At Peterson, we believe that our companies can do more than just deliver excellent products and services to our customers. We're committed to providing good citizenship to our communities as well. Since 2006, Peterson in the Community has been an ongoing volunteer program where Peterson staff has a chance to give back to the neighborhoods where we live and work.

The biggest project to date has also been one of the most fun for us. On May 6, around 70 Peterson employees, family, and friends, and three Caterpillar^® machines spent the morning restoring the habitats of the camels, giraffes, meerkats, and raptors that live at the Oakland Zoo. After a day of digging, moving, weeding, and shoveling, the landscapes were ready for their hoofed, pawed, and winged inhabitants.

At the giraffe enclosure, with the help of a CAT 257 MTL and a 305 mini-excavator, the 20-person crew began by shoveling through some ponds and then turned their attention to a tower of branches piled up by the giraffes. "The giraffes are given branches so they can pick the leaves off to eat. Then, they just drop the branches where they found them. The pile was taller than my 5'11" sister who came along to help out," reports Kristin Gault, Black Belt, Peterson Holding. The hard-working team managed to get all the way to the bottom of the stack, to the delight of the zoo staff which simply doesn't have time to make branch removal a priority. After spreading some wood chips and smoothing out new sand for the comfort of tender giraffe feet, the crew had a chance to feed these beautiful creatures.

Another group took care of improving the landscape in the raptor enclosure. Alex Munoz, Sales and Marketing Assistant at Power, said the group got quite a workout. "The cage area is on a slope," she explains, "which meant we were really leaning to get all those prickly weeds out of there. But, at least we were in the shade." Alex and the other volunteers, including a group of about 10 children, spent the day picking grass, pulling weeds, raking, and surprising an occasional gopher as they worked their way down the hillside. The children were especially delighted with their after-work reward: a trip to see the goats in the petting zoo area.

Meanwhile, at "Meerkat Manor," a group of 15 were on "weed and stomp" detail. "Meerkats are tunnel diggers, so we were asked to stomp down the old tunnels and add new dirt for the meerkats to dig through. We also weeded the entire enclosure and trimmed back some trees," says Erin Sorgel, another of our 6-Sigma Black Belts at Holding. The team made good use of the CAT IT-14 wheel loader to move all that dirt around. But before anyone could get started working that morning, there was the issue of the meerkat who refused to be cleared out of the enclosure. Eventually, the zoo staff was able to corral him to safety, and the volunteers moved in and got their whole project finished by quitting time.

The camel enclosure, which is a newly built area perched on a hillside, also needed some loving care from the team. The task was to level off some sections and to add a fresh supply of special substrate sand. This sandy soil is habitat-appropriate for the types of camels at the Oakland Zoo. The crew of 12 volunteers would get a bucket drop of the stuff and then level and distribute it by the shovel-full. After that, says Christine Gibney, Project Manager for Generator Sales at Power, the team went on "nugget patrol," cleaning the organic matter from the enclosure while the animals supervised the work from a nearby barn. "The habitat is right next door to the lion area," recounts Christine, "and when they would roar, your chest would just shake with the sound. I verified with the zoo staff that we really did have double fencing around us!"

At the end of a very busy morning, the teams were tired but satisfied with their work, and full of good feelings towards Peterson for putting together such a fun volunteer event. Very special thanks go to Christina Alatorre, Sales and Marketing Coordinator at Power Systems, for making the arrangements and coordinating this big undertaking.

"In all, it was a really positive team-building event," says Tom Bagwell, Marketing Manager for Power. "The zoo representative said we did in a few hours what would have taken them months to accomplish. Projects like this really give employees something positive to think about their work place, and allow us to give back to the community that gives so much to us."