I'm feeling hot hot hot

NOTE: I finished writing this on June 22, but my photo processor was being silly and wouldn't let me get my photos until today.

I've been really lucky the past few weeks with cooler Saturdays, but since today is the second day of summer I guess the weather decided it wanted to act like summer. What I am trying to say is that today was very hot. As in, we arrived at Red Wolf at 9:00 AM and it was already 75º F outside. Due to this weather condition, we decided to work on the still-in-progress puma enclosure first before things got too hot. This time I was not sitting on top of the whole enclosure, at least. Instead, I was balanced on top of some somewhat wobbly ladders armed with hog rings and a giant screwdriver. The entire morning was spent finishing up the front of the enclosure. We completed nearly everything - all that is left to do is the  big front gate, which needs to be fitted a little bit better because it is not lined up quite correctly. Fixing the gate requires another pole to be put across the bottom, which will take a good amount of time and effort since the pole needs to be cut and then fixed across the bottom. So when it came to be noon, we decided to call lunch and retreat from the sun. I did manage to remember sunscreen this time around (after my dermatologist made fun of my awkward tan line from last weekend).

After lunch my friend and I did a quick bear-run in which we scooped poo and fed bears. It didn't take too long, which is good since it was quite hot and there is nothing quite as (un)enjoyable as hot bear poo. After the bears, my mother and brother actually came to see the place where I have disappeared to every Saturday all summer. Since my brother is especially fond of raptors, we saved feeding the raptors until they got there. So my friend and I took them on a tour of Red Wolf. We stopped by and said hello to Yuma the puma (and my mother talked to Yuma as if she was just a slightly large house cat. Yuma, of course, remained unimpressed). Next we looked in on the silver-phase red fox (whose name is escaping me right now) and on Joker, the white-phase red fox. As a special surprise, we even saw a few of the wolves, which I was not expecting due to the heat.

Gray Wolf

Next stop was the raptors. The raptor center is completely full right now, occupied by: two great horned owls, one barred owl (Uno), one red-shouldered hawk, two red-tailed hawks, two buzzards, and the three baby screech owls (who were moved out into the center earlier this week). By this time, the temperature was reaching nearly 100º in the sun, so the birds were not terribly active or hungry, but they were still fun to feed and watch for a while. I even remembered to take my camera with me this time!

Red-tailed hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

Great Horned Owl, missing right wing

Great Horned Owl

Great Horned Owl

Great Horned Owl

Great Horned Owl, "Unimpressed" Face

Uno the Barred Owl

Uno the Barred Owl

Not-so-dignified Great Horned Owl

Of course, what tour of Red Wolf is complete without a visit to Rosie? My brother and mother finally got to meet the diva fox who has been the subject of many conversations and photo sessions. She was very friendly, and much calmer than usual (which was probably due to that lovely heat). Then we went down to see the bears. My mom and bro brought a brand new wheelbarrow for the bear bunker, one that doesn't have a giant crack and leak bear poo everywhere! It is very exciting. It was so hot that the bears were literally lying on the floor and raking food with their paws into their mouths.

Tuck was a little more lively:

After the tour, it was time for me to head out because I had plans to go to a Roller Derby match. I had never been to one before, and the entirety of my knowledge came from a quick glance at the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_derby). This was a big grudge match between the Cincinnati Roller Girls and the Northern Kentucky Black-n-Bluegrass Girls. Apparently there is a lot of rivalry because there used to only be a Cincinnati team until the NKY team formed, at which point some of the Cincinnati team girls went over to the KY team. I only know this because the girl who tames my hair whenever it needs a cut is on the Kentucky team. Anyways, it was pretty fun to watch, especially if/when there were body check and wipeouts involved.

It's Been a Long Week

Hello Folks!
It has been a long, busy week! Calculus and work have whooped me pretty hard. It seems like this week was a lot harder than past ones, but that may be because I am a bit ill with a chest cold currently. But I got to spend today at Red Wolf Sanctuary, which always lifts my spirits (although it probably did not help my chest cold at all). I did have time to photograph Rosie today, and I got a lovely series of photos of her doing what I have been doing all week- yawning.

     Nothing too unusual happened today. We started off the day with shoveling some good ol' bear poo, and then feeding the bears. Then we split up. I went to help Paul (boss man) water the foxes, coyotes, and wolves. Most of the water was okay, but since it is starting to get hot here some water bowls were rather greenish. And then there's the two wolves (also known as the bachelor boys) who always poop in their water. To quote Paul, one would think that animals that are as intelligent as wolves would know better than to shit in their only source of water. But I had to dump that tub out, scrub it, and then fill it up with water. I am sure that the crystal clarity of the water will be fleeting, at best. After watering, Paul went back to the barn to get ready for a tour and I joined up with the other volunteers to help finish cleaning the cat barn. I am warning you now that what is to follow is a rather disgusting description, so if you don't want to know go ahead and skip to the next paragraph. Now that you've been warned, here is what I helped clean today: Some volunteers earlier this week put WAY too much food (roadkill deer) in for Yuma. It has been rotting all week, and the entire floor was writhing in maggots. I wish I could say that I am exaggerating, but sadly I am not. The floor was crunchy with maggots when we walked in. Anyways, we got that mess cleaned up. I don't really want to remember that experience. And of course, my friend brought some rice crispie treats for lunch and I had to pass on that...

After my very adult lunch (PB&J), I did some photographing. I spent some time with Rosie. She let me pet her today, which was really nice of her. And of course she let me photograph her:

I also got ONE good photo of the screech owl babies, finally! Although they are not so baby anymore:

And I could not resist taking some more photos of the fox kits. Theoretically, we are going to release these guys back into the wild, so I probably should not be spending so much time photographing them. BUT THEY ARE SO STINKIN' CUTE...Alas, this will probably be one of my last close-up photo sessions:

The rest of the afternoon was spent finishing up one side of the new Puma enclosure. This involved me sitting on top of the enclosure about 12 feet high in the baking sun. With some power tools. Luckily I did not injure anyone. I did manage to get a nice coral-colored sunburn on my back, but that was the worst of the damage wrought today. 

We finished up the day by feeding the raptors. One of these days I will remember to take my camera with me so I can get some updated photos of our resident raptors. Then we called it a day and retreated from the hot sun and back home to a nice cool shower...

Busy Busy Busy

Hello again

Today was a very busy day at Red Wolf. It was so busy that I didn't even have time to sit down with Rosie...so now you know I mean some serious work was getting done.

I am still getting used to working on Saturdays instead of Tuesdays. Bear cages don't get a full clean on Saturdays, which is very nice. Instead, this morning started with cleaning Yuma's (the Puma) indoor/outdoor enclosure. Bozeman the bobcat passed away during the winter while I was at school, and it is very sad to go into the cat barn and not hear his weird chuffing meow and see him rubbing against the door for some scratching. But it is what it is. So Yuma is the only cat in the cat barn now, but she still manages to make enough of a mess to keep us busy. I had the honor of pooper scooper duty, and filled a 50-lb feed bag with poop ranging from the very fresh to the very petrified. It was not the most fun I ever had, but her outdoor enclosure looked (and smelled) so much better after. Then I went back to the indoor enclosure to help the other volunteer finish up. This involved cleaning up a lot of...icky stuff...that I will spare you the description of. Long and disgusting story short, in the summer, carnivore food goes bad VERY quickly. But we prevailed with our trusty Dawn and Clorox.

After taking care of Yuma's stinky situation, we returned to home base. We had to do some cleaning because the sanctuary has gotten 5 new baby birds (kestrels) in the last WEEK. This is on top of the 3 baby screech owls, one great horned owl, and hawk that have come in the the last MONTH. This means lots of poopy grimy astroturf and cages. So we cleaned those up, then made up bear food. We then went to feed said food to the bears. While we were at it we decided to scoop some bear poop as well. We know how to have a good time.

We returned again to the main barn. The other volunteer, who has far more bird experience than me,  tackled cleaning up Ziggy's (one of the new injured hawks) cage as well as feeding the 3 youngest Kestrels. I have a really cool video of the babies being fed, but YouTube said it would take 100 minutes to upload and I am hoping to go to bed in 15. So I will put it up tomorrow. I, on the other hand, took care of completely cleaning the baby foxes enclosure. It is an indoor enclosure for now, until the Sanctuary can gather enough funds and manpower to build a new fox enclosure. It is also not very large, maybe twice the size of your average dog kennel. This means a very concentrated fox/fox pee smell. I was convinced that I burned my nasal passages while cleaning out the cage. Also, I was divebombed by a panicked baby fox. Let me explain- I was scooping out the old bedding and replacing it with new (nice-smelling bedding) while moving around the various toys and tunnels (some still with foxes in them) and generally scaring the poor guys half to death. One, whom I have decided to name Crazy Tom, decided to try climbing up the side of the cage. He lost his grip. And fell on my head. We were both rather startled. But other than that, the cage cleaning was quite successful. And even though I don't feel like uploading the video of the kestrels, I will put some photos up. As you can probably tell, they are projectile poopers. I was not aware that baby birds could poop so violently. You had to be ready to avoid enemy fire if they turned their backends towards you...Luckily neither my camera nor I were caught in the crossfire.

 The older kestrels apparently outgrew their projectile pooping stage and moved onto the "play dead" defense mechanism. They do it quite convincingly:

And despite our little mishap during cleaning, one of the baby foxes let me photograph him (/her?). I still can't really tell the 5 babies apart, although this one's boldness leads me to think that it may be Crazy Tom...

And before lunch, we (and by we I mean the other volunteer) moved Ziggy the hawk to a clean cage!

After lunch, we watered the wolves and foxes and coyotes and raptors. It's starting to get hot, so this will become a pretty common occurrence I think. Then we prepared one of the back rooms of the bear barn to become a new flight room for the two older kestrels, complete with a large baby pool o' mice. Despite the sound of mice rustling around in the hay, the kestrels decided to continue to play dead (Yes, we are sure the are playing dead and not actually dead). And that was it for the day. Not too much exciting, although I don't think many people can say they have been dive-bombed by a fox. Hopefully I will remember to post that video of the baby kestrels being fed, but for now I am too tired to do that.