Week 5 of volunteer work at Oaken Acres Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center is through. So exhausted, but in a good way. And it was the most dramatic day yet!
I'm one of the younger, larger volutneers. One of the youngest, largest volunteers, I'd say, though I tend to be older than the staff and interns (but still larger). Because of this, I get put to a lot of manual labor. Not at I mind. I've helped to lay expand the gravel driveway, to lay down wood chips on the paths due to the heavy rains, to move the trash all the way down to the dumpster, and to dredge out the pit that will become the pond. It's hard work, but it's certainly excercise! I also usually end up washing cages, sometimes sweep and mop, sometimes do dishes, and often take it upon myself to go around checking the water in the outside enclosures, especially as it gets warmer and we get more outside critters.
I do not shirk work. In between all of that I usually find some time still to take pictures and eat. This time around I didn't really get to eat much, or get as many pictures, but I got some quality ones, and a little bit of video as well.
We're getting more and more animals in. There's a red-tailed hawk now, and a kestrel, and a poor fox pup hit by a car that we're watching closely. Another fawn may be there by the time I go back, also.
The older coyote pups are doing well. I got only a brief glimpse of one on film due to how unbelievably shy they are. I almost never see the possums, either. We have one in an incubator and twelve outside, but they're really heavily nocturnal and very self-sufficient.
There are still plenty of baby birds, bunnies, squirrels (Simply Squirrel 2Simply Squirrel 3Simply Squirrel 4), and the like. I had to feed some of the older fledglings, and the finches kept landing ON the forceps while I tried to do so and refused to be shaken off! I also found myself locked in the aviary at one point until I managed to call for somebody to come out and show me how to open it up from the inside when that happens accidentally. I felt bad for the birds out there, putting up with the scary shouting human.
The goslings from the overhang are back down to three (Three Goslings VideoThree Again 2) temporarily; their sibling still in the egg is close to hatching, so their foster sibling is indoors peeping up a storm in the hopes it might induce that.
The wild turkey is doing well. So well it may soon be released again; watching it was like watching the roadrunner, way it rushed about its enclosure.
We also got in a mystery board toward the end! The people bringing it in said they thought it was a crane, but craned don't nest here, only migrate through. We suspected it might be a heron based on that, but when it came in it was definitely something else. A wading bird, not a duckling... at first there were suggestions it was a chicken. It had striped, mottled feathers and big, long-toed feet with just faint webbing. I suggested a few things, and when Kristy said it was too big to be a quail but very similiar, I hit upon looking up pheasants. Sure enough, it's definitely a pheasant chick, though we are uncertain what kind yet.
We also got in three raccoons. The first came in so young its eyes were still closed. Too young to get its picture taken, I was told. It was set up in an incubator and given rehydration. The other two were siblings, and they proved to be a challenge in their own right.
The poor things were covered in fleas and ticks (or teas and flicks, as I kept nearly spoonerizing). There were a couple dozen ticks in each ear, more around the ears and eyes, many between the toes, and plenty of fleas to go around as well. Flea powder saw the latter spilling off of them, while we had to get to work pulling the ticks. One was very aggressive, no doubt as a result of having so many ticks in its ears, while the other whimpered and whined as I held it carefully, trying to escape constantly. We did some work on the aggressive one and put him outside for a time in a carrier to work on the other. The other one we had to stop work on and rehydrate when it began to crash, poor thing; too much stress, and both were dehydrated. We took it outside to discover the first one had escaped! Terrible! A massive search party was undertaken, to no avail. We knew it could not have gotten far, and was probably hiding in one of the big wood piles, but even when I went out with a flashlight I could not find it. Over the next few hours we kept a watch on, and its sibling outside, hoping to coax it out. Eventually, leaving it alone, Kristy spotted it in one of the wood piles and coaxed it out with little churrs and chitters, and it's back undergoing proper care, so a lucky break, there. They'll have to be thoroughly treated to remove all of the parasites, and for their ear infections, but should make it and do fine now.
There are many more raccoons outside now. There are three adjacent enclosures now with two, three, and six in them, and most of those remaining inside are older and easier to feed, as they know how to feed now. We still have a few troublesome ones; some so eager they nearly leap INTO the food, and a few refusing to eat on their own and insisting on being fed. Here is a big collection of pics and two videos, mostly of the outdoor group, though one inside so you can hear the group kept there still:
Lastly, there's our old pal Zorro. Turns out Zorro is a GIANT RACCOON. Okay, maybe not that big, but he inspired the title of this week's journal, and he's big enough that one day he will surely be that raccoon that people are referring to when they tell tales of coming face to face with 'the biggest raccoon I ever seen.' I've been told that he's really extremely large for his cage, which is why he wound up outside so much more rapidly than the others. He's also no longer entirely alone; a smaller female has been placed in his enclosure to keep him company. But I'm still his pal:
Last, but certainly not least, I have new pics of our owls, including many of the two little screeches. We'll start, though, with the great horned owlet, who's recently been moved into a much more open, airy enclosure:
And here are our screech owls. Stinky is a permanent resident of the center due to his bad left eye, a death sentence in the wild where an owl relies on its binocular vision to catch prey. Stinky's fluffy little companion, on the other hand, stands a strong chance of growing up to be wild and free: