Triumphant Return

As you may have noticed, I was unable to post last week. This was because I was not able to go to Red Wolf Sanctuary last week due to an unexpected babysitting engagement. It was probably a good day to miss, considering I would have been repairing fences and shoveling bear poo in sunny 105º F weather. Oddly enough, I was still a little bummed about missing out on my weekly Red Wolf fix.

This week, no babysitting came between me and bear poo. I know that I have already explained poo duty, but I don't think that I have explained what exactly we feed to the bears. The basic ingredients include: peanuts, sunflower seeds, dog food, bear dietary supplement, some form of meat, and raisins. Often time we will also include apricots, carrots, and/or prunes. BUT, the bears' favorite special summertime treat are peaches. They just really love peaches. Paul bought four large crates of peaches, so we treated the bears this morning. This year, peaches are rather pricey due to a late frost that killed off a great deal of the crop (apples were also hit rather hard by the frost), so they have a rather pricey diet this summer. They certainly enjoyed it, though. Peach juice was running from many a bear's mouth.

 We were short a volunteer this week, so bears took a little longer than normal. Plus, shedding season just hit full force, so bear hair is EVERYWHERE. It clogs drains, it makes their water tubs disgusting, it mats poo to the floor. In short, it significantly extends the amount of time it takes to clean the pens. Needless to say, after all this hard work I was very ready for my sophisticated PB&J lunch. Rosie was oh-so photogenic today. She's a diva, that's all there is to it. The fact that it was very hot and very inductive of nap attacks also helped add to the photo opportunities. Here are some photos to prove my point:

In other news, Paul has recently rescued a little adolescent red-shouldered hawk that was blown out of its nest in one of the recent storms. So, after Rosie time, we went and fed the hawk. Before I go into details about what exactly we fed, I want to mention that Paul has every intention of releasing this hawk back into the wild. This means that it has to know how and what to hunt. So when I tell you that we fed the hawk live brown mice for its lunch, hopefully you will not be too appalled. Even if you are a little upset about it, at least you know why it is necessary.

Then it was off to the cat barn to feed frozen guinea pigs. Due to the scorching heat, all of the non-frozen meat we have been feeding to the cats has been turning to writhing maggot masses within 24 hours. To combat the heat and the maggots, Paul decided to feed frozen guinea pigs. The cats seem to really like them and it has helped a great deal with the smell, flies, mess, and maggots. Yuma took her frozen treat outside to enjoy in the sun!

Due to the heat, water runs low very quickly for the animals. This means that today we had to set forth in the water 4x4 and refill water bowls for every coyote and wolf and cat on the premises. One of the male wolves was feeling very friendly today and Paul allowed the other volunteer and I to come in and greet him. It is always amazing to meet such an intrinsically wild animal like the wolf. On the way home, Paul spotted this monster:

The other volunteer had one last duty left for the day by the time 3 rolled around. We had to collect grasshoppers to feed to the Red-Shouldered hawk. This is not simple task. Armed with a butterfly net and a PB jar, we managed to capture four of them. I was in charge of the PB jar. I was very importantly watching Justin (the other volunteer), run around while wildly swinging a butterfly net. Our technique was so bad that I think it's pretty safe to say we caught the four slowest, dumbest grasshoppers out there. In fact, I'm kind of surprised that Natural Selection didn't get to them before we did. Lucky for us, I suppose.