Preparing for Incidents

I help lead the team of staff that respond and help manage incidents on grounds. It’s a great group of folks to spend time with. We review actual incidents that have occurred, discuss situations we are concerned about, review procedures, conduct surprise drills, and more. In the past few weeks we conducted “Emergency Jeopardy” as well as knocked out two emergency drills. TEAM ULI, my partner and Butterfly House Director, took on TEAM SHERRY in our Jeopardy style activity. AsRead more

Wolf Transfer Debrief: logistics

I’ve already talked about how we caught the wolves from the habitat, and a whole bunch about crates. Today, we’ll review the logistics, and all the somewhat boring but incredibly necessary pre-planning that occurred to help make this transfer as smooth as possible. Since this might not be the most thrilling part, enjoy these wonderful photos of the wolf family taken December 30, 2019 Planning for this transfer started in the summer of 2019, during the Red Wolf SSP ManagementRead more

Wolf Transfer Day: let’s talk about crates

Last week I talked about catching up the wolves. The focus of post #2 about red wolf transfer day will be on CRATES. In order to catch up 10 wolves, we not only need more than 10 crates (ideally), but very specific sizes and types in order to make our work go as easily as possible. The work starts well ahead of time to make sure we have the crates on grounds: a minimum of 10 of the “x-large” size,Read more

The goodbye was hard… on so many levels

Last week we transferred eight of our red wolves to the Mill Mountain Zoo, one of our Red Wolf SSP partner institutions. We’ve been updating folks through Facebook so hopefully everyone is aware of the changes. I’ll write a few different posts over the coming days to let people in on the enormity of the project. From planning, communications, wolf catch-up, health checks, transportation, emotions, documentation, institutional readiness, supply management, and more; the project was intense. Today, let’s focus onRead more
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Christmas 2019

Happy Christmas! Today has been incredibly smooth. I am sure it is due to the abundance of help. Yesterday we had an almost full contingent of staff, and today, Keeper Chris and Volunteer Virginia were in to help this morning. Given the help, it meant my start time was much later. I woke before my 6:01 AM alarm and arrived at work to get settled and organized for Chris’ arrival at 7 AM. In addition to the later start time,Read more