Funny Foxes

Hello again,

Sorry for the long intermission. I wasn't able to go to Red Wolf last weekend, so I didn't have anything very interesting to write about. Luckily, I did return to Red Wolf this weekend and was able to get lots of photos. Today was very hot, so we started out by cleaning and filling up all the water for the coyotes, foxes, and wolves. It doesn't sound like a lot, but many of the enclosures are overgrown due to all the rain recently, so getting to the water bins often required some hardcore week-whacking. I was also trying to avoid ticks at all costs. On the way to fill up water bins, we stopped at Yuma's enclosure so I could get some non-rainy photos of Yuma enjoying her new spacious enclosure. She was feeling photogenic for about fifteen minutes before she decided she had enough and retreated behind a large boulder.

After Yuma's photoshoot, we went to fill up the foxes' water. We stopped in to say hello to Bull, who was being much more friendly than normal:

We eventually finished watering, and then retreated from the heat. Since it had been a long time since we had played with Rosie, we decided to go and spend some time with her. She was not as friendly or energetic as usual, but that was probably because of the heat. She still managed to be pretty photogenic, though:

One thing I did notice is that both Rosie and Bull were making some pretty funny faces today. Observe:

After Rosie, we decided to take a lunch break in the wonderful air conditioned lunch room. Then it was back out to the heat to feed and clean the bears. After the bears, we spent most of the rest of the afternoon cleaning and organizing the animal kitchen / meat prep area. It was pretty smelly, dirty work but at least it was air-conditioned. My fellow volunteer screamed at least three times. The first was due to a spider crawling up her arm, the second was also due to a spider, and the final scream was due to a mouse that popped out of a box. Each time she screamed I just about had a heart attack. It was made even funnier by the fact that this volunteer is not very squeamish, so to hear her scream was pretty funny (after determining that it was not due to anything life-threatening).
Just as I was leaving, a summer thunderstorm cropped up, due to the heat. It brought a wonderful breeze and a ten degree drop in the temperature. It wasn't too bad of an end to the day!

Salamander Super Highway

Hello friends,

If any of you live in the midwest, then you know that there has been nonstop rain for the last few days. This is honestly one of the wettest summers I can remember here in Ohio. The rain did not let up today, which meant that it was going to be a very wet day at Red Wolf Sanctuary.

Since the bears live mostly inside, we were still able to scoop poo and feed them (lucky us!). Nothing too exciting to report from the bears this week. They are shedding like crazy, and their fur is drifting around in tumbleweeds the size of rodents. After we took care of the bears, we went to look in on Yuma, who was moved to the new enclosure that was finally finished. It is so much bigger than her old one and she was so happy! It was raining today, so she didn't venture out from under the overhang. But I still got a few good pictures of her despite the rain.

The baby foxes were moved to the indoor portion of Yuma's old enclosure, because it is one of the only place from which they can't escape. I was silly and forgot to switch my phone to landscape before taking the following video, so sorry about that:

After stopping by to say hello to Yuma and the baby foxes, we went back into the wooded area to look for likely spots to place some screech owl boxes. We are going to release the babies screech owls tomorrow, so we wanted to make sure that they would find somewhere to hide. 

Due to the rain, many of the creeks are quite full.

So full, in fact, that some of the paths were crossed by rapidly running creeks. That didn't stop us, of course, and we had a great deal of fun crossing this particular creek. It is fondly called Salamander Super Highway. I don't know why.

The rest of the day was spent indoors, out of the rain. The visitor barn was in need of some mopping, so that finally got accomplished. We also grudgingly began organizing the tool shed, which is a maze of piles of mismatched tools. Not quite as exciting as frolicking with foxes, but very very necessary!