The last couple of posts have been pretty heavy and not very cheery. So today I decided that it is time for some smiles, and how could you not smile at this face?
Meet Rosie, a very young fox who lives at Red Wolf Sanctuary. Paul Strasser, who owns and runs Red Wolf Sanctuary, has hand-raised Rosie since she was just a few days old. Since I am now a volunteer at this sanctuary, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to play with this little girl for about an hour this morning. She is certainly much more active than the cheetah cubs! I don't think she really sat still, ever, except for about five minutes when she cuddled in my lap (!!!). Paul said I must be a fox-whisperer because he's never seen her willingly cuddle and stay still longer than 5 seconds. Lucky me! She has super sharp teeth and she likes to pounce and run and jump and stick her nose into things she shouldn't stick her nose into. Such an awesome start to the morning!
After playtime with Rosie, we (Paul, two other volunteers, and I) went to the bear house to do some serious cleaning. Bear poop ranks up there with some of the smelliest poo I've handled. It was pretty rank. Usually it's just Paul taking care of all the bears, coyotes, foxes, wolves, big cats and raptors, so things can get pretty messy. That's when us volunteers come into play - as pooper scoopers! So we spent most of the morning shoveling poo into wheelbarrows and Cloroxing that shit up. Literally. I even had to pick up bear poo. That's just how dedicated I am.
After a brief lunchbreak, we went to clean the big cats' enclosure. At the moment, Red Wolf Sanctuary is home to Boze the lynx and Yuma the Puma. The weather is starting to get hot, which means bad things for the meat left over from the cats' meals. In other words, there were lots of maggots involved. But it was super satisfying to give the enclosures a good scrub-down. After the cats, we fed horses and cleaned the water for the raptors. The raptors include a red-tailed hawk, a barred owl, a great-horned owl, and a few vultures. After that, we called it a day. I got my wild animal fix for the week! Yay!
Wow, cool!
ReplyDeleteJust wondering - what specifically is it about the smell of bear poop that's worse than that of other animals?
Hi! There are several reasons why it is particularly smelly compared to other animals...the first is that the bears live in a cement bunker when it is not their turn to go outside, so the poo kind of just sits there in a cement box in the sun and marinades. The other factor is that they tend to have...loose...stool that is sloppy and just tends to smell more than other poo.
DeleteHaha, I actually got a chance to volunteer at Red Wolf Sanctuary a few weeks ago myself, and helped clean the bear enclosures - but it didn't smell bad at all to me, even the poop. Any idea why that may be? Were they maybe fed meat back when you volunteered and they're not anymore? Hmm.
ReplyDeleteAlso, everyone says foxes stink, but I got to sit in Akima's enclosure and didn't think the foxes stunk at all, either. The only animals that even remotely stunk, to me, were the adolescent wolves, but I actually kind of liked their smell after a while :)
Red Wolf is a great place though!
If you just volunteered a few weeks ago, I imagine it was not the blazing hot summer :) Everything tends to smell more when it is 90°+ outside and humid. Diet changes could certainly have something to do with it as well.
DeleteAkima's enclosure is much bigger and much more...breezy than the smaller holding pens that the foxes often have to stay in before we can get a bigger enclosure built for them. If you are ever in an enclosed area with a fox, you will likely experience the strong, musky smell that is associated with them.
Thanks for commenting, and for volunteering at Red Wolf!
(I'm the anonymous commenter from above - suppose I should pick a name :p)
DeleteTrue - it was cold and at times rainy. We didn't get much done but Paul's a great guy, playing with the wolves was fun, too. Sounds like you had some good experiences there too though! I'll have to check out the rest of your blog - I'm guessing you're a zoology major?
I'm actually a bio major and veterinary school hopeful! But yeah, I had great experiences at Red Wolf. Paul is a great guy to work with and the animals are incredible :)
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