Day 3

 What a great day!.. Today I got to see Steve Martin work his magic TWICE. The first time was with some corbids (Ravens and Crows). They were having issues coming near the bird door at the bottom which is used to load them in to travel crates. Steve started small with just stepping in and giving them small amounts of food through the bigger door. He did this a couple time before he moved down to the ground with them. He finally got the birds to be right in front of the bird door without them freaking out. It was crazy. This took all of maybe 15 mins. It was sooooo cool.  The next event was with a hornbill. This hornbill had never worked with steve so as soon as he stepped in to the birds enclosure the bird jump back in to the far corner to get as far as he could from him. So steve understood that behavior and stepped out and closed the door. The little steps were needed. Steve started with giving the bird blueberries (Her favorite) in her bowl. He waited for her to take the fruit from the dish before placing more in there. Once the bird was okay with steve being right there, steve moved to the front of the enclosure and open the door handing her a blueberry. Once she took it he would close the door. Steve repeated this step 7 more times . Once he noticed he had her trust he stepped in and started giving her fruit while he was in her space. She was perfectly fine. He even began to let her head fall backwards to allow steve to give her scratches.. It was soooo cute and so amazing. He had never worked with this bird and within 10 mins she was allowing him to touch her.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The connection that they had at the moment was strong. Steve believes that the relationship with the birds should be a partnership not a battle of who is dominate. This thought would be great for relationships with animals or people.  The rest of the day the gang and I worked on getting 500lb tents up  and putting up their heavy siding. We also discovered how mean Red Ants truly are and how fast they can react to intruders. They litterally covered about 2x6 feet area. Looked like a streak of red covering the tent. One thing I learned about fire ants is that they dont all bite randomly, one ant will send out a chemical cue telling everyone to bite at one time. So not only are you getting attached by ants you are getting I nice bite from every freaking one of them at the same time.. Freaking sucked. Around 6pm we called it a night a went home. Interns decided to do left overs for everyone so we just chilled again with a cold beer and good company. However, I was exhausted so I went to bed early.  Truly was an inspiring day.