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