Kicked, Bitten and Scratched

This looks like an interesting read for the holidays!

 

"Journalist Amy Sutherland takes readers on a fascinating tour of this boot camp of a school, with its nearly all female student body and teaching zoo of two hundred animals. Over the course of a year, Sutherland follows students as they touch their first animal (a tarantula), learn how to kill pigeons with their hands to feed the birds of prey, take the emu for a stroll, and rush to the emergency room with a bad animal bite or two. EATM pushes the limits of all enrolled as they master animal anatomy and hundreds of Latin species names in between hosing poop out of the big cats' cages and making sure Zulu the mandrill gets his morning juice in a paper cup. If the students survive the grueling twenty one month program, they will have essentially learned to talk to the animals."--BOOK JACKET.