Day 2 - Raptor Duty, Bears & Lots of Restraint

>>>If you click on the pictures you can see them full size! So do that!<<<

Today was insane! I learned sooo much and we were so productive. I felt like everyone was on their game and we did work!! First thing we did this morning was take care of our baby raptors which included a few Cooper's Hawks, a juvenile Kestrel and a baby Kestrel.

He was so adorable and noisy, I couldn't get enough. With young raptors they stay inside until they are deemed healthy and big enough to move out. Then they are "acclimated" for three days which means we move their kennels outside where they can start getting used to being outside for the day and are brought in at night. I'm excited to get to watch this little dude grow up :)

Then a few of us headed up to the black bear pens to muck out the one with the smaller bear cubs. They are SO adorable but they sound like demon spawn!! So scary hahaha It was intense hard work and the bears are on a critter cam so we are working with an audience. We secured the cubs in their back den and went to work getting their place all cleaned out and threw in some fun new toys. We climbed on top of the enclosure and watched as they were let out of the den and explored their new digs and it was really fun to watch them enjoy their toys and fresh food :)

Taken from above their back den area

I'm sad I missed them when they were small enough to handle...but if I'm lucky we might get cubs later this summer that I can get my hands on :) Right now we have 16 cubs which will hopefully be moved to the new bear run being built right now. It's such a small space in a cement building that gets filthy so fast. It will be great for them to get more space to play and we will be able to give them more enrichment to help them learn skills they will need in the wild.

A big part of bear and fawn diets are fresh tree cuttings from plants they will be eating from in the wild. The difficult part of this is that we have to venture out into the surrounding forest to gather all these cuttings!! haha I went out with Brenna, another new extern, and Jordan, an experienced extern and Natural Resources major, to learn how to identify the plants they eat and find some good plants to bring back. Here are the one's we learned about today :)

Serviceberry (Amerlanchier spp)

Red Maple (Acer rubrum)

Dogwood (Cornus spp)

Dogwood also has a very unique bark that is used to identify

Blueberry (Vaccinium spp.)

Jordan was really helpful in answering all our questions about plant identification.

Black Gum (Nyssa sylvatica)

Black gum can be identified from a distance by the way the branches extend at an almost 90 degree angle from the main leader

Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)

Crazy fungus we saw growing on a lot of the Black Gum

Tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera)

It was a lot of fun to learn about the native plants from someone who really knew his stuff :) And it was great to get away from the hospital and hike around for awhile (eventhough we were still working) OH! one thing you ALWAYS do after hiking through brush etc,....check for ticks!! and guess who got her first tick today!? ME!! lol ewww I kinda freaked out...but I've seen these dudes under a microscope and they do not play!!! So I had to take a pic lol Sorry about my hairy legs, I'm about to shower and this will get taken care of promise...just not much reason to shave if ya know what I mean haha.

I found multiple ticks on me today...just part of the deal when you're working with wild animals... but usually I just find them on my clothes. Thank goodness this is the only one that got to my skin and it hadn't burrowed yet lol

Anywaaaaayyys...next we learned how to restrain and transport fawns which looked like this:

love those cute fuzzy butts haha

Then we were trained on raptor handling/restraint & weighing using nets and then two ways to restrain a large raptor to weigh them. My mind was BLOWN! It was so easy. So one way is to use a box, laying the raptor on its back which calms them down.

The second and easiest way is to CAREFULLY lay the raptor on its back and make a raptor burrito! I couldn't believe how easy it was. Raptor swaddling hahahaha So awesome!

Then it was time for miscellaneous chores involving cleaning and returning box turtles to their cages from their soaking tubs. Check out the pics :)

Cottontail rabbit (Sylvilagus spp)

Baby box turtle! (that's my thumb for scale, it was about 3 in from end to end)



Terrapene spp

Loved their bright colors :)

Then we had to feed the adult raptors later in the day including the education raptors.

Athena (below) is a Barred Owl and is pretty feisty, known to dislike females. Which is why my trainer made me enter her enclosure to give her her food hahah As soon as I put her mouse on the perch she flew over to it and glared at me while I put out the rest.

I did not turn my back to her the whole time haha she was quite intimidating, pretty sure she was trying to send me a message in this picture...which I had to take outside of the enclosure. There was NO way I was taking off my leather gloves to snap a pic with her looking like that. Then there's Edie, an American Kestrel. She's in the mood to mate right now so no one but staff is allowed in her enclosure because she gets.... worked up hahaha

But she seems to like attention and to glare at chicks (another female hater) so I got to snap this pic while she was perched right next to the mesh. So by the end of the day I was trained on so much! Below is the list of tasks we will be expected to learn and master by the end of our externship. It's been two days and this is what I've been signed off on so far (including turtle handling). Not too shabby!! By the time I leave I will also train another extern on all these tasks as well and sign off on their activity chart :) There's still so much to look forward too and lots of time to completely master these skills.

Here are some other cool pics I took around the enclosure yard.

Such an eventful day but beyond exhausting! 10.5 hrs on my feet with maybe 45 minutes of that sitting down to eat lunch and rest...a little! Needless to say I earned a milkshake from Sonic's after work and now I'm going to take a long hot, hot shower and work a bit with my feet up and pass out before 10pm hahaha I decided I'm over morning work outs hahah don't need them. And I don't need to worry about not lifting this summer because I know I'm doing all that and more everyday at the hospital. But definitely doing yoga religiously morning and evening :)

So pumped to see what tomorrow brings....if this much has happened in 2 days...I can't even fathom what all I will have seen/done 54 days from now!

Exhausted and feeling blessed for such an amazing experience.

Day 1 - Orientation & Fawn Duty

I bottle fed a fawn!! Multiple fawns actually...and I didn't get any appropriate pics HAHAH I know sorry, I'm a tease. There was so much to learn today, mostly just figuring out where everything was! haha But I'll be working with them many more times so there are tons of pics to come. I also got warmed up with baby birds (always a good place to start). Here's a little Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina)

It was such a cutie. Kept dodging my syringe but I worked with it a little and it got the idea of what I needed for it to do :) It felt SO good to be back at a hospital doing something I'm so passionate about. Everyone there was so helpful and nice and we all love what we're doing, it was a great atmosphere. And we all have different education/career goals so it's great getting to talk about it and slowly narrow my focus and hopefully cement what my direction will be as I continue. I wish I could do rehab forever but some days it really feels like putting a bandaid on a broken leg and so I think I will keep it as an extracurricular and an opportunity to learn natural history and network with the wildlife community. Oh here's a fawn pic I can show you all, took a quick snap before I had to feed it (gloves get dirty fast when you're bottle feeding formula)

These are White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), just darling little things. We have about thirty fawns at this time and will most likely get another rush when the late ones are born. They are so delicate and sweet. There are no real words hahaha It was an experience to say the least.

Anyways, I'm starting 6am workouts with one of my housemates tomorrow morning, probably a run & yoga. It will help me keep my head together and stay focused. I'm one of those people who is the most productive and happy when I have WAY too much going on. So I will get back to California absolutely exhausted but happy and in really awesome shape. Works for me!!

Tomorrow I'm on raptor duty :)

Good night everyone!!



The Final Leg

I departed Missouri at 2am CST and drove 12 hours into Virginia today, arriving at 3pm EST.... Another long day on the road. Nothing too eventful just lots of rain and hicks haha I went through quite a few states, all of them very pretty and green. I'm pretty sure I caused the extinction of several species of insects haha it was ridiculous how many times I had to clean my windshield just to get it full of bugs a few miles down the road. I kept forgetting to take pictures haha I was so anxious to get to my destination already but here are a few of the scenery in West Virginia and into Virginia :)

The wildlife hospital is set in a beautiful wooded area and the extern house is located a couple miles down the road. There are going to be about eight of us here at all times (people rotate in and out) and we will be running most, if not all, the duties at the hospital. It's going to be busy and really dirty and even more exhausting but the externs who have already been here for a few weeks have promised that I'll learn everything there is to learn.

I took a bit to get settled in and grabbed some groceries for the first few days - I'm totally brain dead so who knows if what I bought even makes sense haha The town of Waynesboro is......sleepy lol and kind of run down. I got the feeling that there are a lot of poor people here and maybe a lot of drug use. (Don't freak out Mom haha) I feel like I'm on a different planet, this is definitely going to be an experience. On top of that, something is wrong with my phone so I can't send/receive texts or calls, these first few days will be crazy (a few externs this year have left after a few days to a week because it was such hard work haha, weak) and a little lonely on top of that. The other externs all seem friendly enough so I'm sure I'll get into my groove relatively quickly. Most of all I'm anxious to dive in and kind of forget my life back home for a couple weeks.

I'm off to bed. Have to start work at 9am and I'm way beyond exhaustion and need to be at the top of my game tomorrow morning. Gnite world....

Of Cliches, Lists, and Courage

I get a lot of people asking me: "why Virginia? why drive there? why did you even move to LA? Biology? I thought you were studying physics?" lots of why's...and in the moment I don't always know how to answer so I'll attempt to give you all a little insight into my "why".

Like most stories, this one starts with a guy and a girl in love and as these sorts of stories go, in the end the boy is gone and the girl is left trying to figure it all out and start again. I met him when I was very young and impressionable and love/infatuation makes you do funny things, like care if the person has an opinion on how you dress or how in shape you are. At an age where I was still trying to learn who I was he was a good and bad influence. He opened my eyes to so many wonderful things but because of this his opinion became increasingly influential in my decisions. When I realized I was losing myself and putting off dreams I always had, I ended it.

That was over two years ago and since then I've been going back to my bucket list, re-writing some of it and completing other tasks. So I guess you can say I'm doing this all because of a guy... how cliche, I know! hahah But it's the opposite of what that usually means. I'm doing everything I always wanted to do but put off and especially those things that he told me I couldn't or "would dump me if I ever did"....like getting in really good shape, singing really loud in my car, and piercing my nose haha I know I knooowww! Sounds like I'm only trying to send him a big "F*** you!!" and maybe in some things I am...haha.... but in another, bigger way I feel like I was the person I am now for those six years and I've only just let her out into the world.

Now here I am crossing one more thing off my bucket list: drive cross country :) Most people that hear what I'm doing say I'm brave or some synonym and while I appreciate the sentiment it feels like too much. Soldiers and firefighters and parents are brave haha I'm leaving my friends behind for the summer and blowing money driving way too far and being very bored alone in my car hahah Then I started listening to TED talks this week and I heard one the other night that was talking about how vulnerability is necessary to connect with people. I learned that the word courage comes from the Latin word cor which means heart and by definition courage means to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

So I've decided that my "why" is courage. If you want to know why I'm doing this or that, the answer is always because it's the only way I know how to live and stay true to who I am. I'm a free spirit, I love change, get anxious if things stay the same for too long and I tend to be spontaneous in a big way. I lived so long with these self imposed restrictions and now instead of asking "why" I ask "why not??!!" and very rarely do I ever find a reason to not do something.

"If I don't get on that boat I know exactly what I'm going home to.

If I do, my future is unwritten"

Missouri Botanical Garden - St. Louis, MO

>> Oh, if you haven't already figured it out...you can click on the pictures and see them all full-sized!! So yea....do that :)

After our little jaunt to see the Gateway Arch we decided to hit up the botanical gardens because if you know me, you know how much I love plants. People say I have a green thumb or a special way with plants but it really didn't start out that way. A few years ago, I moved into my own apartment (no roommates, nothin!) and my mom decided I needed some cute things for my door so she bought me a doormat and my first plant, a geranium (Pelargonium hortorum). Suuuper easy plant to maintain and I somehow managed to get it infested with white flies and then kill it hahah A year later I decided to take a couple horticulture classes and since then I've been working with different plant species and making my new place into a veritable jungle.

So the Missouri Botanical Garden was a real treat and such a haven. It was still raining a bit when we got to the gardens so we didn't get to see half of it but the Temperate House and Climatron were enough and we easily spent two hours there without realizing it. There were sooo many species I have never seen and many I had forgotten about. Another awesome facility they had on the grounds was a Home Gardening Center where they knew everything about what plants were best for which windows and how to grow in and around your home. Awesome resource for the casual, backyard gardener or someone like me who wants a little backyard farm.  Here are some of the better pics we got of the grounds and the favorite plants we saw. I meant to get all the names of the plants but there were SOO many hahah so if you know what some of these are give a shout in the comments section.

The Climatron

loved these pitcher plants Sarracenia spp.

more pitchers

Begonia spp.

Ficus benghalensis - Banyan tree

Dracaena draco - Dragon palm

Those huge fan palms in the back are from a Double Coconut palm (Lodoicea maldivica) they have the largest seeds (coconuts) which can weigh as much as 50 lbs each.

Anthurium spp.

Loved the indoor ponds and waterfalls, it was like being in another world :)

Hibiscus spp.

Phalaenopsis spp - Moth Orchid

these made me decide I'm starting to grow orchids when I get back home

Carludovica drudei

Pachystachys lutea - Golden Shrimp plant

Most bromeliads are epiphytes meaning they grow on another plant/structure, non parasitically. Their roots are for stabilization and attachment and they derive water from the air and rainfall. This bromeliad is collecting water in its inner cup and will absorb it through the surface of its leaves if necessary. Very cool & diverse plants. Many orchids are epiphytic too.

Musa spp. - Banana tree

We loved this moss

And these Anthurium leaves

Alpinia vittata - Striped narrowleaf ginger

More Musa

Poison dart frogs

And I loooved the cool texture of these geckos :) So awesome.

Allium cepa - Onion

Canna spp. - Canna lily

I can't wait to get back to California, hunt down the nearest botanical garden and LIVE IN IT!

ok that was my weekend of fun in St. Louis and now I'm off to cook my Chicken Parm for the family and then do what I do best...sleep!...well a little more work then sleep :)

I head to VA late Tuesday/early Wednesday and then real party starts Thursday so keep checking back for more updates/pics/posts!!