I wasn't certain if there'd be a raccoon journal this week, at least not initially. I didn't sign up for any shifts ahead of time, because I wasn't certain what state of mind I'd be in.
A year ago my mother passed away. She died on the 22nd. She would have been 60 on the 28th. This past Friday she would have been 61.
In the end, though, I decided that I could best honor my mother by going in and helping out. She was a nurse, working in nursing homes and later doing hospice care, and she took in strays and rescue animals others would have given up on. I got a lot of my compassion and empathy for others from her.
In a way, my mother's been donating to Oaken Acres also. I brought them a few sets of forceps I inherited from her, and some tweezers as well, useful for a variety of tasks such as removing ticks from raccoons and feeding fledlings mealworms and other bits of food.
Which brings me to one of the things you can do to help places like Oaken Acres: donate. Find out what they need. Sometimes that's animal carriers, towels, blankets, small stuffed animals... money, of course. Equipment. I brought them a good, quality knife that we weren't at all using, for chopping up food. I got some stuffed animals for the raccoons to cuddle with from a thrift store, ten cents a piece. If you can't volunteer, you can always donate.
Another thing you can do is keep your eyes open for trouble. Keep a watch out for injured and orphaned animals. In some cases, it can be difficult to identify the latter, since some animals will leave their young for extended periods of time, and some animals go out on their own pretty young. You'll see baby rabbits roaming about, and fawns left to wait for their grazing mothers. It's a delicate line, knowing when to watch and when to act. If in doubt, call. Ask for advice. Often you'll be told to return them to a certain place or just keep a watch for a time, but you never know. And if you do call, try to note as much about the animals as possible, particularly their condition: any obvious injuries or illnesses or weakness, so on.
It was a busy day again. Most of the raccoons are either outside or on gruel now, so we had few to feed. We did have vaccinations to do, and moved a bunch of them into one of the big enclosures together, and others outside. We still have a lot of baby birds to look after, including a couple so tiny they weren't even as big as my pinkie finger and had to be fed a single drop every fifteen minutes. We do not yet know what species they are.
The fawns have been moved into a larger enclosure, one protected from predators by an electric fence. I did some weeding around the fence to help protect it, and ran into these ants while doing so. All four are out there now, including the one that survived the car accident. Its recovery has been nothing short of miraculous. Here are more pictures of them, as well as a brief video of them racing about:
Both batches of coyotes are outside now also. We rescues a wren from one of their enclosures, where it had somehow gotten inside and trapped. I heard it flying against the mesh over and over, and we finally had to use a net to get it out. Here's a pair of brief videos from that enclosure, of one of them watching me: Pacing Coyote Pup 1 and Pacing Coyote Pup 2.
The kestrel is outside now. We had a rainstorm, and it didn't come in from the rain. It has a fair bit of fluff and is still more bluish than not right now. Most of my pics came from right after the rain storm:
What's in the box is two wood ducks and our pheasant chick. We'll need to cover them from now on, as the kestrel kept making eyes at them and trying to get at them. Dude, the pheasant chick, is really getting big. After I brought him inside for the night, I noticed he leapt into one of the dry food bowls and scratched about, searching. On a hunch I got him some mealworms, and he went right after them the moment they were back in the carrier.
I also discovered that geese have talons! While carrying one of the goslings in for the night, it flailed a bit and kicked me before I grabbed its legs, giving me some very long scratches across my right bicep. Who knew their nails were so sharp?
Zorro and his girl friend are doing fine, and I saw them playing all over the enclosure at one point, chasing each other and wrestling. I also spotted one of the older possums out, from the batch of twelve:
The grounds are beautiful, with a lot of prairie and forests and paths back behind. You never know what you might see. I understand there's a red-breasted woodpecker around, and I often see jays, cowbirds, red-winged blackbirds, chipmunks, squirrels, and more. We even found a snake that a raccoon had probably killed, and likely intended to come back for.
I also rescued a mother spider from the wood chip pile:
I'll only be at Oaken Acres for another few weeks; volunteer work ends around mid-July, when the baby season gets lesson busy. I find I envy the interns and staff, who will be with them until fall rolls around, and intend to offer any aid I might if they need anything afterwards.
I like to think my mother is smiling on my work. Until next week.
