Double Time

Since I didn't post yesterday, I bet you might have thought that I slacked off again this week. It is a reasonable conclusion, considering my past track record. However, this is not the case. You see,  I did not even get home from Red Wolf until 10 P.M yesterday evening.  I decided to stay late to help Paul with a big tour. But I'll get into details about all that later. Many things occurred before this late-evening tour, and I want to cover them first.

The morning was not the typical bears-first morning. When I arrived, Paul was in the office with two new volunteers. Upon walking into the office, Paul says "Look, new meat!". I'm sure that made them feel good. Anyways, once the two other regular volunteers arrived, we set upon the first task of the morning, which was releasing that red-shouldered hawk back into the wild. I took a video of it and spent two hours uploading it onto YouTube, so I am going to take this opportunity to shamelessly insert it here:

You may have noticed that at the very end of the video, one of the newbies said that the release was anti-climactic. I disagree. I thought it was incredible to witness such a beautiful bird returned to the wild, where it belongs. Also, did you hear the bird calling in the beginning of the film? Isn't it beautiful? It makes me think of mountains and big sky country. The hawk did not go too far away at first; it just landed in a nearby tree. Its presence greatly upset the mockingbirds, as seen in the photo below.

After releasing the hawk and disturbing the mockingbirds, we took care of the bears. Imagine, if you will, that it is 93º F outside with 50% humidity. If you live in the Cincinnati tri-state area, this will not take a whole bunch of imagination. Now, imagine that you are inside big cement cells with no real air movement. Next, add in some shoveling of stinky bear poo and hauling of cleaning supplies and you get yesterday morning. It was not so much fun. Also, the bears are shedding like crazy and gunking up their water tubs so that we have to drain and refill all of them, which takes FOREVER. Also, we had two volunteers who had never done bears before. Long story short, yesterday morning was a very slow, hot process.

Eventually we did escape the bear oven in time for some lunch. I broke down and stored my lunch and water in Paul's office refrigerator, which I haven't done before because sometimes things like dead mice and rats get put in there before (animal) feeding time. You'd think that someone who shovels bear poo and processes meat could care less, but it still kind of grosses me out. However, it was so hot that I had fears of even my carrots melting, so into the questionable frige my lunch went. At lunch time, my cold water and lunch was divine, and I regretted absolutely nothing. 

Of course, after lunch was Rosie time. Rosie was literally bouncing off the walls despite the heat. I think the new volunteers got her all riled up. But she did pause to be photogenic a few times. 

After Rosie, we had to process an elk. Paul picked up this elk from an elk farm in Indiana. Apparently it had gotten its antlers stuck in the fence, and in the process of breaking free he tore off not only his antler, but part of his skull as well. The animal was still alive and left to his own devices (with an exposed brain??!) for two weeks before finally being put out of its misery and then donated to Paul. I won't go into details, since it was pretty much the same process as the cow. I did get to use the bone saw again, though...

The next task after the elk was vaccinating Paul's horses. I don't know if I've ever described how crazy his horses are, but to put it shortly, they are definitely not riding horses. Paul often describes them as his big dogs. Well, vaccinating these "big dogs" required a bucket of grains and a bucket of chopped up apples and being surrounded by four horses who were torn between eating the food from your hands or spooking from the vaccinations. Not my favorite of situations, but we all came out of it okay. No harm, no foul, right?

The next chore was easy: cleaning and refilling the raptors' water bowls. Paul asked me to take some photos for him, so I have lots of bird photos for your enjoyment.

Red Tailed Hawk

Great Horned Owl

Barred Owl

Following birds, we went back to the barn. One of the newbies had to leave, but we took the other on a tour of the property. One of the senior volunteers (I won't name names...) overheated the 4x4 and caused it to spew smoke and anti-freeze, which we quickly diluted with water to keep any animals from ingesting it.

After the tour, everybody headed home except for me. I stuck around to help Paul water the wolves and  later give a tour. The tour started at 7 PM and had a total of 7 people from 3 different groups in it. I was in charge of driving a cart with two people in it. The tour lasted two hours, which is incredible because most sanctuary tours are short and not incredibly informative. Paul takes the time to talke about the animals in a way that relates specifically to the group he is showing around. For example, there were three children in the group yesterday, and he talked to them as much as he talked to the adults. It was really neat to see him talk about the animals he knows and cares so much about.

By the time the tours was finished, it was 9:15 and time for me to go home. I was too tired to write when I got home, so sorry for the late update. I go out again tomorrow, but it should be a much shorter day. So hopefully I will write again tomorrow!