Sad Goodbyes....

In just over 12 hours I will be leaving San Juan Island. Hopefully I won't be leaving forever, but it could turn out that way. I'm really going to miss it!

I don't know that much exciting stuff happened over my last two days of work... We didn't get any new seals in. They did get a bald eagle in today! Unfortunately, with a broken clavicle and injured eye, there wasn't anything to be done for it and it had to be euthanized.

I had an interesting experience during the midnight seal feed on Saturday night, though. Everything seemed to be going fine initially. I got all the food ready, fed Concho and Wolf with no trouble, and had just finished feeding Ocelot. I was getting ready to fix her warm compress (she gets a hot towel under her belly after her feeds to try and help with her bloating issues) when all the lights in the seal nursery went out - the fuse had blown. I had to call the on-call staff member (I felt really bad for waking her up!) to find out where the fuse box was. On my way out of the nursery, however, I noticed that the gate next to the building was open. This gate is normally closed. I hadn't noticed whether it was closed when I first went out to the nursery, but I had assumed it was, so it was very disconcerting to discover it wide open!! It led my overactive imagination to start wondering whether there could be someone lurking in the dark, watching me feed the seals and clean syringes. It was very creepy! So I had to finish up all my tasks with the eerie idea that there could be someone else around when I was supposed to be alone. At any rate, I managed to get the lights working again and had just finished cleaning when the fuse blew again. I switched it back on and proceeded to wash the dishes, as usual. By the time I finished, the fuse had blown a third time!!! I switched it back on and had to just hope for the best, that it wouldn't blow again sometime during the night and leave the seals that still need heat lamps to slowly get colder and colder. (I don't think it blew again, which was a blessing!) It was an interesting night, to say the least!

Other than that, Sunday and Monday were both fairly uneventful, animal-wise! Nukupu'u showed how precocious and wonderful she is - she ate the fish that got put into her bath on Monday. According to Penny, seals as young as she is normally don't eat their fish. All I could say was, "That's my girl!" It's funny, but the interns all feel rather more attached to "our" seals, the ones that we individually named, than to the others, like parents with children or (some) people with their pets.

On Monday night, though, all the interns and Tristen went out to one of the beaches for a campfire. We roasted hot dogs, made biscuits-on-a-stick, made s'mores, and had ice cream and chips and other delicious junk foods. We also saw tons of stars, including a few shooting stars. I actually saw the Milky Way! I've only ever been able to see it once before, when I visited Arizona several years ago. I think most places in North Carolina, at least that I've been too, are either too hazy (with humidity or smog) or too close to large, light-polluting cities, or possibly both, to really be able to see the stars clearly. It was a pretty cool evening.

If you want to see more pictures that I've taken, be sure to check back in about a week! I'm planning to post them online, and as I put them up I'll post links to the albums on this blog. Thanks to everyone who read, and especially to those who commented!

Time Flies When You're Having Fun!

I can't believe I've only got 2 more days left to work here! I've really enjoyed it - I don't really want to leave. Not that I don't want to go home, I just wish I could come back and work some more.

I've taken pictures of some of the animals I talked about in my last post. First off, the coot. Hopefully you can tell from the picture how ridiculous his feet look. He's really good at jumping, though, so those feet are obviously good for something!! He's only about 5 inches tall, but he can just about jump right out of a large tote bin, with sides about 2 feet tall.

As mentioned previously, we have a new otter pup (kit? I'm a little unsure which is the correct term for an infant otter, as I've heard both used). He's done very well since we got him; he eats well (and who wouldn't when they finally got something they would naturally eat?), he recently got moved to an outside enclosure from a kennel inside, and he gets a tub of water to play and swim in every day that he really enjoys. Hopefully he'll get big enough to join the other two and have some playmates.

As always, there's a ton of news about seals! I've got pictures of our three newest, Ocelot (whom I mentioned in my last post), Concho (who has become something of a celebrity!), and Wolf.

This is Ocelot, just after she came in. She had several wounds on her front flippers (which have since healed); I'm not sure what might have caused them. She was really skinny when she came in, and we've had problems for a little bit because she can get chilled extremely easily. She threw up in her baths several times because she got too cold. To combat this, we keep her heat lamp as close to the top of her tub as possible. She's also been rather bloated and gassy recently, so she gets hot compresses under her belly all the time and she gets her stomach massaged whenever we feed her. We've also tried a couple different things in her food, initially, simethecone drops, and most recently papaya enzyme. She's definitely more perky now than when she came in, though, which is a good sign!

This is Concho, the local celebrity seal. She was picked up by a woman (who was purportedly drunk at the time) and kept on a boat, with the woman allegedly showing her off to friends. About 36 hours after she was taken from the water, Concho was found in a backpack in the woman's car at a "routine traffic stop" - the woman ran a red light. (Note how dumb criminals are. It's illegal under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to capture marine mammals, and yet the woman decided to run a red light with a federally protected species in the back of her car.)
Now, of course, the woman faces up to a $10,000 fine and possible jail time for violating the MMPA. Several local news organizations (including a television station in Seattle) ran stories on Concho. The interns were informed to refer reporters' questions to staff members - after all, we don't create treatment plans or even know the full, detailed history of the seals, we're just involved in implementation of treatment plans! We also got several calls from federal officials who are conducting the investigation that will (almost definitely) lead to punishment of this woman. It was an exciting few days right after she arrived! (Here is what was published on the Seattle Fox subsidiary's website.) I was pretty psyched when we got her, too, since I got to help with her initial exam.

This is Wolf, our tenth seal. He's a sweet little pup! I'm not sure what his back story is, but like most of the seals we get he was dehydrated when we got him. (I think the only seal we've gotten who hasn't been seriously dehydrated was Nukupu'u...) Fortunately, we haven't had any problems with him yet. (*Knock on wood!*)

Our four oldest seals are all getting nice and fat and healthy. Coho and O'o have been able to stay outside in the big pools all the time for several days, and Stilt just joined them. Palila is healthy enough that she'll get an 8-hour swim with those three tomorrow and hopefully start staying out overnight soon after that. It shouldn't be too long before O'o and Coho are ready to be released! We had some confusion yesterday, though, with three gray seals in the same pool. Palila was supposed to come in at 4 pm, except Stilt got pulled out instead and put in her tub. Fortunately, Palila was mistaken for Stilt at 8 pm and got pulled out and put in his tub for the night (although Coho was almost put in the tub instead, but that's a whole other story)!! To lessen the confusion, Palila and Stilt got marked with grease paint sticks this afternoon, but I think everyone who was working today made sure to find some distinguishing mark on both of them anyway. (Stilt has a lightning bolt/hourglass shaped spot under his right eye. To tell Palila apart from Coho, Palila has a large dark spot right behind her left eye and Coho does not.)

We've been having serious issues with Shrike's digestive system. She seems to have a very sensitive gag reflex and tends to bring up some of whatever you've just put in her stomach whenever she gets tubed. She's also been really bloated and gassy, like Ocelot, so she gets hot compresses, massages, and special things in her food (like simethecone drops or papaya enzyme).

Nukupu'u and Eskimo, on the other hand, seem to be doing great!! I found out today that Nukupu'u will escape from her tub if you leave the lid up during her bath - that's my feisty little baby!! She turned out not to be a real brat, as well, which is great. She's usually very good about being tubed.

After having several crows, we finally got a raven in the other day - it had run into a wall. I'd never really been clear about the difference between crows and ravens, but the most obvious one is easy to see - ravens are enormous!! The crows are small enough that I'm never too concerned about one of them biting me, but the raven is another story! His beak is not only much bigger than a crow's, it looks stronger and more painful.

I hope to have plenty more to say before I leave, even though that's only 2 days from now!

Oh, Canada!

So on Wednesday I managed to get to Canada. I spent hours on Monday night trying to figure out if I could get to Victoria or just to Sidney, and how I could get there, and what I might be able to do. I ended up just going to Sidney on the Washington State Ferry; all the private ferries that offer stops in both Friday Harbor and Victoria only go to those cities from some other point - they don't offer trips between Friday Harbor and Victoria. I suppose I could have taken a bus from Sidney to Victoria, but I didn't particularly want to add another step to my trip - I wanted time to actually see things! I ended up having to take a 6 am ferry from Friday Harbor to Anacortes, WA, before taking an 8:15 am ferry from Anacortes to Sidney. (The Washington State Ferry System only runs 2 ferries a day from Anacortes to Sidney and back, one in the morning that doesn't make any other stops and one in the afternoon/evening that stops in Friday Harbor.) I had to get up at 4:30 am to be sure I'd get to town in time to catch the first ferry! (Because it takes me about 30 minutes to bike into town, they tell you to be at the ferry dock at least 30 minutes before the ferry's posted departure time, and I had to actually wake up, eat breakfast, and get ready to leave.)

Anyway, I got into Sidney around 10:30 am. The Canadian customs people were really nice and quick; it took me less than 5 minutes to get through. I spent the day mostly walking around downtown Sidney. It felt very quiet, even when the shops got busy later in the day. They had 11 bookstores within a couple blocks of each other!!! Most of them were used book stores of the most awesome type, where you go in and they have so many books they have to make piles on the floor and on top of shelves (that don't necessarily match each other), and every time you go around a corner of a shelf or through a doorway you discover even more books. It was pretty much heaven, getting to wander through all the bookstores. I found a book about crocheting decorations for the home that was very obviously from the 1970s. Some of the patterns looked decent enough, except for the color schemes, which were largely olive green with orange or yellow - those '70s types of color combinations. I also visited Sidney's local historical museum, which gave the history of the town and a bit about the surrounding area on the Saanich Peninsula. I found a little bakery that actually had decently priced pastries!! At home, it seems like all the little bakeries charge you at least $5 for a small brownie. The one I visited seemed to charge much less for things. I got a huge strawberry rhubarb turnover - for $1.26!!! (After tax!) I had a great time just chilling, strolling past the stores and window shopping and being an actual tourist for once. Sidney was very nice; it was a quaint small-town without the feeling that it was trying to be quaint. It was a very unpretentious quaintness.

The one thing I can't figure out: I passed a gas station, and the sign was advertising the price as "144.9" I have no idea what that means! It seems impossible that they would be charging $144.90 for a gallon of gas (even a Canadian gallon, which is apparently larger than a US gallon), and of course a liter is even smaller than a gallon. Can anyone tell me what the "144.9" meant??

When I came back to Friday Harbor, the US Customs guy wanted to know every single detail of my travel. It would have been easier just to hand him a complete itinerary of my day!! I suppose it might have seemed a little odd at first glance, someone from North Carolina getting off a ferry from Canada in Friday Harbor, but the second thing I told him (after telling him that I live in North Carolina) was that I have an internship on San Juan Island. And I went to Canada to do sightseeing. And I just brought back some souvenirs (okay, what I actually brought back was a candy bar, a book, and some yarn, but I figured saying "souvenir" was close enough). And I just went to Sidney, I didn't go to Victoria, and only for the day. And I walked around in Canada. And I didn't go to Victoria, I just went to Sidney. And I got there by taking the ferry from Anacortes. And I got to Anacortes on the ferry. And I didn't go to Anacortes from Seattle, I took the ferry from Friday Harbor that morning because I'm living on the island for my internship, and then I took the ferry from Anacortes to Sidney, where I walked around for the day. -Then he said he'd forgotten about my having an internship on the island and let me go. He must've forgotten pretty fast!! Along with forgetting a couple times that I said I only went to Sidney, NOT Victoria. Honestly, I understand that they're trying to keep us safe, but he spent more time questioning me about my traveling than the Canadian woman in front of me! And I think they could stand to be a little friendlier, too.

We've also gotten in a new seal, Ocelot (sorry, no pictures yet!), as well as a young Coot. He's pretty cute - he's got feet that are as big as he is tall!! It's amusing to see this little tiny bird with feet that look like they belong on something 5 times his size, because he's got these long, super-skinny toes.

The past few days have been downright chilly! I do like cool weather, but not in the middle of summer! As beautiful as it is out here, I just can't see myself living in a place where you need to wear long sleeves and jeans in July because you'll be cold otherwise (unless it's south of the equator!).

We've also got a third otter kit in, sent to us from another rehab center. He's a bit smaller than the two we already have, so he's being kept separately. Part of that may be from poor nutrition - they were feeding him apples, carrots, quail, eggs, and corn on the cob at the other center. Everyone here was pretty flabbergasted by the diet he'd been getting - it's not the sort of thing you should be feeding a river otter. And I would think it wouldn't be that difficult to do a little research on what other rehab centers would feed a river otter, or to at least research otters' natural history to discover what they eat in the wild and try to find suitable alternatives. It's baffling, trying to figure out why they decided to give this poor kit the diet they did. (Also, I know several people who expressed a desire to own an otter. They are incredibly cute... but they are also very gross and smelly!! Consider yourself warned. ;-D)

I always know where my towel is.

The internet is finally working again!! :-D As promised, I have TONS to talk about - hopefully I can remember everything I wanted to say!

About 2 weeks ago, the night before Laura, one of the other interns, left for home, she and Jana and I decided to eat in town. (Who wants to cook the night before they leave? We wanted to celebrate!) We could have ridden bikes into town, but then we'd have been all gross and sweaty when we got there, which just wouldn't do. Instead, we participated in the "San Juan Rideshare" program, more commonly known as hitchhiking. There are Rideshare stops along most of the major roads around the island where you can wait for someone going the appropriate direction. The stops have signs posted with tips for using the program (including "Dress for success" - ie, don't look sketch - and only tell the driver your destination after they tell you theirs - so you can turn them down if you think they're too sketch). We waited for about 20 minutes before someone headed into town stopped for us, a nice older woman who lives on the island. (Apparently locals tend to be the ones who actually pick up people. Visiting tourists don't seem as keen on participating.) After dinner, we had an incredibly easy time getting a ride back out of town, the opposite of what normally happens! The second car to drive by the stop at the edge of town picked us up, a girl just a few years older than us, also a resident on the island. It was a pretty cool experience overall!

Since I last wrote about seals, we've gotten five more. Palila (named by Laura), a female, came in right at the beginning of July, followed quickly by Stilt (named by a staff member), a male.

Palila (taken 3 days ago), a brat if there ever was one!

Stilt (taken just after he came in), the sweetest pup so far. The green mark on his head was placed there by the Marine Mammal Stranding Network when they first checked on him. When he was still beached (and much skinnier!) 5 days later, they picked him up and brought him to us.

The last three seals came in over just two days, this past Friday and Saturday. Shrike, named by Alec, arrived on Friday, and she is the most gorgeous seal I've ever seen. On Saturday, another female arrived, which I dubbed Nukupu'u (the coolest name ever!). She was followed swiftly by a male, named Eskimo (short for Eskimo curlew) by Jana. Saturday was very hectic, with the arrival of two new seals!

Shrike. Isn't she gorgeous? One of the staff members told me dark seals are rarer, which is really too bad! We're joking that she should be set up with O'o so they can make beautiful dark-furred Harbor Seal babies! ;-)

Nukupu'u!! Supposedly, she's a real pill, but the one time I got to tube her she was perfectly fine! That may have had something to do with the fact that she'd been napping just before I fed her, but I'll take what I can get. ;-) Of course, she may turn out like Palila, acting like a brat for everyone but the person who named her (*knock on wood!*).

Eskimo. He seems like a pretty good seal, so far. He hasn't given people too much trouble with feedings yet, but that could always change! (Plus, he's being compared to Nuku, who makes Shrike and Eskimo look like angels.)

We actually got some garter snakes in this past week!! I was really excited. I think all my time with the reptiles and amphibians at the museum last year turned me into a herp person... or just brought out the herp lover lurking inside me all along! Both of them had been rescued from cats, so they got antibiotics for a couple days, along with some crickets. They recovered pretty quickly, and we got to release both of them! :-)

We've also got a baby gull, and it's absolutely adorable. Adult gulls? Kind of ugly. This kid? Cute as all get out. He's fuzzy and kind of awkward, and he reminds me of pictures of the Dodo, with a very round body, small stubby wings, and a stout beak. I really hope he gets better - I think he got hit by something (a car?), and it caused him to bleed into his right eye. He seems to have some vision problems because of it; if he's lucky, they'll go away as his eye heals. One of the staff rehabbers pointed out that a one-eyed gull should be able to survive perfectly fine anyway - I know I've seen one-legged gulls that looked pretty healthy, so a missing eye shouldn't be too tough to deal with.

Two weeks ago, on one of my days off, I got to go on a whale-watching tour. I managed to get on a really great trip! There are three resident pods - J, K, and L - that generally remain in the San Juans, and all three pods were hanging out in the same area that day. I got to see tons of whales, including a couple calves!! They exhibited all the typical behaviors, from spyhopping to breaching. The calves especially seemed to like jumping completely out of the water. A few whales also swam up really near to our boat, which let me get some awesome pictures. I wanted to enjoy watching the whales, so I was mostly just aiming in a general direction, shooting, and hoping something came out, but when the whales actually swam about 15 yards from the boat, I managed to get some really great shots. I will admit, though, a lot of my pictures are nothing but sea or sky, depending on which way the boat was rocking! It was a really awesome experience (but incredibly cold!) and, if I'm lucky, I might get to go again. The company giving the tours lets Wolf Hollow interns go for free when they have open spaces, so it's a really great deal! If I can't think of anything to do next "weekend", I might try for some more great shots - this weekend I'm going to try and visit Canada!

So much to say, so little time!

I'm sorry to disappoint anyone, but unfortunately I can't do a real entry right now. I have lots of cool things to talk about, but I'm borrowing a laptop and I've got brownies coming out of the oven soon! I had planned to update a few days ago, but the internet on the communal computer here at the intern housing seems to be malfunctioning - it hasn't worked in about 5 days!! I've got some great pictures to post, as well; unfortunately, they're on the communal computer! As soon as they get the internet working again, I promise a great post!

Seal Pictures! :-D

I've finally uploaded some seal pictures!! They're pretty adorable:

This is Coho. She was a premature pup, but is doing well. She's lost her lanugo and has real fur now. She's pretty cute.

This is O'o. I had a harder time getting a good picture of him because a) he kept moving around and b) he's dark so the contrast between his fur and his face isn't as high as with Coho. He's older, and was a full-term pup that we got because he has an injury on his left eyelid. I got to tube him today to give him electrolytes!! :-D He was really good about it. Coho has to be held from the side while she's tubed, but O'o will accept the tube if you just cup his chin and push the tube in from the front. I also gave him his 2 pm bath. He's getting a little nippy now, as I experienced when I had to spray his umbilical cord with betadine. He managed to nip at the back of my arm, but he didn't actually bite down. He just ended up with a little bit of the coat we have to wear to do anything with the seals (to protect our clothes from mess, and also to help prevent cross-contamination between seals).

It's gotten really warm the past few days. Of course, it's only in the mid-70s, but I was just getting adjusted to temperatures in the upper 60s!! Now it feels unbearably hot in the indoor animal care areas, as well as in parts of the intern housing. It doesn't help that there are heat lamps and heating pads in most of the rooms in the animal care building, and there's no AC. I'm pretty sure there's actually no AC in the intern housing, either! (I might feel a bit cooler if I wasn't sitting in front of a computer, too... ^_~)

Another really exciting thing happened today: I got some yarn! Yesterday, I went with Tristen, one of the staff members, to pick up an injured crow fledgling that was found by staff at a hotel in Friday Harbor. (The poor thing had a really badly broken leg and had to be euthanized.) Along with the crow, they donated a couple boxes of linens that they couldn't use any more because of minor stains, as well as things that people left behind (we've found some shirts). Near the bottom of one box was several skeins of yarn!! I checked with the staff, and they told me that Wolf Hollow doesn't have any real use for yarn, so I happily took it off their hands! :-D

So, two really big exciting things happened today (getting to tube and bathe a seal, and finding yarn). Unfortunately, there was a really sad thing as well. The black swift, which is a really cool bird, and has been here since before I came, died today. It seemed like it was doing well; it was eating and starting to get stronger flight muscles. The most likely cause, according to Tristen, is a severe vitamin deficiency because we can't imitate its natural diet of hundreds or thousands of different types of bugs very well. We'd been feeding it mealworms (sprinkled with calcium powder) for a long time, then switched it to crickets (because the mealworms apparently have very tough exoskeletons).

Yesterday evening, during the second part of my split shift, was also very exciting. I went with Laura, another intern, to pick up a dead deer (normally we try to pick up freshly dead deer that we can butcher to feed to various carnivores, or else we might pick up things blocking roads and driveways and set them far away from most things on our property so that it's safer for vultures and eagles and other carrion-eaters to pick at them). This deer was extremely dead, very bloated and covered with flies and fly eggs. It was pretty rank and disgusting. (On the bright side, the guy who called us (it was in his backyard) gave us a donation!) When we got back, we had to feed animals, including a pair of hatchling birds (pink and ugly and unable to hold their own heads up. They're a pain. Or it, rather, since one died.), and Laura had to pick up a bird that was being sent to us on the ferry. While she was gone, a guy brought in 9 (yes, nine) mallard ducklings that he found running along a main road without any parent in sight. So I had to fill out some paperwork and get them all set up in a tub with food and water for the night, as well as prep food for several animals, while trying to feed hatchlings every 15 minutes, a few nestlings every 30 minutes, and about 8 other birds on the hour. We also had an interesting time trying to prepare food for a couple fawns that are having intestinal issues. One is supposed to get a Gas-X tab in her food. Except we couldn't find the Gas-X. We spent over 15 minutes searching for Gas-X, until we decided that it must have all been used. It was probably the most hectic time I've had to work since I've been here. I was infinitely glad when my shift was over!! We were running around doing so much, neither of us even got a chance to eat dinner until after everything was done around 8:45!!

I think I'm about ready to get away from this computer and (hopefully) into a cooler, breezier spot - right in front of the open door to the deck! ;-)

We've got Seals!

We've finally got some seals in!! We've actually got two so far - one came in today and one came in a couple days ago. I haven't been able to go in and take pictures yet, though, but there will be some forthcoming!! The first one to come in was a premature pup, a female that we named Coho. All the seal pups get named following a certain theme; this year's is Threatened and Endangered Vertebrates found in the US. Premature pups get named specifically after fish, and full-term pups can be named for any other vertebrate (one option is the "Shenandoah Salamander", but my personal favorite right now is "Moorhen"). The pup that came in today was full-term, so his name is now O'o (which I think is a type of bird, possibly from Hawaii).

One thing that continues to amaze me is the length of daylight here. Yesterday being the summer solstice and longest day of the year, it didn't get fully dark until close to 10:30, and the sun comes up really early. I've felt disoriented multiple times, waking up to full daylight and realizing it's only 4:30 am - and my room faces west!

On my second day off last week, I biked over to English Camp, a historical park on the west side of the island. It's counterpart, American Camp, is on the southeast tip of the island. The two sites were actual naval bases in the mid-1800s, after (or during?) the "Pig War". An American on the island shot a pig in his garden; the pig turned out to be property of the Hudson Bay Trading Company, and they called on the British Navy to solve the problem. American troops got called up to defend the island as American property, but no real fighting ever occurred. Both sides basically kept their bases on opposite sides of the island while the issue of who "owned" which parts of the "Oregon Territory" (which stretched up into British Colombia, and including all of the San Juan Islands) was worked out between Britain and America.

We had a turkey vulture come in from Lopez Island yesterday. Unfortunately, his wing was broken too badly for him to be rehabilitated, so he had to be euthanized. They took an x-ray of his wing anyway - it was crazy! He'd obviously broken it previously, both the radius and ulna (that's the equivalent of our forearm, for those who aren't up on anatomy), and it had started healing, except the bones hadn't gotten back to the proper placement. You can see the calcium deposit in the x-ray - it's the bright solid-looking spot in the middle of the bones. (The x-ray is of his right wing, for reference.) Some of the staff think he may be the same vulture people on Lopez have called about at least twice before in the past couple months. With the previous calls, however, by the time a volunteer on Lopez got to the scene, the vulture was nowhere to be found. Apparently he was pretty emaciated, so it could be that this time he was just too weak to get away when people approached him. (I actually took that phone call - I could hear the guy telling his son to put the bird in a dog crate! We don't generally ask callers to catch animals for us, especially potentially dangerous ones - leave that to the volunteers! ;-) But these guys obviously felt up to the challenge, so more power to them!)

Hopefully my next post will include seal pictures... :-D

First Week Over...

My first week of rehabbing animals is done! I've got Tuesdays (today) and Wednesdays off to just do whatever. Today I went into Friday Harbor to send some letters and pick up supplies. I walked around "downtown" for a while - the town is absolutely TINY!! There's a movie theater - which only plays 3 movies at a time. And lots of souvenir stores selling kitschy little things that are rather overpriced and not my taste at all, of course. X-D

The only problem is that I had to make two trips to get everything I needed/wanted from the grocery store (or, as it's called here, the Market) on one of the center's "intern" bikes. Which wouldn't be too bad, except that it's a tad too tall for me (and a "guy" frame, which makes it worse) and the seat is really hard. So I'm pretty sore from riding on that thing for at least 16 miles (it's about 4 to town). On the bright side, the scenery is really nice. San Juan Island is very bucolic, and there were some amazing views on the ride.

I did manage to find a spot in the intern housing that gets a patchy phone signal; it'll be decent for a while, then suddenly completely drop out. Unfortunately, this means I'll have to wait until I can get into town (or somewhere NOT in the middle of a valley, which Wolf Hollow is) to call people back home.

And now to talk about the really good stuff - the work! So far, it's been a little overwhelming
trying to learn everything and adjust, but it's been really cool, too. I've spent a lot of time preparing food, feeding, and cleaning up after the animals. There are some really neat patients right now. We've got tons (or it seems that way!) of birds; some are adults that just need "supportive care" until we know they're ready to be released, but we also have nestlings that would never survive without help. Some of the young birds get fed every half hour, which gets a little annoying after a while, if you're the person doing every feeding. ("I just fed these birds and I have to do it again?!") We've got three starling nestlings right now (or at least they could be starlings), and they're pretty ugly. But the sparrow is cute, at least to me.

Two of the starlings - see how unattractive?

Especially when they gape for their food - their mouths are humongous!

Notice how cute this guy is. (Or at least try to imagine. He was hopping around so much I couldn't get a good picture! But he has these adorable little fluffs of feathers on his head reminiscent of Einstein.)

We've also got six fawns, at the moment, four of which are doing wonderfully, but two aren't doing so well. There's also a baby squirrel, two goslings (one is smallish and still very baby-cute, but the other is in kind of an awkward phase between baby-cute and adult-handsome), three ducklings (a hooded merganser, a wood duck, and a mallard, which are all in the same tub to provide a social grouping for them), an adult (?) mallard, three (at least essentially) grown barn owls and one younger one that doesn't have all its feathers yet, a bald eagle with a broken shoulder, an adult cottontail and two infants, two young river otters, 5 young opossums, and 7 young raccoons. I think that's basically it, apart from all the songbirds.

We got a fox kit in the first or second day I was here - she was pretty adorable, but understandably frightened. You can see her head in the picture, during her initial physical exam. She'd been trapped by a person who said that if he saw her again, he'd kill her (to protect the game birds he raises), so the decision was made to try and raise her to be released in the fall. Unfortunately, she ended up dying a few days later. :'-(

One of the really great things about Wolf Hollow is the chance to work with raccoons. There hasn't been a case of a raccoon acting as a rabies vector species (only bats have been found carrying rabies) in this area, so interns can actually handle the raccoons. We still have to take special precautions, though, because of a certain worm they naturally have in their gut that can infect humans. Baby raccoons look pretty cute. Once they get to a certain age, however, they apparently all become pure evil, and ours are just getting to that age. They're very growly and will gladly bite or scratch you, if you let them. I was transferring 5 of the coons to an outdoor tub for the day, and the first one I picked up decided he did not like it one bit! He was the squirmiest thing I think I've ever tried to hold on to! He made the worst noises, as though I were torturing him instead of just scruffing him like a mother might do, and tried his best to get either his claws or his teeth into me. Fortunately for me, I didn't have to take him far, I was wearing gloves, and he didn't manage to get me. The lesson: they may look cute, but raccoons beyond a certain age are evil, evil creatures!

The river otters are also really cool, although one of them is way too friendly. I think she may have come from a different rehab center (she got here before me) because she was imprinting too much on the staff there, which is exactly what you DON'T want to happen. I'm not sure we're having much more success preventing her from imprinting on humans, to be honest! The other problem we're having is that she doesn't seem to understand how to eat from a bowl. She'll eat from a syringe all day, and she's eaten food off a spoon a couple times, but bowls seem to completely baffle her (granted, it's not natural for them to eat from bowls, but a tiny sparrow figured out after a few hours that the food was now coming from a toothpick instead of a beak! You wouldn't think it'd be that difficult for an otter to realize that the dish contains food and yes, she can actually eat it without it coming directly from the hand of a human!). (The picture is Penny, one of the staff members, demonstrating how to use a syringe to give formula to an otter during my first day of training.)

We also constantly get phone calls about potential patients or other animal issues. (My least favorite thing so far has been having to answer the phone!) I got to go out with Penny to pick up a deer carcass from someone's driveway (I think if it had been fresher - it had died the night before, probably after being hit by a car) and, supposedly, pick up a new animal from the airport. (We take in cases from all over the region - other islands, mainland towns close to Anacortes, and even some from other rehab centers.) The plane was running late and we ended up going back to the center because we'd have had to wait too long. The only other call I've gone on was to try and rescue a fawn that got attacked by a fox. It supposedly stood in a pond for 45 minutes (not a good sign) before we got there, but as soon as Sarah R (a staff member) moved towards it, it leaped away. So none of my calls have resulted in a new live animal coming in yet. :-( With seven weeks left, though, I'm pretty sure I'll get something soon!

The really exciting news came tonight - we've finally got a seal pup in!! I can't wait to see it on Thursday - hopefully it will make it that long! (I've heard the seals have a pretty high mortality rate...)

I haven't talked about anywhere close to everything that's happened, but I think this post is long enough already. ;-)

So much to see, so little time...

I'm finally at Wolf Hollow - I officially start my internship tomorrow! Fortunately, they have a computer, so updating won't be as difficult as I thought it might be.

I had a great time in Seattle, meeting my cousins and seeing the sights. I went all over the city - I visited Pike Place Market, the Seattle Aquarium, the Space Needle, the Woodland Park Zoo, the Olympic Sculpture Park, and the Flight Museum. I got some great pictures, but I don't know if/when I'll be able to post them.

Unfortunately, I was in Seattle for their coldest June on record - on the days they were reaching the new lows! Compared to 100 degree heat, though, I think 55 is rather nice, even if it is gray and damp and drizzly. Luckily, the sun actually came out while I was on the Space Needle, so I got some great pictures there. I managed to get one of Mt. Rainier (who knows if I spelled that right!) in the distance; there were clouds around it, but you could see the top poking through, all covered with snow.

I also think I saw a seal on my ferry ride over to San Juan Island, but I'm not 100% sure. I didn't get my camera out in time to take a picture, plus only part of its head was out of the water.

On the whole, Seattle seemed like a very nice city, apart from being so dreary while I was there. (Though supposedly I just got to experience the typical winter weather.) It seemed very dog-friendly, and the transit system (once I actually found my way to the bus stop!) worked really well.

There are currently 3 other interns at Wolf Hollow with me; they seem pretty cool, even though I haven't really gotten to know them since I've only been here a couple hours.

Hopefully there'll be some great pictures with my next entry!

So Close!!

Only a few more days until I leave!

Am I ready? Not really. X-D But, I'm getting there. Slowly.

I'll try to post on this blog as often as possible - probably about once a week, as I'll probably only have a couple days each week when I'll be able to get into town and onto a computer. Feel free to leave comments on posts, or send me an email at klgleaso@ncsu.edu. Since I'll be there for about 8 weeks, you can also send me regular mail at Wolf Hollow: Wolf Hollow WRC, 284 Boyce Rd, Friday Harbor, WA 98250. (Obviously, you should make sure my name is on it as well. ;-D) If you do send me snail mail, make sure it'll arrive before I leave the center on August 6.

My next post should be from WASHINGTON!! :-D

Where Am I Going?

Washington! :-D See where the little flag is on the map?



This is where I will write about (and hopefully post pictures from) my trip to Washington, where I'll be doing wildlife rehab at Wolf Hollow Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.

I don't leave until June 7, so there probably won't be much posting before then.