Open House 2009

What a day!

To the best of my knowledge, Cornell is one of the only vet schools (if not THE only vet school) that does an Open House activity for the general public, and boy is it an experience... 8,000 to 10,000 people descend on our school and see booths and demos about everything from milking cows to ultrasound to a teddy bear hospital. If I had known about this as a kid, I would have begged to go to this WAY more than Disney (but then again, I'm kind of a nerd, so take that as you will). I was working at the "Pocket Pets" booth with three other vet students and our assorted furry (scaly, feathery) kids, and that was also quite an experience by itself... the line of visitors started at 10am when the doors opened and we had a constant flow of people until the school stopped letting people in at 4pm. We did have the most live animals of any "small animal" booth, therefore we were the coolest 8) Our little guys held up remarkably well, given the day they had; even though our job was technically "Educate the public", that was really secondary to "Protect the animals from the public" (though the public was actually very well behaved today). We educated a surprising number of people about the existence of chinchillas, and that ferrets are not rodents (they're carnivores), and that gerbils have tails and are not rats... but also offered a few serious tips on small exotics care and hopefully made some small critters' lives a little better. We also had a few critter ambassadors, including the famous Gideon the Bunny, who placidly (and totally unnaturally) sat through 8,000 head rubs, God bless his furry little head. (Gideon was rescued by my friend's animal hospital after being thrown out of a van, and we have a theory that he was actually a lab rabbit whose brain was swapped with a Labrador retriever).

While most of the day went wonderfully, I do have yet more proof that the avian species is out to get me... I was sitting with Gideon at one point, and was stationed next to the bird cages. We had a Senegal parrot sitting out two cages over, who decided she was bored and wanted a human to antagonize... because I am a prime target for this, I found myself suddenly trying to calm down a large white rabbit while balancing a parrot on my head. I thought we could work this out, since the other volunteers had been wearing her as a shoulder accessory all day, but pretty soon discovered that this particular parrot has a taste for both ears and glasses... add parrot-notched eyeglass frames to my collection of bird-induced damages. On the bright side, I did end the day with a clean shirt. Maybe someday we'll get along, just not today...