Summit Park - November

As a reminder, our community partner is the Dickerson Park Zoo, and our main goal is to get more people from the Drury campus and the community to volunteer. Our community partner has also asked us to redecorate the children’s maze, so that has been our main goal this month.

Towards the beginning of the month, Genevieve and I (Lauren) got to work closely with the animals. I was assigned the Africa exhibit where I helped feed the cheetahs, bongos, ostriches, and most importantly, a red-ruffed lemur named Cordelia. That was the highlight of my trip that day as I got to go into her exhibit and distracted her from eating the other lemur’s food by scratching her arms and petting her (I kid you not though I do not have pictures to prove it). The rest of the time was spent cleaning out the hippo, giraffe, and ostrich exhibits in retrospect, I should have worn boots. The Dickerson Park Zoo even offers free housing to its interns which is very helpful to one that I met from Canada. The zookeepers and administration care deeply about their members, employees, interns, and of course their animals. They even had a memorial for Henry, a hippo that recently passed away.

Lauren Pyle and I (Genevieve) also got to volunteer to work with the animals at the beginning of the month, which was fun. I helped the zookeeper with a variety of animals mainly in the Missouri Habitat area.  My favorite part had to be getting to put a pumpkin in the cage of the cougar and watch him play with it. Some of the other animals I helped was the otter, bobcats, a few more, and I helped clean the petting zoo for a little bit.

With the maze, at the beginning of the month, Lauren Pyle and I (Genevieve again) were able to take down the banners of the children’s maze with Chelsea Hoover, the person at the zoo we communicate with. Our original plan was to paint the banners there with our own designs, so we needed to clean them first. Chelsea recommended power washing them, so we took them to a car wash and did so. After that we went to Home Depot to get paint for the banners, only to find out that the only paint that was going to withstand the weather and wind was extremely expensive, so we had to scrap the idea. Instead, we decided that we would order new banners and design them ourselves. We currently have some designed now, but we most likely will not be able to get them until next semester since they need to be approved by Chelsea, and she will have to use her budget for the maze to purchase them due to the prices of them.

After that, we tried to get in contact with Chelsea about the banners and when we could put other decorations in the maze up. Sadly Chelsea was sick for a week, then the next week was Thanksgiving, so we were not able to get in contact with her until close to the end of the month. Over Thanksgiving break however, Alyse and Lauren Slamb were able to purchase decorations to use in the maze.

Alyse and I (Slamb) went to Michaels on Black Friday and took extreme couponing to a whole new level. We spent 3 hours picking out themes for each section of the maze and the decorations to correspond with it. We even had a little section in the back of Michaels that we used to help us with our creative vision. We ended up splitting the maze into four different sections. Then we made four piles and placed the corresponding paint and decor needed for each section in its specific pile. By the end of the night, we purchased over $300 worth of decorations and paint for the maze. After the discounts, coupons, and tax exemption our total was around $145. I think we did a pretty good job if you ask me!

After Thanksgiving Break we were able to come in on the 30th to decorate. Lauren Pyle and I (Genevieve) came at noon and gathered the supplies and tools we would need. Before decorating, the maze needed a few simple repairs, such as putting zip ties on the emergency exit signs. We also wanted to get rid of the dirty pool noodles that were hanging on some of the ropes, so we did that as well. Alyse joined us at 1 PM and we started hanging up the actual decorations. Lauren Pyle spray painted some of our stencils on the concrete, and I helped Alyse put some of the orange mesh fabric we purchased for an area of the maze.

I (Alyse) got to the zoo on the 30th to decorate at 1:00pm and was there until 4:00pm. During my time there, I decorated the entry and exit with the decorations that Slamb and I bought at Michaels. I wrapped them around the ropes that were currently there to make it more aesthetically pleasing. I also hung some decorative mesh with Genevieve, spray painted the cement, and made repairs.  

I (Slamb) came straight from class to help with the Kids Maze. I got there at 3:15 and immediately went straight to work. Alyse helped me finish hanging up all of the rest of the garlins then she had to leave for a meeting with the Mirror at 4:00. I stayed and redid the harnesses on all of the broken tarps. I made sure to go through and clip down the zip ties to be safe for the children. I finished another section of the mesh top for the desert area. Once it got closer to 5, I walked through the maze and made sure to pick up all of the trash and loose leaves. This way it would look more presentable. Chelsea thanked up for our time and I got a chance to discuss a few things with her about future plans for the maze as well as the zoo itself. All in all, I’d say, it was a day well spent!

We decided to make four different sections of the maze: rain forest, desert, aquatic, and deciduous forest. We have different garlands hanging from the ropes hanging down to represent the beginning of each section.

An important lesson that I learned was that things do not always go according to plan. You have to coordinate with multiple people who have to approve it with their superiors on a limited budget. It can be hard to visualize all the details to pull a project together, but we are working hard on it.

We were not able to finish every detail of the maze on the 30th, but we will continue to work on it next semester, and will hopefully get the banners by then too. We have a lot of plans for next semester including having a zookeeper bring animals to the zoo to get students interested in volunteering, and also partnering with SUB to have a college night where Drury students can come into the zoo for a cheaper price, and even having zoo baskets/prizes for different events. We have accomplished a lot this semester, and hope to do even more in 2018!