QuikPost: Watermelon Day follow-up

It was so busy and exciting on Watermelon Day that we didn’t even have time to take photos! Check out photos by clicking here, or at the following site: http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/goaskmom/image_gallery/14809228/. Thanks for all the donations too- we received 69 watermelons!Read more

Watermelon Day is coming

Join us August 3rd for WATERMELON DAY. This will be our 5th year spreading the watermelon-love to our critters. (Click here to read about our first year). While we won’t be doing watermelon carving, the bears and other animals will be doing watermelon eating. Of the over 1,200 posts we’ve published, some of my favorites have to do with watermelons: Watermelons for our Farmyard Friends Watermelon Storage Watermelons in the bear pool. and of course, Watermelon poop  (take a look, it’sRead more

Welcome to our new Skunk

Meet Florian, our five-year old striped skunk (formerly known as hunk-the-skunk who was rescued by CLAWS). Florian, meaning “Flower” in Latin, is the first skunk we’ve had here since Flower, our old female skunk, died over 10 years ago. (She was well-loved and it seemed appropriate to have him named after her). CLAWS had Florian since December, when a home was needed for him after his last location. The folks at CLAWS worked long and hard to get some weightRead more

Max and more behind-the-scenes difficult news

It’s been two week’s without Max and life is still strange. The emails and cards and notes and drawings help to remember how much impact he had. All the tests are not back yet but it seems that Max aspirated some of his food for no apparent reason and died of choke.  It doesn’t seem to be common and there isn’t anything we learned to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. Maybe the last tests will tell usRead more

Barred Owl Box

We recently added a box to our barred owl exhibit. The exhibits department did a wonderful job making it and with Keeper Janine’s help of drawing the specs. It turned out exactly how we wanted it. It was installed yesterday and today I was checking on all the animals in the afternoon. When I checked on the barred owls, Kerby was perching on it! It took only one day for them to start using it. As you can see itRead more