You know the deal. Advance prep for the day:

1. Review all the log books and check in with Keepers about any specific things to note. CHECK
2. Christmas present for Security Guard. CHECK
3. Headlamp and tasty food for me on desk and ready. CHECK
4. New batteries in Camera. CHECK

   

    

All’s ready for the day.

5:00 AM arrival with the only issue being I startled the security guard. I arrive set to have no escapes, even though Sarah commented it was time for a critter to roam free. I check on everyone inside and all is well. However, I evidently didn’t secure the ferret door well enough after giving them their meds. SH#T!

I follow the open doors into Carolina Wildlife and see the girls at the fish stream- phew, at least I found the two. However, I cannot catch them. Again, SH#T!

I follow them out of Carolina Wildlife and into Aerospace:

Finally, they both run into trouble in Play to Learn and I am able to nab them.

So, back to work now that the girls are caught 🙂

Former volunteer Karyn is my partner for much of the day, arriving at 6:30. Thanks Karyn! She helped me out last Christmas, as well as other Christmas’ too. (She and I serve together now on the board of the Red Wolf Coalition). With Karyn here, we work together to clean the indoor animals and then head outside.

The Farmyard critters weren’t thrilled with us as we check on them at 8:00 AM  and then headed to ETW.

Explore the Wild was in good shape:

• Three bears (Gus, Mimi, and Virginia) sleeping in the house. Yona snoozing in the cave. Mimi and Gus looked dead. I looked at Gus a long time and once he took a breath I was relieved. Mimi huffed at me (or Virginia) so I knew she was fine.
• Two Wolves are eventually found: The female, as usual, was sleeping in the den and finally moved so I could see her on the camera.
• Ten lemurs were fine, but slowed us down a bit trying to shift ring-tails out of the way for cleaning. I’d say the most exciting part here is that Cynthia and Iris, two of the red ruffed lemurs, took juice from me EASILY (as did Jethys).

Back to the farmyard where Equinox was still walking around with a piece of hay in her mouth:

No issues in the Farmyard, and it doesn’t start drizzling until we are finished and heading to compost. Back to the building well before noon. I said goodbye and a big thanks to Karyn sometime 11:00-11:30 as I write-up all my notes for the morning and begin to write this Blog Post. I get a surprise guest around noon- Al from Facilities is checking in.

So, the bulk of the work is done. I’ll be back in the afternoon to check on everyone and do evening feedings. My partner for the end of the day will be my daughter.  (Check her out about 1.5 years ago in this blog post when we picked up the Toledo Lemurs, or about 7.5 years ago in this blog post when we had honeybees living in our house).

Enjoy the rest of your Christmas!

Confession time before I head out: The ferrets did not get out of their cage but rather went on a supervised field trip. (and everywhere they visited was cleaned and disinfected after their visit). HOWEVER, I did let a critter out for real this morning. Mr.pain-in-the-arse-blue jay!!!! His cage was soaking wet, and I knew it was not going to go well shifting him, but it had to be done: