[Vets taking Autumn the turkey vulture into a treatment room]
Kailey Anderson (interview): “So today we’re at the Turtle Back Zoo, the Essex County Turtle Back Zoo, and we’re here at the veterinary hospital. It is brand new. It is officially titled the Animal Wellness Center, and we are in the treatment room, which is on display to our guests, and we’re going to be doing our turkey vulture named Autumn.”
[Treatment room and observation deck]
[Kids looking at a vet exam]
Kailey Anderson (interview): “She’s a rescued bird from the wild who came to us for a permanent home since she is non releasable. She came in with some trauma, she can’t fly.”
[Vet holding a turkey vulture]
[Anesthesia being administered to the turkey vulture]
[Eye exam]
[X-ray]
[Blood being drawn from the foot of the turkey vulture]
Kailey Anderson (interview): “She’s in like her middle years. So she was due for her Wellness Exam today. So she is gonna get a full exam. She’ll get x-rays, we’ll take blood. We do routine screening for certain infectious diseases for all of our animals just for monitoring. So we’ll do that even though she isn’t sick today. And then we’re gonna microchip her.”
[Observers and the vet hospital treatment room]
Kailey Anderson (interview): “It’s not very common to have a window into a treatment room. More zoos are starting to do it as hospitals are being redone because of the value of the education aspect and alerting people to exactly what happens at zoos and the kind of care we can provide.”
[Children watching a turkey vulture checkup]
Kailey Anderson (interview): “I would say that probably the people who stand and watch the longest are kids and school groups who come through, and it really doesn’t matter what we’re doing. There’s a lot of little faces pressed to the glass. We have the ability to put it on monitors so that people can see it outside even if we’re working on something small, but kids seem to really enjoy it. And actually, when they see me in the park, I get a lot like, oh, I want to be a zoo veterinarian, which is fun because… prior to sort of having this window experience, people didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a zoo vet, that it was even like a career pathway and that we weren’t just like dog and cat vets who like work sometimes at the zoo. So it’s really fun to be able to like see the kids realize that it’s something that exists and it’s like a really awesome job.”
[Kids watching a vet procedure]
Teelyn Cahill (interview): “I am going to be a bone surgeon when I grow up so I am going to watch what they are going to so I can learn what to do.”
[Vulture being microchipped]
[Microchip detector device]
[Turkey vulture exam]
[Vet putting the turkey vulture into a transport carrier for return to its enclosure]
[People in the zoo]
[Prairie dog]
[Kids playing on a giant snake model]
[African penguin swimming]
[Kids looking at African penguins]
[Male and female lion]
[Zoo visitors and the lions]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.