Friday, August 11, 2006

TWO...TWO....TWO POSTS IN ONE!

That's what I will be attempting tonight! First off, let us revisit the raccoon youngsters. Remember this little guy and his sibling?


Well, just look at them NOW!

They have gone from that "Where's my bottle?" stage to the "Hand over the grub, sista!" stage. They have graduated to what we call the Weaning Cage. This is step 3 in a 4 step process. After this they will be moved to a larger cage out in the woods that has more room and less human interaction.

The barn owlet has also been moved to a roomier enclosure.

Yep....same reaction as last time even though I am standing at least 8 feet away from him. Isn't he beautiful though?

We are still getting in baby rabbits. This is a group of cottontails that came in from off island.

Goodness knows how a mother ever tells them apart!

We got in a young eagle who is ALL attitude. First he was in one of our smaller mews and trying to get old food out of there was an interesting experience, as he was usually very close to it and behaving...well....like THIS!

He has now been moved to our Eagle Flight Cage. They always seem to get a bit cockier when they get moved into there, as they KNOW they rule in there. And they make sure you know that as well.

Okay, let's get down to some SERIOUS otter business! Have you ever tried cleaning out an otter pool with some four-legged "help"? No?! It's really QUITE interesting! First, as you start draining the pool, over come your "helpers" to check out the draining action.

Then, as you get down to the nasty business of scooping all the old fish out of the pond, the net MUST be inspected for any possible delicacies.

Having determined there are none in the net, the fish bucket must then be thoroughly examined and tasted.

Then, last week, I went out with a few girls from WH on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning to collect shore crabs. "Why?" you may ask. Why, for my very first Otter v.s. Crab smackdown!

And, once they figured out that there were more of these little mobile guys in the basin, it was "Bobbin' for Crabs" time!

Needless to say, the outcome was a given.

We are STILL getting in swallows of all types and sizes. We have some tiny ones....

to whole gangs of them!

And this isn't even taking into account the 10+ swallows we have flitting about the Indoor Mew!

That's about it for me. I know....I know....some of you are probably thinking "Hey...wait...what about the seals!?!"

Well, we had 24 of them in as of last Saturday, with all but 4 permanently in the "big seal" pools. I will elaborate more tomorrow after my shift. I promise! Til next time...