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!

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.

TRIUMPHANT RETURN

After nearly 9 months away, I finally returned to Red Wolf Sanctuary yesterday! I always love going out there, but I must admit that the 5 baby foxes and 3 baby screech owls made it even more exciting. Of course, I had to say hi to an old friend before going on to meet new ones...Rosie was as much as a diva as ever, although it took her a few minutes to warm back up to me. After the initial skittishness was over, she was back to her photogenic self:

Once Rosie and I got reacquainted, I went to see the five fox kits. Unlike Rosie, the plan is to release these kits back into the wild. Rosie was just way too friendly to consider releasing. Like Rosie, however, these babies are VERY cute and photogenic:

When I tell you I took over 600 photos, I am not exaggerating. Also, enjoy some baby screech owls:

Believe it or not, I did do more besides photographing cute animals. In the morning, we working on the new bobcat enclosure. Red Wolf Sanctuary got a grant from (I can't remember the name of the foundation but it is from Cincinnati) and is building a new and improved outdoor enclosure for the bobcat. It is not easy to haul around hog fence and cut wires and balance on ladders, but at least the weather was pretty fantastic - nice and cool, even though it was sunny. 

After lunch, I helped to scoop bear poo and feed bears. I also helped to feed foxes and raptors. After nearly falling in one of the bear pens, my friend unwisely made the comment that she was surprised she hadn't actually fallen yet...so of course she later falls onto a decomposing deer carcass while feeding foxes later. Luckily she had spare clothes in the car.

That was pretty much the entire day. I was briefly introduced to a new Great Horned Owl who had his wing amputated. I think he is going to be trained to be an ambassador bird, which would be pretty awesome. I think I will be going pretty regularly on Saturdays, so keep an eye out for more updates!