Kalysha Clark

As you may know, I am a Teaching Assistant for a course called Introduction to Companion Animals. The professor who teaches the course also teaches one of Companion Animal Management and she always takes her students behind the scenes to see the animals of the Ringling Brothers Circus. She invited us along and there was no way I was passing up such an opportunity.

We were sat on the floor of the arena and got to see how the big cat handler trains his cats (which are owned by him and not the circus itself) with the batons and cords. We also got to see some of the tricks the cats can do. Afterwards, we got to see the elephants from the show and also some of the more domestic animals, including horses, alpacas, goats, donkeys and ponies.

Check out some of the pictures below. It was a great experience and I'm thankful I got the opportunity!

Wow. I've sorta neglected this blog a little, huh?

 Sorry about that, sometimes I get caught up in other things. My grandfather passed away about a week ago so there are a lot of things that are taking the front seat to updating the blog.

 But I'm here now!

 And here are some updates for you.

I am officially living in Raleigh. In a house. With a kitchen. I couldn't be any more excited about this. No more on-campus living for me. Yippee. I live with my cousin, who's a grad student, and another roommate, who's a vet student. They are wonderful roommates and I really enjoy living with them. Not to mention, between the two of them, they have three dogs. You can't have a bad day when you come home to three loving dogs wagging their tails at you!

I am volunteering at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. I volunteer in the biodiversity lab under one of my former biology lab TA's. I do pretty much whatever they need help with. I go twice a week on Friday's and Sunday's. I missed a few days due to the passing of my grandfather, but so far, I've been involved with dissecting coyote scat and compiling images for a book about camera trapping.

Classes are going alright. I dropped my international studies class yesterday, so I fear I may become a little behind, but I'm going to try to take it a day at a time. I currently have two minors so it may be that I have to drop one. And if that happens, it happens. Unfortunately, I cannot pay to be in college forever, so I have to make do with what I have.

Those are pretty much the big updates. Not much, but I'll have more coming as I go along.

Hope you guys are all doing well!