So I forgot to add something to yesterdays post! We had a raccoon that had broken its leg back before I arrived here. He stayed outside in an enclosure all winter. Remember when I said I catch poled and vaccinated raccoons? Well this raccoon was actually one of the harder raccoons to capture because he more or less knew the way of the pole; how it worked. So he would always slip out of the pole. He would also mock charge which made him look scary but you could honestly see the fear in his eyes when we were around. I managed to catch pole this raccoon last night for release! I asked the others if they wished too because I did not want to steal the show but was super excited that I was able to get involved in doing this. After capturing it and putting it in a crate I then carried it to the truck where we loaded it up into the back. Next stop was out in the middle of a forest for release! Which was very successful mind you. We took pictures so I hope to post them up in this post at some point. Will update everyone when I do in later posts and what not. Later on that night, all us interns (except one :(! ) went over to a staff members cabin and played card games for a good hour or so. Had a GREAT time for sure!
This morning started out good. Have a lot of energy today so been doing quite a bit of stuff. Started to vacuum until phone calls came in. More raccoon and fawn calls of course. Hopefully found a young raccoon a good home with another rehabilitation center (since we are completely full!) and then continued to tell people to leave the deer fawns alone since they aren't crying out nonstop.
Once some calls were taken care of then I continued to vacuum. By then the sweeping and mopping was done; very thankful for the other intern doing this. Love it when there is two of us up front for sure. I attempted to clean windows but we ran out of window cleaner; thankfully more was ordered. The two of us then fulfilled our animal task by cleaning out the box turtle tank in the education room. The other intern took care of the turf portion of it (picking out the food with tweezers) while I did the water portion. Cleaned the filter, the rock, mat, and then the tank itself. Added new water so of course dumped the old out. After this we took a small break until some people called. Somewhere during the middle of this we emitted some eastern cottontail rabbits and I gave a tour while the other intern followed. The tour was easy since they were somewhat rushing through; wanted to see more of the animals and talk about some facts vs a lot of facts which I didn't mind at all.
Eventually the other intern went to lunch so I updated the 2013 patient database, emailed it to the two rehabbers, then continued to do gift shop inventory that I had started in previous days. Hope to inventory everything between the back room and gift shop then updated the gift shop excel spreadsheet so we have a more accurate reading of things. I was almost finished with the back room before the intern came back from lunch so I could then take lunch. Typing this all up of course and hope to add more soon.
UPDATE: So after lunch I went back downstairs, of course, and then the intern and I tried to find the education director. He mentioned having a special project for us so we wanted to find out. This project included a wheel barrel, twigs, and grass. The project we had? Rebuild the Bald Eagle nest replica previously built by interns. The storm caused it to droop on one side and so we rebuilt a wall and then added a lot of grass in the middle to make it look new and fresh. This honestly did not take long at all; we were called good Eagles for it haha. We returned back inside and sat for a bit. No other tours came in and I had a feeling we wouldn't get anymore. So I started doing inventory on gift shop items kept in the back room storage. I started this a few days ago and since nothing had been taken out I figured finish it asap. This lasted up until around 2 when we had a staff meeting. We covered the DNR inspection regarding the advanced license, the Loon incident (when the loon brought in was shot), schedules, and various other things. It was mentioned that a gift shop inventory should be conducted which made me smile since it was already started and halfway finished. It was honestly the assistant education staff members idea but the progress I made felt great. During the staff meeting we had a few phone calls too so I missed the very rear end of everything but caught up afterwards. More fawn and raccoon calls!!!!
REMEMBER EVERYONE, Leave the fawn alone!!!! Unless it is crying/wandering for hours straight the mother is somewhere. They leave their fawns alone since the fawn does not have an odor and the mother doe does. Its a technique to keep predators away from the young fawn.
When it comes to Raccoons; do not relocate a raccoon unless you're 100% positive it does not have babies. Some poor babies lost their mother because of this mistake.
After the phone call episode, and trying to find raccoon babies a rehabilitation center (since most of them are now full - including ours), we took a moment to breathe before returning to work. I returned to doing inventory on the back room while the other intern left elsewhere to clean owl enclosures. I worked on the inventory until roughly 6 something then updated the excel spreadsheet with all of our gift shop information. Once this was done around 6:40 or so I emailed it to the executive director, told her we needed more adult sized squirrel shirts, made a note for myself about updating the rest of the spreadsheet next time I am on education, and then head upstairs to finish off this blog post.
Sometime tonight I am going over to one of the rehabbers homes to let his dogs out for him while he visits his girlfriend up north then heading back. Otherwise I believe this is going to be a rest day for everyone since we stayed up super late last night.
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