Wolf Music

Howdy hello,

Later-than-usual post today due to an event hosted at my house...I was in charge of watching children at said event, so that required all of my attention and energy. However, before I had to herd children all evening, I was still able to spend the morning and part of the afternoon at Red Wolf Sanctuary. One of the first things I did this morning was feed the baby deer. Wallace and Joey are getting big and super greedy hungry. They each went through two bottles of milk this morning, and even tried to suckle from poor Justin's man parts, which he found to be rather uncomfortable. Once we were able to convince them that no milk could be produced from that particular piece of anatomy, they found the bottles to be quite satisfactory.

The photo I have above is of Joey. You might be noticing that most of my photos of the baby deer are of Joey. Yes, she is a bit more of a diva than Wallace. But Wallace also has this issue with personal space and as soon as you whip your camera out he sticks his nose right into it. My poor camera can't deal with that sort of invasion of personal space, so most all of my Wallace pictures are blurry deer noses.

Anyways, after dealing with the fawns, I made a beeline to the wolf puppies. I got them howling again, and this time I remembered to record it on my camera...in landscape mode! Here, have some wolf music:

Anyways, the pups got vaccinated today. They didn't even blink during the inoculations. It's funny - I've worked at a vet's office for years and have met 100-lb dogs that cry like a baby when you stick them with that needle. But not these puppies. They're all like, "Dude, my siblings bite wayyyy harder than that wimpy needle."
Also, Paul decided to give them a "chew toy" - AKA a deceased cardinal - and all that remained today were some red feathers and a single bird leg (with little talons still attached) that the pups were quite fond of playing tug-of-war with. Even if it did lead to some awkward sibling situations...

My boots continue to be a source of fascination for them, especially for Crioux. He can just about fit the entire end of my foot in his mouth now, which makes me very thankful that my boots are super heavy duty and protect my feet completely from his sharp little wolf teeth.

It's hard to take photos of these guys, since they are always moving and/or trying to eat my camera/fingers/ears. This is what my typical wolf pup photo turns out looking like:

Yeah, so out of the nearly 400 photos I took today, probably only 20 of so are not blurry and do not have wolf pup butt in them. But sometimes I do get lucky and get some good ones. I ended up with more good photos than usual today because Paul has built a "photo studio" in the barn, complete with a green screen. Now, the green screen is there so that the background can be cropped out and something natural-looking can be photoshopped back in. The volunteers had some creative ideas about what backgrounds would be appropriate. Here is one:

I think Kiowa looks quite at home in a Coral Reef Environment, don't you? I haven't had time to appropriately add in backgrounds to any of the photos I took in the studio, but I'll post the "raw" photos anyways.

Now, these photos give an unfair representation of the pups. In most, they look noble and majestic. In real life, they stumbled and fell and pretty much tumbled their way up and down these rocks and logs. It was quite entertaining to watch.
After the wolf puppies, I had lunch and then went to feed the baby kestrels. This means that A) I had to acquire two male mice from Paul's live stock and B) I had to prepare them for the kestrels. This did not sound too difficult. However, it turns out that the mice know that I am only allowed to pick out male mice and not female mice from the mouse tub. The female mice would lazily stroll by hand as I sat poised and waiting for the elusive male mice to come close enough for me to grab. It took me 15 minutes to catch 2 male mice. Feeling glad that I can buy my food at a grocery store and that I don't have to hunt it (because clearly I'd go hungry), I went about prepping the mice for the kestrels. After the mice were killed, this involved cutting them in to kestrel-sized morsels with scissors that have seen much better days. I would have taken pictures, but kestrels (and most baby birds, for that matter) tend to be projective poopers and I did not want to subject my poor camera to such abuse.
Before leaving, I had to say hello to my Rosie. She was feeling personable today, and she let me scratch her behind the ears for a good long while. And she posed for some photos, of course...