Elvis is alive and well and looks pretty good for his age. OK, so the duck tail is slightly askew, his coat is a bit too shiny, his voice is much more of a bray and he needs help eating.

What do you expect from a five-year-old African Penguin?

It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was spending a few hours as a "Trainer for a Day" at the National Aviary, America's only independent nonprofit zoo dedicated exclusively to birds. It's one of the many treasures this newcomer has come to discover in his new hometown.

Erin Estell, manager of Interactive Experiences, was my personal tour guide on this behind-the-scenes experience that lets me come this close to Aviary residents usually off-limits to the general public.

On our way to Elvis, Erin dishes out a plethora of penguin patter, and I suck it down, almost as rapidly as Elvis and the rest of his tuxedoed team suck down the raw capelin and sardines I fish out of a steel bucket and ease down their throats.

I cuddle Simon in my arms. One hand under his belly, the other on top of his soft, downy coat. If I had my eyes closed, I might have thought I was holding a favorite fishy-smelling fleece pillow.

We stop at the kitchen. Everywhere I look are sanitizing towelettes and disinfecting dispensers -- "in this business, cross-contamination can be deadly," says Erin. We wash up. We disinfect. We toss on latex gloves and we're off to the walk-in deep freezer. Inside are countless plastic containers of peas, carrots, blueberries ... as well as individually frozen baby and adult rats, mice, quail and chicks. It's up to Aviary employees to thaw, then skin, the critters before feeding time.

Across the hall is a room filled with thousands of creepy, crawly superworms, mealworms and crickets, sliding about in their tanks, unaware that at any moment they will be breakfast or lunch or dinner for many of more than 200 different species of birds found here. Erin details the process: "Tightly pinch" one end of the worm before offering it up.

Meandering through the building, I meet Melon, a Red-fronted Macaw who has been trained to take paper money out of visitors' hands and stuff it into a donation box. (The money goes to an African-based penguin conservation program; between Christmas and New Year's Eve, Melon raked in more than $2,000.)

I watch a Hammerkop work a discarded towelette into its nest. I watch children of all ages volunteer to feed the feathery friends ... and only once did a woman wince when a superworm's guts oozed onto her manicured fingernails.

It was in the tropical forest free-flight room that I learned a Waddled Curassow by the name of Lenny had been shipped off to a zoo after he learned he could roam the hallways by pressing his beak against the handicap entrance button. Diane Lavsa, another Aviary employee, takes me "backstage" and I watch her feed Old Man, a blind senior Boat-billed Heron, who lives alone in his cage, out of sight.

Diane flips a switch, sending sheets of "rain" into the mock rainforest, washing the birds and offering yet another Kodak moment. Another benefit of the fake rain is that it helps wash bird waste off the leaves of the plants. (For the record, cages are scrubbed down once a day and hosed down once a week.)

Almost time to go. My last stop: the Lories and Friends Room. Armed with a small container of nectar, several of the colorful Rainbow Lorikeets perch on my arm, lapping up the sweet drink with their paintbrush-like tongues. The Loris are as clownish as they are colorful: After drinking, and perhaps from the sugar rush, one decided he wanted his belly rubbed.

He flounced onto his back.

I went out on a limb and rubbed.

Then I took flight, my spirit soaring as high as a, well, you know.