uniform. My least favorite was trimming the birds because they’re insides were weird looking. Learning to trim the brain was quite difficult because you have to make the cuts exact and you cannot butcher them. If you butcher them, they won’t look clear on the slides when they’re created.
I was quite happy with the progress I had made while trimming today, and was excited to do it again the next day!
Title: Wednesday
Date: May 21, 2014
Today started off with computer filling again, there were also no dead animals which was strange because I was used to at least having one dead animal per day. I filled shipments into an excel spreadsheet and by the time I finished it was already lunch time.
When lunch was over, it was time to go down to the necropsy room. When I went down to necropsy I continued trimming the tissue, until I had to go watch a dolphin operation. One of the female dolphins named Ripley hadn’t been eating and the vets need to check what was wrong with her. To check on the dolphin, vets had to lift Ripley up from the water using a crane and net. Ms. Erika said that this was how dolphins flew.
Once the dolphin was on the floor, the stuck a camera down its throat to its stomach. They had to see what was wrong with her stomach. Once they looked inside her stomach, they saw that there was something wrong and went to get her antibiotics. Once they brought back the antibiotics, they administered them to her through a thick needle. The dolphins were trained since birth to be used to getting shots and swimming when told to into the net. Seeing the dolphin operation was the end to my day and I couldn’t be happier that it ended that way.
Title: Thursday
Date May 22, 2014
The day started off with more computer filing and feeding the fish Bobby V. We did not have any dead animals when we walked in, but we did get one later that day. The animal we got was called a Curl-Crested Aracari, which Ms. Erika explained was a funny looking bird because the feathers on its head because really curly and looked like jerry curls. This bird wasn’t found dead or a animal from the park, it was from a breeder who had paid to get a necropsy. The bird was in well nutritional condition and we could not figure out why it died.
For the rest of the day we got more progress done on the trimming because there were no other dead animals. I was getting really good at separating the parts and trimming the pieces. The only problem I had was trimming the heart and brain because they’re difficult.
Title: No Work Friday
Date: May 23, 2014
Today we got into the office and there were no dead animals again. We didn’t really have any work to do, so we just went down to necropsy to trim and organize the fridge. After we did that, we got a dead baby penguin. This penguin was special because it was one of the first to be artificially inseminated and they were really curious to find out why it died.
Outside of the penguins body there was nothing that looked weird, the only thing that looked weird internally was its yolk sack. It’s yolk sack looked quite large, and we weren’t sure if it was supposed to be that big for that age. After we finished taking samples of each par, we cleaned and went to go explore the park for a little bit and ride Manta. They had added a new part to the park that I thought was really cool. They had placed about multiple little pools that had different fish the guest could reach inside and touch. They had sharks, crabs and cleaner fish. The most unique were the cleaner fish because you reach inside and if you stay completely still they’ll eat your dead skin off. This sounds painful, but it just tickles. After we were done exploring the park, we went back and it was the end of the day.
Title: Mackenzie’s Visit
Date: May 27, 2014
Today we didn’t really have much to do, we only had one seal lion that we a quick necropsy on. The seal lion didn’t have anything unusual and wasn’t very interesting. For the rest of the day I did tedious computer work until Mackenzie showed up for the site visit. I explained to her how I tell apart the organs and what we do to them. I also got introduced to the project Dr. Judy St. Leger wanted me to complete during my internship. For the project I had to gather all the research papers they had written and cite them in APA format and place them into a document in alphabetical order. For a few of them there was a library that had some of the papers in there, but for the rest I had to search the doctors name through google scholar and make sure it was for them and it was while they were at seaworld. Searching through google scholar was the most annoying part, especially when the doctor had a common name or a lot of papers.
Title: Research Wednesday
Date: May 28, 2014
My day today just consisted of doing the research paper scavenger hunt and two interesting necropsies. The first one we did was on a California Sea Lion, this sea lion had various things wrong with it internally that were not apparent on the outside. One of the sea lions lungs had collapsed and fell down and the thin layer that protected it was filled with air so it looked like a balloon. Most of the organs were filled with nasty puss pockets. The sea lion had been rescued and it was septic, which meant that it had an infection that had spread entirely throughout its body. The bad infection was caused by the sea lion having a bad lesion that had gotten bacteria in it. The sea lion also had a weird bump on his nose, which under it had flesh overtaken by bacteria. Overall this had been one of the worst cases of infections I had seen yet.
The next thing we did a necropsy on was an eel. Doing this eel was fun because it was something weird and Ms. Erika hated eels. Cutting the eel open was interesting mainly because it had two jaws, one of the jaw sat were its gills were and came out to capture the prey. Eels are nasty looking animals, but they’re overall pretty cool.
Title: Dolphins
Date May 29, 2014
Today consisted of more tedious computer work, searching through google was not exactly easy to do. My highlight of the day was watching the dolphins. Since the play I mainly work at is next to four large pools that have dolphins I get to see them a lot. But today it was different because they had replaced the female dolphins with male ones. Since they were male, they were more energetic and played a lot. They were constantly jumping up and down and splashing. The females usually just swim around and don’t do anything unless they’re asked too. I had also realized that the dolphins were my favorite animals, I love how they’re so nice and friendly. They’re also very obedient, trained and smart. If I had to choose any animal to be, I’d be a dolphin.
For the rest of the day I trimmed some of the few cases we had left. Today I had done the brain without asking any questions and it came out the way Ms. Erika liked it. That was the second highlight of my day because I was really starting to dislike cutting brains.
Title: Monday
Date: June 2,2014
Today I woke up late which started my day pretty bad. Another thing that added to my monday being bad was that there was a lot of traffic on my way to Seaworld. I am really beginning to hate traffic. When I got to my internship I had to finish doing my computer project. My project was really tedious and took a long time to do because the computer I was using was so slow. We also had to ship out some of the weirdest things I have ever shipped out. We had to ship out three different bodies of penguins that had been in the freezer for a long time. One of them had been in the freezer since 2011. It was cool to see how they hadn’t decayed and remained in the same condition when they were placed in there. We had to get boxes to fit the penguins, so we got to go inside the top of an aquarium that stored boxes. Going into the aquarium was pretty cool because I say the fishes they had. They had piranhas, some type of alligator fish, huge turtles, etc. When we walked by the turtles they opened their mouths expecting food. Today we necropsied a Cownose ray that had died. This was the first time Ms. Erika had done which was pretty cool to know because I wouldn’t be the only one that would be unfamiliar to it. Doing the ray was interesting because for the first time, Ms. Erika was unsure of what something. Seeing that she didn’t know what something was made me feel better about not knowing stuff. Once we did the ray we were done for the day in the necropsy room and went back to continue doing the computer work. My days at Seaworld were passing by really quickly.
Title: Scoliosis
Date: June 3, 2014
The day started off again with having to do computer work. I had to go back to the document and add all the authors in for all the references. Doing this was very tedious and annoying. I did my computer task until lunch. When I got my food for lunch, two Seagulls had a planned an ambush for my food. At first one Seagull swept down and hit my head which distracted me and made me stop. Then another Seagull swept down and stole my breadstick with two pieces of my tri-tip. I went and told Ms. Erika the situation and she went with me to get a replacement. After lunch Ms. Erika had to leave for a while and I got to go explore the park as a regular person and not as an employee. I walked through all the exhibitions and saw the Beluga whales and Walruses. I was so surprised to see how big the Beluga whales were because I had never seen one in person. Once I got back, we got world of a rescued dolphin who had scoliosis. The dolphin’s tail was basically a hill. This was strange because dolphins with scoliosis tails usually went the other way not up and down. While the dolphin was coming back to get help, it died, so that meant we would have to do a necropsy on a dolphin the next day.
Title: Wednesday
Date: June 4, 2014
Today I got in early at 7:30, the traffic was worse than other days. It seems like the early I go the worse the traffic gets. The first thing I did today was go down to necropsy and trim a Sea Lion. I got to use Ms. Erika’s professional camera to take pictures of the different pieces I trimmed. I had to suddenly stop trimming to go with Ms. Erika and another vet-tech to an expensive pet hospital in La Jolla. We were taking the dead dolphin with scoliosis to get x-rays of its tail. This dolphin was most likely going to be a special case for the doctors so they wanted to get the best of the best x-rays. They got a 3D x-ray that was super cool. It was a scan of the entire dolphins skeleton in 3D. At the expensive pet hospital they had the best coffee machine that made the best coffee. Once we were done getting the x-rays of the dead dolphin, we loaded him up and took him back. It was now time for lunch and after we were going to necropsy him. Doing the necropsy on him was tedious because he was a cetacean. Since he was a cetacean, we had to take a lot of measurements of everything. Once we got into his body, it was pretty obvious to Ms. Erika and the other doctors who wanted to observe that his organs suffered as well because of his deformity. His organs were kind of pushed up and he had a lot of muscle because he had to work so hard to swim. This was one of my favorite necropsies.
Title: Thursday
Date: June 5, 2014
Today started off with computer stuff again, but we stopped early because Ms. Erika had a vet-tech from an organization there with two interns who she had to give a tour too. Ms. Erika gave them a tour of everything in the back of Seaworld and showed them the rescue animals they had. After this I went back to finish taking pictures of my trimmed tissue and brain. That was basically the rest of my day and I was finished.
Title: Last Day
Date: June 6, 2014
Today I brought my mentor and another corner mate Janet Starbucks. I brought them each a Vanilla Latte. I decided to buy them Starbucks because I’ve came to realize that they love coffee. Everyday since I’ve been there, they each drink a cup of coffee each morning. Drink coffee to them is like a ritual. The day before I had also asked Ms. Erika what her favorite drink at Starbucks was and she said a Vanilla Latte. I was pretty sad that today was my last day because I really loved my internship. I had grown accustomed to driving to Seaworld everyday and eating the amazing breakfasts and lunches they had. I had also learned so much and grown as a person and I wanted to continue doing this. I really loved working and pretending to live the life of an adult. Ms. Erika surprised me today by taking me to go take pictures with the dolphins. She knew that dolphins were my favorite animals and that I went to go see them everyday. I got to go into the spot where the trainers threw them fish. I had the dolphin “Bell”, jump and I threw him a fish. Being able to do this with the dolphin was one of the greatest surprise ever. For lunch Ms. Erika accompanied me to go eat lunch because they had fish tacos today. We had lunch together and talked for a while and went to go get a shaved ice. This was one of the best lunches I had during the duration of my time there. After we ate lunch we went to necropsy the last two animals of my time there. That day a Sea Lion died and a puffin died the day before. We first did the Sea Lion and then did the Puffin. I began to realize how much I actually loved doing this, which was pretty strange. I was shocked at how used to blood and dead things I was. This made me realize that I can probably handle being a doctor and maybe even a medical examiner. Doing this internship made me excited for my future because I was surrounded by people who were content with life and that is what I want to be in my future. This was the end to the best internship I could have possibly asked for, it is amazing all the things I had learned.
Date: May 12, 2014
Today was my first day of internship and it was quite interesting. I met my mentor, Erika Nilson, and the rest of the people I would be around during my time at internship. The first thing I did in the morning was go with Pacifique to go get my uniform, I.D. and name tag. After I got those items I changed and I had my first experience performing a necroscopy, which is an examination after death.
The first necroscopy I observed Ms. Erika do was on a seal. The seal was badly infected with pneumonia. We had to cut the seal open and make sure all the organs looked fine. I learned a lot about anatomy and where the organs go. Once we made sure the organs were saved we saved the standard organs they save for every animal, which are the liver and kidney. In special cases they save the blood which later becomes serum. On this seal they had to culture the liver and stick a Q-Tip in it which was sent back to the lab for test. We continued on another seal that was still a pup and performed the necroscopy. I had never seen what fresh organs look like from out of the body.
The last seal we did of the day was special. It had to be euthanized because it had a bad gunshot wound to the head. They gave the seal a large shot that had the euthanizer and stuck it into his chest which poked the seals heart. When I saw the procedure happen, I did not know they were putting the seal down. I realized that he had been put down when we had to perform a necroscopy on him.
The seal laid on the floor and we began to cut him up. Everything looked normal inside, he had a few parasites, but it was rare to find an adult sea lion that did not have them. When we got to his head there was a large gunshot in his skull. It was hard to believe that he had survived after that, he must of been in excruciating pain. His eye ball socket was swollen and his eye appeared to be blown out. When Ms. Erika saw the wound this poor animal had, she got emotional and began to cry.
This first day was a lot to take in, but it showed me how important it is to be kind to the animals in our environment and how important research is. Ms. Erika also told me that I would need to pick my favorite organ.
Title: Bat Ray Siblings
Date: May 13, 2014
My second day of internship began with filling slides of tissue. Although it wasn’t as lively, it showed me what they did with the tissue they saved after they performed microscopy. Seeing all the different slides was kind of fascinating, but the only thing that brought down my fascination was having to file them and re-organize the others.
After I was done filing the slides and Ms. Erika was done with her emails, we went down to the lab and performed a necroscopy on another seal. Once we had finished with the necroscopy, we moved on to the other animals. This was very exciting because Ms. Erika and I tag teamed on two Bat Rays that were born dead. I was also nervous because I had never cut open an animal before. We cut open the Bat Rays and began to check them and compared the organs because one was malformed and the other one was not. After we did the Bat Rays, we moved on to birds. We tagged teamed on these birds, but the only difference was that they were not the same species. I had a Brown Pelican and Ms. Erika had a penguin. This was quite interesting because I saw the difference between a land bird and a bird that flies.
When I cut open the pelican it was strange because the inside of its skin was kind of like bubble wrap. Ms. Erika explained this to me and said that it was because the bird swoops down fast and that is what helps it float. I had quite an interesting day and I began to love my internship more that I already had!
Title: Livers
Date: May 14, 2014
Today the day started off with computer filling, it was hard but it became tedious after repeatedly doing it. When I was filling, I got to see what the slides I had filed the day before actually looked like through a microscope. I was filling through files from 1997 of slides from all different species of animals. This wasn’t the funnest thing to do, but it gave me an insight to Ms. Erika’s job. That day started off with no dead animals, which was quite exciting for Ms. Erika.
I was filling slides until lunch and when I left for lunch, I uncovered a really nice spot to eat at. It was by the marina and it had a view of the bay. It was very peaceful and relaxing, until I was overwhelmed with the 100 degree temperature and had to go inside.
When lunch was over we had gotten news of a dead seal that was picked up from the beach. While Ms. Erika began to perform a necroscopy, I began to trim the tissue that was already prepared from the formalin. Formalin is a chemical that the stored tissue was preserved in, it kept it the body parts the same as it was the day we took it out. Trimming the tissue wasn’t hard, but it was something you had to get used to. The biggest problem I had was separating the organs and using the bag sealer. Once I had finished trimming the tissue, it was stored and ready to be shipped off to the company that put them onto slides.
I had a good day at internships and I am excited for what is to come next! Today I also realized what my favorite organ of the body was. My favorite organ in the body is the liver because of its texture. The only downside is the horrible traffic to and from my internship, it takes me about an hour to get there and to my house.
Title: Good Monday
Date: May 19, 2014
Today started off really well because there was no traffic on my way to Seaworld and I got there twenty minutes early. The day began with so computer filling, and I received my first box of slides that I trimmed. Trimming is when you take the body parts out of the formalin and you cut each one into a small piece and then put it into a cassette with holds about five other parts and is placed in formalin again and then sent to the lab to be put on a slide.
When I received it back, Ms. Erika told me that she would have to go over trimming with me again because I didn’t do some things right. I didn’t really group the tissues right or cut them right, and they weren’t the quality she expected. This was a lesson because I felt disappointed in myself for not being able to get the job done right.
Later that day we began to trim more tissues and I actually completed it right because Ms. Erika and I tagged teamed on the trimming. I was asking her questions will she was right beside me trimming. This was very helpful because I had trouble telling apart the different pieces apart. She did a mini lesson and I began to recognize the parts by myself.
Today I also watched Ms. Erika do a necropsy on a Harbor Seal which was different because it only had two liver lobes and not five like a sea lion, they’re also smaller and cuter. The Harbor Seal had really bad pneumonia and its lungs were horrible. Itls pneumonia was parasitic because when we cut into the lungs there were worms. When we placed the lungs in formalin they didn’t float which meant that it did not have any air in it at the time of death. Lungs are supposed to have air even after death so that was a bad sign.
Later that day we both tagged teamed Brown Pelicans side by side. I had to cut out its internal organs which was difficult because it’s lungs are really delicate and they're attached to the bones. Once I finished taking out its organs, I had realized I have been over my time to leave by thirty minutes. Which made me realize how quickly time passes when you’re doing something you like.
Title: Thoughtful Tuesday
Date May 20, 2014
Today I began with filling on the computer again, but luckily I finished all the filing today! After I finished the filling we went down to the necropsy room and started to investigate why a female sea lion died. The sea lion looked fine from the outside but once we cut it we saw a large spot in its neck that looked like an explosion. This was really weird because it had nothing on its outside to tell that it was like that on its inside. We took pictures and samples of each organ and a piece of the mini explosion.
For the rest of the day we trimmed tissue. I was getting better at trimming because I could actually tell apart the pieces. My favorite thing to trim was the seals and sea lions because they’re pieces were large and very uniform. My least favorite was trimming the birds because they’re insides were weird looking. Learning to trim the brain was quite difficult because you have to make the cuts exact and you cannot butcher them. If you butcher them, they won’t look clear on the slides when they’re created.
I was quite happy with the progress I had made while trimming today, and was excited to do it again the next day!
Title: Wednesday
Date: May 21, 2014
Today started off with computer filling again, there were also no dead animals which was strange because I was used to at least having one dead animal per day. I filled shipments into an excel spreadsheet and by the time I finished it was already lunch time.
When lunch was over, it was time to go down to the necropsy room. When I went down to necropsy I continued trimming the tissue, until I had to go watch a dolphin operation. One of the female dolphins named Ripley hadn’t been eating and the vets need to check what was wrong with her. To check on the dolphin, vets had to lift Ripley up from the water using a crane and net. Ms. Erika said that this was how dolphins flew.
Once the dolphin was on the floor, the stuck a camera down its throat to its stomach. They had to see what was wrong with her stomach. Once they looked inside her stomach, they saw that there was something wrong and went to get her antibiotics. Once they brought back the antibiotics, they administered them to her through a thick needle. The dolphins were trained since birth to be used to getting shots and swimming when told to into the net. Seeing the dolphin operation was the end to my day and I couldn’t be happier that it ended that way.
Title: Thursday
Date May 22, 2014
The day started off with more computer filing and feeding the fish Bobby V. We did not have any dead animals when we walked in, but we did get one later that day. The animal we got was called a Curl-Crested Aracari, which Ms. Erika explained was a funny looking bird because the feathers on its head because really curly and looked like jerry curls. This bird wasn’t found dead or a animal from the park, it was from a breeder who had paid to get a necropsy. The bird was in well nutritional condition and we could not figure out why it died.
For the rest of the day we got more progress done on the trimming because there were no other dead animals. I was getting really good at separating the parts and trimming the pieces. The only problem I had was trimming the heart and brain because they’re difficult.
Title: No Work Friday
Date: May 23, 2014
Today we got into the office and there were no dead animals again. We didn’t really have any work to do, so we just went down to necropsy to trim and organize the fridge. After we did that, we got a dead baby penguin. This penguin was special because it was one of the first to be artificially inseminated and they were really curious to find out why it died.
Outside of the penguins body there was nothing that looked weird, the only thing that looked weird internally was its yolk sack. It’s yolk sack looked quite large, and we weren’t sure if it was supposed to be that big for that age. After we finished taking samples of each par, we cleaned and went to go explore the park for a little bit and ride Manta. They had added a new part to the park that I thought was really cool. They had placed about multiple little pools that had different fish the guest could reach inside and touch. They had sharks, crabs and cleaner fish. The most unique were the cleaner fish because you reach inside and if you stay completely still they’ll eat your dead skin off. This sounds painful, but it just tickles. After we were done exploring the park, we went back and it was the end of the day.
Title: Mackenzie’s Visit
Date: May 27, 2014
Today we didn’t really have much to do, we only had one seal lion that we a quick necropsy on. The seal lion didn’t have anything unusual and wasn’t very interesting. For the rest of the day I did tedious computer work until Mackenzie showed up for the site visit. I explained to her how I tell apart the organs and what we do to them. I also got introduced to the project Dr. Judy St. Leger wanted me to complete during my internship. For the project I had to gather all the research papers they had written and cite them in APA format and place them into a document in alphabetical order. For a few of them there was a library that had some of the papers in there, but for the rest I had to search the doctors name through google scholar and make sure it was for them and it was while they were at seaworld. Searching through google scholar was the most annoying part, especially when the doctor had a common name or a lot of papers.
Title: Research Wednesday
Date: May 28, 2014
My day today just consisted of doing the research paper scavenger hunt and two interesting necropsies. The first one we did was on a California Sea Lion, this sea lion had various things wrong with it internally that were not apparent on the outside. One of the sea lions lungs had collapsed and fell down and the thin layer that protected it was filled with air so it looked like a balloon. Most of the organs were filled with nasty puss pockets. The sea lion had been rescued and it was septic, which meant that it had an infection that had spread entirely throughout its body. The bad infection was caused by the sea lion having a bad lesion that had gotten bacteria in it. The sea lion also had a weird bump on his nose, which under it had flesh overtaken by bacteria. Overall this had been one of the worst cases of infections I had seen yet.
The next thing we did a necropsy on was an eel. Doing this eel was fun because it was something weird and Ms. Erika hated eels. Cutting the eel open was interesting mainly because it had two jaws, one of the jaw sat were its gills were and came out to capture the prey. Eels are nasty looking animals, but they’re overall pretty cool.
Title: Dolphins
Date May 29, 2014
Today consisted of more tedious computer work, searching through google was not exactly easy to do. My highlight of the day was watching the dolphins. Since the play I mainly work at is next to four large pools that have dolphins I get to see them a lot. But today it was different because they had replaced the female dolphins with male ones. Since they were male, they were more energetic and played a lot. They were constantly jumping up and down and splashing. The females usually just swim around and don’t do anything unless they’re asked too. I had also realized that the dolphins were my favorite animals, I love how they’re so nice and friendly. They’re also very obedient, trained and smart. If I had to choose any animal to be, I’d be a dolphin.
For the rest of the day I trimmed some of the few cases we had left. Today I had done the brain without asking any questions and it came out the way Ms. Erika liked it. That was the second highlight of my day because I was really starting to dislike cutting brains.
Title: Monday
Date: June 2,2014
Today I woke up late which started my day pretty bad. Another thing that added to my monday being bad was that there was a lot of traffic on my way to Seaworld. I am really beginning to hate traffic. When I got to my internship I had to finish doing my computer project. My project was really tedious and took a long time to do because the computer I was using was so slow. We also had to ship out some of the weirdest things I have ever shipped out. We had to ship out three different bodies of penguins that had been in the freezer for a long time. One of them had been in the freezer since 2011. It was cool to see how they hadn’t decayed and remained in the same condition when they were placed in there. We had to get boxes to fit the penguins, so we got to go inside the top of an aquarium that stored boxes. Going into the aquarium was pretty cool because I say the fishes they had. They had piranhas, some type of alligator fish, huge turtles, etc. When we walked by the turtles they opened their mouths expecting food. Today we necropsied a Cownose ray that had died. This was the first time Ms. Erika had done which was pretty cool to know because I wouldn’t be the only one that would be unfamiliar to it. Doing the ray was interesting because for the first time, Ms. Erika was unsure of what something. Seeing that she didn’t know what something was made me feel better about not knowing stuff. Once we did the ray we were done for the day in the necropsy room and went back to continue doing the computer work. My days at Seaworld were passing by really quickly.
Title: Scoliosis
Date: June 3, 2014
The day started off again with having to do computer work. I had to go back to the document and add all the authors in for all the references. Doing this was very tedious and annoying. I did my computer task until lunch. When I got my food for lunch, two Seagulls had a planned an ambush for my food. At first one Seagull swept down and hit my head which distracted me and made me stop. Then another Seagull swept down and stole my breadstick with two pieces of my tri-tip. I went and told Ms. Erika the situation and she went with me to get a replacement. After lunch Ms. Erika had to leave for a while and I got to go explore the park as a regular person and not as an employee. I walked through all the exhibitions and saw the Beluga whales and Walruses. I was so surprised to see how big the Beluga whales were because I had never seen one in person. Once I got back, we got world of a rescued dolphin who had scoliosis. The dolphin’s tail was basically a hill. This was strange because dolphins with scoliosis tails usually went the other way not up and down. While the dolphin was coming back to get help, it died, so that meant we would have to do a necropsy on a dolphin the next day.
Title: Wednesday
Date: June 4, 2014
Today I got in early at 7:30, the traffic was worse than other days. It seems like the early I go the worse the traffic gets. The first thing I did today was go down to necropsy and trim a Sea Lion. I got to use Ms. Erika’s professional camera to take pictures of the different pieces I trimmed. I had to suddenly stop trimming to go with Ms. Erika and another vet-tech to an expensive pet hospital in La Jolla. We were taking the dead dolphin with scoliosis to get x-rays of its tail. This dolphin was most likely going to be a special case for the doctors so they wanted to get the best of the best x-rays. They got a 3D x-ray that was super cool. It was a scan of the entire dolphins skeleton in 3D. At the expensive pet hospital they had the best coffee machine that made the best coffee. Once we were done getting the x-rays of the dead dolphin, we loaded him up and took him back. It was now time for lunch and after we were going to necropsy him. Doing the necropsy on him was tedious because he was a cetacean. Since he was a cetacean, we had to take a lot of measurements of everything. Once we got into his body, it was pretty obvious to Ms. Erika and the other doctors who wanted to observe that his organs suffered as well because of his deformity. His organs were kind of pushed up and he had a lot of muscle because he had to work so hard to swim. This was one of my favorite necropsies.
Title: Thursday
Date: June 5, 2014
Today started off with computer stuff again, but we stopped early because Ms. Erika had a vet-tech from an organization there with two interns who she had to give a tour too. Ms. Erika gave them a tour of everything in the back of Seaworld and showed them the rescue animals they had. After this I went back to finish taking pictures of my trimmed tissue and brain. That was basically the rest of my day and I was finished.
Title: Last Day
Date: June 6, 2014
Today I brought my mentor and another corner mate Janet Starbucks. I brought them each a Vanilla Latte. I decided to buy them Starbucks because I’ve came to realize that they love coffee. Everyday since I’ve been there, they each drink a cup of coffee each morning. Drink coffee to them is like a ritual. The day before I had also asked Ms. Erika what her favorite drink at Starbucks was and she said a Vanilla Latte. I was pretty sad that today was my last day because I really loved my internship. I had grown accustomed to driving to Seaworld everyday and eating the amazing breakfasts and lunches they had. I had also learned so much and grown as a person and I wanted to continue doing this. I really loved working and pretending to live the life of an adult. Ms. Erika surprised me today by taking me to go take pictures with the dolphins. She knew that dolphins were my favorite animals and that I went to go see them everyday. I got to go into the spot where the trainers threw them fish. I had the dolphin “Bell”, jump and I threw him a fish. Being able to do this with the dolphin was one of the greatest surprise ever. For lunch Ms. Erika accompanied me to go eat lunch because they had fish tacos today. We had lunch together and talked for a while and went to go get a shaved ice. This was one of the best lunches I had during the duration of my time there. After we ate lunch we went to necropsy the last two animals of my time there. That day a Sea Lion died and a puffin died the day before. We first did the Sea Lion and then did the Puffin. I began to realize how much I actually loved doing this, which was pretty strange. I was shocked at how used to blood and dead things I was. This made me realize that I can probably handle being a doctor and maybe even a medical examiner. Doing this internship made me excited for my future because I was surrounded by people who were content with life and that is what I want to be in my future. This was the end to the best internship I could have possibly asked for, it is amazing all the things I had learned.