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...
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