Update 3 from Germany

I’ve been assigned a group on three hunting seats to maintain on my own. I am to lay down feed in the muddy wild boar pits or Suele in German hunting language, as well as maintaining the shooting lanes and clearing the paths leading to the high seats. Maintaining clear shooting lanes is best done with two people, with one seating up in the high seat pointing out the branches and bushes obstructing the view and the other trimming them down. The paths to the high seats must be periodically cleared of small branches and leaves to a width of approximately 50 cm to allow the hunters a clear quiet way to the high seat. I was also told to set up three Wilduhren in three of the most heavily visited Suelen.
These Wild Game Clocks are designed to stop when they are tipped over. Since they are placed in the mud over the corn feed the only game that sets them are Wild Boar. It is an accurate and relatively inexpensive way to keep track of game movement on a piece of land.
At the moment these times are simply told to Herr Brecht, the Jagdpaechter, and he then tells hunters where to go on a day to day basis. I wanted to record these times by seat and then analyze the data to give us a better understanding of what seats are visited at what time. This information could help aid hunters in being more successful by choosing seats most traversed.
As chance would have it, a mere two days after I started recording these times two of these Wild Game Clocks disappeared. Herr Brecht informed me that Wild Boar have occasionally dragged them off or buried them but a more likely explanation would be that a nosy visitor to our nature preserve stumbled upon them in the forest and decided to take home the curious looking device.
So it turns out that my experiment will have to wait a while longer until new clocks have been bought.

Nils Bell

Week 4 with 2 more!

That's right, we now have 6 fawns! Of course we are expecting 40+ fawns, so there is a long ways to go! But the two newest ones are Mushroom (in the front) and Feisty (in the back). They arrived here at Fawn Country this past Sunday to be hand raised.

Boy are these six girls a handful! They now have an out door play area that they have free access to during the day. The older fawns love to race around it at top speed, narrowly avoiding each other. The younger ones are more apt to jump and skip around, then to race the older fawns. Once they tire they will either curl up outside in the pen, or walk back onto the porch and fall asleep in some hay or in the dog kennels that have been put out there. When its time to feed them again, we call them to us by grunting to them like their mother would, and they come running! Some times were are still getting the bottles ready when they swarm us. They usually know when its time to eat, and will come before they are called. The two youngest fawns don't yet come when called, but they will learn yet.

During and feeding time and after when wiping butts, you have to watch out because some of the fawns, mostly Miss Ann and Sandra have taking to chewing on the baby wipes, both clean and dirty. Miss Ann also has taken to chewing on my shirts! Chewing on clothing and giving nips and licks are signs of the fawns bonding to us. So while the nips may be a bit painful, they are a good sign.

Something sad happened this past week. A young buck fawn that was brought to us died. Normally we don't hand raise the bucks, but this would have been the exception had he lived. The owner, and one of our customers had brought him to us after one of his does gave birth to triplets. One was born and an appeared healthy, one was a still birth, and the finally one was born very very small. He was hardly 3 pounds (average is about 6 lbs) and could not stand to nurse. Even if he could stand, he would not have been able to reach is mother. So they owner brought us the little buck in hope that he could be saved. Unfortunately fate was against us. The owner waited over and hour before picking up the fawn. He should have been grabbed immediately, as he was to small to reach his mother, regardless of whether or not he could stand.

When the tiny fawn was given to us, he was wrapped in a blanket and placed on a heating pad to be kept warm. When his temp was taken it was 93 degrees, normal temp is 101.5-102. He was very cold. We gave him some warm ringers solution and gave him some goat colostrum to try to give him something akin to the passive immunity that his mother would have given him through her milk. Unfortunately our efforts were futile as he quickly passed.

Another scary event that happened this past week was that one of the fawns, had a little run in with a door. Literally. Margarita was in the pen when a truck drove by in close proximity to where she was. Needless to say, the truck spooked the fawns that were outside. So the little ones ran as fast as they could back on the porch. Margarita was unable to stop in time and hit one of the windows on the porch door with her head, shattering the glass pane! We cleansed her wound with a saline solution and put some Nolvasan on it to prevent infection. Then we went about cleaning up all the broken glass and removing broken shards from the the door. After which we covered not only the empty window, but all the bottom windows with cardboard to prevent such another injury.

Well, it sure has been an exciting week! While the six fawns we have now may not be a lot, more should be arriving in about 10-12 days, just in time for the third intern to arrive!

3rd Week at ZooQuarium

So, I finished my third week at ZooQuarium this past week. The zoo has not been very busy lately but last Sunday we had a ton of people, which was really nice. I was able to do a couple animal presentations at our "Zoorific Theater" stage. I did one on African Animals so I brought out Madagascar hissing cockroaches and an African pygmy hedgehog. Then I did a presentation with Lily the skunk for a Native Wildlife show.

This past week I have had a lot of progress with our red-tailed hawk, Jasper, who I have been working with. I have slowly been getting him used to me being in his enclosure and getting used to the glove that I will be feeding him and handling him with. The first step was to leave his food on the glove everyday, so he would finally learn to take the food from it without being afraid, and I would also spend time talking to him everyday as well. Then I would start waiting for him to eat. At first he would not take his food till I had left his enclosure, but this weekend I managed to get him to eat while I sat on the floor of his cage. It took him a while to trust me, but once he did, it was the best feeling in the world! The next day I also sat in his enclosure but a little bit closer, and he did not take as much time as he did the previous day, so we are making good progress even though it takes time.

Last week I also finished a project I had been working on for our "Walk in the Woods" section of the zoo. We have some spring peepers that I set up an exhibit for. I have been working on it since I got here, and I finally got it the way I like it so that the frogs are happy and zoo guests can still see them as well. I also came up with an enrichment idea for our albino chipmunk in "Walk in the Woods" as well. I took a paper towel tube and lined the inside with peanut butter. Then I put Cheerios, rodent blocks, corn, and some cut up apple inside and stuck it to the peanut butter. He really seemed to enjoy it!

photos!

2/3 cheetahs, gigi and claire.

1/2 bongos, prudence.

training session with JW, leopard.

So I tried to post photos with my blog, and it didn't work. So here goes try 2.

Animal Care Internship

I am one of 7 animal care interns here at the Kansas City Zoo. The department I work with is called Baobab, which is divided into two groups: Market and Forest. The forest side is made up of gorillas, red river hog, bongos, african crowned cranes, leopard, black mangabeys, red capped mangabeys, and yellow backed duikers. The market side is made up of cheetahs, warthogs, lilac breasted roller, red ruffed lemurs, ground hornbills, saddle billed storks, aldabra tortoises, leopard tortoise, lappet faced vultures, bateleur eagles, blue duikers, red-flanked duikers, and tons of birds in 2 different aviaries. My department has so many different animals, I'm probably forgeting a few of them..



I started my 3rd week on Sunday, and loving it. So far I've learned all the routines for the different areas in Market and Forest. Besides taking care of the animals in my department I also do keeper chats about cheetahs and gorillas.



One fun thing I did last week was paint with the gorillas. We helped them by holding the ornaments and canvas, while they held the brush and painted. One of the best perks of being an intern is that if we bring in canvas, we can get the animals to paint. And basically all the animals at the zoo paint. I've also got to observe training sessions with one of our cheetahs, and our leopard.

This is the first summer that KCZ is technically doing internships. In previous years they've had assistant zoo keepers, which were paid part time keepers. So since they haven't done it before, and they're trying to figure everything out (ex: if we can shadow other departments, etc) so we're basically a guinea pig group; but it's not bad at all.

Mountaintop Removal Week 2

Week 2
24 May
Day 1 (8)
Today I finished sending letters to all of the members of the US Senate and started sending letters to member of House. I got half way through California.

25 May
Day 2 (9)
Today I finished letters to California House members and Colorado. We did a lot of work around the house today, moving books and supplies into the office, cleaning and revamping the kitchen, organizing the kitchen: lots of handy work. Tomorrow we officially start work. The head of Christians for the Mountains is coming tomorrow and the mattresses are arriving in the morning!

26 May-29 May
Days 3-6 (10-13)
I did a lot of digging in the garden this week and learned a bit about planting with the cycles of the moon. I started to till up a new garden but it started raining. I organized the office: it looks better now that we have filing cabinets and such. The house is also set now. Rebekah has been painting her bedroom and our bathroom (they look much better). We cleaned house for the arrival of our guest.

30 May
Day 7 (14)
I went to a local sustainability fair today in Charleston, WV. It wasn’t impressive at all. We didn’t have a table since we’re just getting started and moved in, but we will have one at a Christian music festival coming up. Our guest Abby is a joy. I learned a lot from her about reaching out the people in effective yet gentle ways. It’s been pretty basic this week. We’re still settling in to the house and office. We’ve made a bunch of local connections with churches, a rafting company, a bookstore, and many others. We also keep getting calls from all over the nation from people wanting to stay a week or so to help out. Basically support is increasing exponentially: it’s great! I went for a hike today. The forests here are mixed mesophytic temperate rainforests: the most diversity in the Western hemisphere and the most diversity of all temperate rain forests in the world! It was pretty exciting; I ate sassafras and wintergreen, walked through giant rhododendrons, smelled amazing blackberry bushes, short needled pine, lots of oak, and some chestnut. The giant rhododendrons were the coolest: I’m used to what my family grows in the garden. The end of the trail brought us out to a ledge looking over the New River Gorge National Scenic River with a famous arched bridge arching over the gorge. It was breathtaking. Truly a work of God.

First Hunt

This week I had my first sit in for a hunt. I went with one of our hunters to a seat called Kur Fursten placed in an area that has seen allot of damage due to wild boars of late. We saw first a fox, then a young buck, and right before we left a medium sized pig all in one night, though it was too late in the night to safely shoot by the time they came out. Each state in Germany has regulations depending on the time of year of when hunters should stop shooting based on the amount of daylight available. Two nights later I went out again and we saw a full grown doe that was grazing on the edge of the field we were sitting at for a good half an hour but Mr. Brecht only wants bucks to be shot at this time of the year because it is mating season and females could be pregnant. So no game was taken home but that’s why they call it hunting. The game we did see gave Mr. Brecht a clearer picture of how the animals are moving across his property.

Wild boars continue to be the topic of main concern for us. A new report was published by Germanys most renowned hunting magazine, Wild & Hunt (Wildlife and Dogs), that found that the wild boar populations had increased at over 300% rather than the 200% previously believed. Their vast numbers continue to cause destruction to farm grounds adjacent to forest property and land owners, like Mr. Brecht, have to literally pay the price. Thus, our efforts remain focused on controlling their population and minimizing the damage they caused. This week we took down an old fence that was put up a while ago when corn was first planted but has become extraneous because the corn is at a stage of growth that does not interest the pigs. Mr. Brecht is now considering the best place to put up the fence. Some wheat fields directly next to his property are starting to reach maturity so next week will probably be spent trying to protect those crops.
To finish off the week I had the rare treat of spotting a Zauneidechse in the forest. In all my years spent living in Germany I have never seen one of these and this one was friendly enough to pose for a picture. Representing Unity College of course!