Festive festivities!!

Since I didn’t have time to write a blog last week, I’m going to sum up the past 2 weeks in this one. I presented my first educational program last week which pretty much consisted of me talking about fish to 60 girl scouts. I was really nervous but it went great and they seemed to like it. The next day I was assigned to a “river reading” at a local library. I read “The Rainbow Fish” book to about 10 kids ranging from pre-k to 1st grade. Afterwards I had them put together a fish puzzle and decorate it. I also had them “fish” for magnetic fish with tiny rods that I made. I have another river reading tomorrow, so I’ll be doing a different book and craft project.

This past weekend was the Zane Grey Festival. This is a big bash in honor of Zane Grey (father of the western novel). There were different booths and tents set up by organizations, along with arts & crafts for kids, and different demonstrations. I was in charge of the fishing demonstration, in which I had to wear the lovely old time “bathing suit”. I complained a lot beforehand and my boss said I didn’t have to wear it, but I decided to be a trooper. The festival had a great turn out, and overall it was a fun day…even in my gorgeous bathing suit.


My housemate Becky and I organized a talent show for the park staff which we held last Sunday. In between the other acts, I played guitar and Becky sang spoofs on songs that we made.We also changed into different ridiculous outfits after each act. I must say that it was pretty amazing, and the whole show was hilarious. We’ve decided that our next organized event will be “water olympics”. Keep an eye out for us on TV.


Until next time,
Lara

And the "Felon" appears!

Most of our days this month and next month are filled with programs. But the first day of this week was hard, hard labor. We had 22 sheets of 8x4 plywood that needed to be painted for Jeanne's aviary she's building and for the flight cage. Our day started with an adventure to Home Depot to pick up a 5 gallon bucket of paint. You don't realize how heavy a bucket of paint is until you carry it all the way out to the car. That took up the first hour of our day. By time we started painted it was getting hot. We were painting 8 sheets at a time; front, back, and sides. After we did the first 16 we saw that there was only 6 sheets left so we pushed through to finish them. I was so tired by the end of the day.

Wednesday was once again our cleaning day due to the abundance of other things we had to complete during the week. We cleaned out left over food, bleached and refilled water, and scrubbed perches. While we had started on our animal care routine Mary-beth was out picking up a new rehab bird from Bolton Vet. She ended up bringing back a Turkey Vulture that we are treating for lead poisoning. We have to put his pills in his food 3 times a day and hope that he doesn't tear appart the mouse with his medicine. Turkey Vultures usually just inhale small prey items like mice. We usually don't name our rehab birds, but he earned his name. This bird ended up being named "Felon". When we was at the vet he had gotten out in the holding area and made a mess of things like tossing things arounds. After we were done cleaning and observing the Vulture we went on with our other events for the day. It was Jeanne's birthday and we were going out to look for Kestrel and then to get ice cream at UCONN. Unfortunetly we didn't see any Kestrels but we did get to watch a Red-tailed hawk fight off a song bird which was pretty cool.

Thursday was a busy program day, with two programs in two different locations. I got to jess up Silo when we were getting all of the birds packed up, and she didn't even scream at me. I learned that if you block her path by putting your arm up infront of her she doesn't fly off and you don't have to grab her. For our first program we were at Starbase again, and I presented the environment. I messed up a little bit by jumbling a few numbers in the facts. For the second program 2 hours later we were at the New England Air Museum where I did the environment again, but this time did a much better job. I think I know what my problem with public presentations is. With public presentations your trying to talk slow and smoothly so people can understand you. But when I need to speed up a part of a program I do not get nervous. Being able to speak at a faster pace makes me a lot more comfortable. So I need to learn to start talking at a speed that is comfortable for me, and then as I do a different program start talking a little slower each time.

Last night was a fun night though. It was our meet and greet program at the movies for the Harry Potter movie. We brought all of our owls out for 2 hours in the afternoon. I had Emyrs the Barred Owl who was a bit of a grouch. But I felt like i did so well at this event, to the point where I was bringing up facts I learned in Ornithology class. This wasn't a paid program for us, just donations, but even then it looked like was were doing well. The last half an hour Jeanne had me take out Silo and present her facts. I was a little nervious because I hadn't really read up on Barn owls but I did fine. Everyone that stopped by seemed to love seeing and hearing about the birds, and thats what matters.

Until next time,

-Heather

*The picture of Mary-beth was taken by the New England Air Museum.

Week 5 state capital internship

This week start with me writing an article that was not something I agreed with. I found it quite easy to do this. That was because when i have done debates in Nancy Ross classes I often took the side I didn't agree with. I feel this gave me the tools to be able to use my knowledge to write about it, and make sure it defended what people from my view would have said. I also had to do a lot more research then areas I agree with because i feel i was looking for facts more, and wanted to try and see if i could convince myself.

I also had to cover the front desk again this week. It is always interesting getting to talk to people, and be the first person to talk to people.

The rest of the week was quite slow this week. Which is OK it happens. I feel it will continue to be slow because it is now summer break for the California Legislators.

--Rae

Meeting the public

So for the past couple of weeks I have had a big role in working with the 4 cheetah cubs we are raising to be ambassadors for CCF. Chewbakka, our last ambassador, unfortunately died earlier this year after a 16 year career at CCF and due to that loss it was time for us to begin raising more cheetahs to follow in his pawprints. Last August we received four three week old cheetah cubs from the government of Namibia who had confiscated them from a farmer in the Okakarara area of Namibia who shot their mother and captured the cubs. This is why they are currently called the Okakarara Cubs. Because they came to us at such a young age, there was no hope for them to be released into the wild and we decided to hand raise them and train them to become our new ambassador cheetahs.

Now these four cubs (Kaijay, Peter, Tiger Lily, and Senay) are 11 months old and they are growing very fast. As ambassadors, for the rest of their lives they will be meeting people and the public around Namibia and here at CCF's main center so it is very important for them to be very use and habituated to humans. We spend time with them everyday socializing, while at the same time respecting them for the wild animals they are and will always be. Although they are ambassadors in training and are very comfortable with humans, we always remember the fact that they will always have their instincts and will never be CCF's "pets." We consider them to be more of employees of CCF and ambassadors of the cheetah species.

One of the things we do daily is take them on walks to meet the guest we have here at CCF on a daily basis. It's not quite the same as walking a dog, yet it has similar qualities. Obviously, much more patience and awareness is needed because they are wild, but again because they have been with people their entire lives and are habituated to humans, we can take them on these walks and use them in this way without at all making them uncomfortable. I've greatly enjoyed working with these guys and being one of their handlers. I have learned so much but I have also been able to utilize so many of the things I have learned at Unity. I don't have many pictures but here is one. Again like always I am always happy to answer any questions and welcome any comments. Until next time...

- Eli

Myself with Senay, Dr. Marker with Tiger Lily and Andreas who was a high school volunteer

Does that bird have a mouth?

This week has been a very eventful week with programs just about every day that I worked. Wednesday we drove all the way out to Stamford for two back to back programs at the same place. The first group was pre-K to 2nd grade and the second group was 2nd thru about 8th. I was a little nervous about this one because both groups had upwards of 100-120 or so kids, plus we had to use a microphone! I've never used one for a program before other than for my environmental challenge project, so it took getting used too. It also doesn't help when you like to talk with your hands. Though for the first program we shortened it to about 35 minutes for the age group and I had to present Chico and the environment. I feel like I started off a little rough with Chico, but when I went on the environment next I felt more comfortable. We had a short 10 minute break until the next group came in and then we were off with our talk again. For the second talk I did only Chico and it went a lot smoother. I was so tired this way I was actually falling asleep on the car ride there and back.

Thursday we did our cleaning day due to the busyness of the rest of the week. Me and Jeanne did our regular cleaning routine of raking, watering, and scrubbing. Kyle showed up an hour later and got there for the tail end of cleaning. After cleaning I had the chance to jess up Silo which took no time at all. She's such a polite bird once you get ahold of her. While I had her out I practiced my Emyrs talk being I was to present him at the program on Friday. Our next task was to clean out Spirits carrier. We decided to let Kyle hold him being he was one of the only ones who haven't so far. Only problem is Spirit decided to nip Kyle and his reaction was to open his hand and let go of the jesses. Lucky for me he stayed in between two carriers so it was easier to grab him. We also grabbed Emyrs to clip his nails and went to check the Red-tailed feet. Jeanne grabbed the first, adult Red-tailed and check to see that his feet were looking better since we switched out some perches. Then it was my turn to go and get the baby hawk.

This is when I learned a very important lesson, you can never be too careful about what your doing. I grabbed the baby and had each leg in one of my hands, but he was facing me and he needed to be facing away. So I was able to switch one hand and held him as far out as I could so that I could grab the other leg. He almost got my arm when he swung around to perch of my glove. When I reached in to grab his other leg he reached out and tagged me on my face. For those who don't know, when an animal tags you it means that they either got you with their claws, talons, or bit you. The whole thing happened so fast that I didn't really think he got me nearly as bad as he did. Lucky for me he missed my eye and only got me with one talon, but it was still enough to cut my face a bit to start bleeding. The important fact about the situation is I didn't freak out, I kept cool and continued to restrain him. I thought I had the bird far enough away but you can never be to careful. Like Alan said, next time just let him go and try again. I learned my lesson and that's something I never want to happen again. These birds are powerful creatures and need to be respected at all times. The minute you even start to get too comfortable in what your doing is the time you'll mess up.

And that wasn't even the end of the day! After I had a chance to clean up Jeanne and I had to drive down to Pfizor for our rodent pick up. It was a nice bonding time and we were able to get there just on time. Once we got back it was packing time. We had to take all of the mice and rats from the three boxes we picked up and place them into freezer bags for storage. It took us about an hour to get everything all packed up.

Friday was another program day, and another 2 hour ride. We were doing a program for a library that Hope Douglas had done programs for 18 years, so we had big shoes to fill. It was an extremely varied group from young children to adults. I had to present Emyrs for the first time to this group, and it went well except one thing. I was talking about his weight, and it's a natural thing to kinda lift the bird up and down, but with Emyrs that’s not good cause he has a balancing issues. I just glad he didn't bate, he just turned around with his back facing the crowd.

Yesterday was a fun day because we were at Riverfest. We arrived at 3 in the the afternoon and got everything set up with enough time to do a quick walk around. At 4 we started to take the birds out, only 3 at a time, and cycled them every 30 minutes. That way all of the birds, and handlers, got a short break from the crowds. I handled Herc for the day and switched of with Rose every other cycle. Rose is one of Hope's old volunteers who's trying to start off on her own. Herc did well but could only stay out for 10-15 minutes at a time because the music was stressing him out. It's amazing at meet and greets how little people know about these birds. We stayed there until 8pm in which we packed up and left. We wanted to be out of there before 9pm when the fireworks we going to be set off. Over all it went very well.

After a crazy week of programs and lessons learned I have a day to rest before I start all over again. Though I only have 5 weeks until my internship is over and school starts shortly after.

-Heather

week 4 state capital internship

This week was pretty calm. I got my first draft of my op.ed. done. I am learning about writing this, and how my style is and what i need to do to change for talking to constituents and what words they like and the wording they look for when reading.
I also had a chance to talk to our legislative director and learn more about what he does and how he balances all his jobs. As well what it takes to get something done. One thing i found out is that you must really follow bills cafe fully and talk to everyone who is effect by this bill as it goes through the process. This is because u must talk to them before u emend so that can let you know how they feel. I also learned you have to learn how work with each member because they all have very different ways of handling legislation. It is also very important to remember you won’t be an expert on everything. So rely on the experts, often times they come to you, and want to share their knowledge. Use that and also use your Caucasus experts and annalist.

I also have been doing a lot reading. This week i have been going through and reading the water code. This is because i would like to become an expert in water in California and i have access to them, and the time to read them. The part i have read this week deals with funding and appointing the chairs to the state water committee.

-rae

African Safari 3D

So I know I'm almost a week late on my week 4 update, but last week internet here wasn't working so well and I finally have found time to update everyone on what has been going on. Last week a large film crew was here to get shots of our cheetahs for a full length feature film they are working on called African Safari 3D. From what I understand, the film is about kind of a mix between a documentary and normal film in which the two "actors" lead the audience on a safari through Africa from the southern portion of Namibia to Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya. It's being filmed in 3D and is set to be released sometime in June or July of 2012. All last week we were all extremely busy getting the film crew the shots they needed plus taking care of the normal day to day activities of CCF.

The reason this film crew came to CCF was mainly to get footage of cheetahs running, so we did our best to provide good opportunities for a usable shot. They came in and filmed at our normal cheetah runs, but we also allowed them to come along for feeding. For some of our cats, we run them behind our feeding truck before they are fed in order to exercise them, so rather than use our own truck we fed out of one of theirs that had a camera and a stabilizer with it. I unfortunately didn't get to come along for this but I saw it from a distance and it looked really neat. Here is a picture of the crew and the truck with the camera with our lead cheetah keeper.

Juliette, our lead keeper, is near the middle of the image with the brown hat

In the film there are two "actors" who are more of guides than actors. One of these people is Kevin Richardson who is a lion and hyena enthusiast who has a center in South Africa. Kevin is well known in the wildlife world, especially when dealing with lions and I got to spend a good amount of time talking with him. We had an 1 1/2 hour conversation about what it is he has been doing and his outlook on conservation and issues surrounding the lion. He is often criticized for the way he works, but after talking with him I know he is in it for good reasons and has a very good outlook on conservation and the issues surrounding the animals he is passionate about and caring for them in captivity. I really enjoyed spending time with him and Mara, the "actress," during the time they were here.

That was pretty much the most exciting part of last week. Again, I know this update is late but when you are in the middle of Africa 45 minutes from the closest civilization, internet is not always the best. I will post the update for this week in a few days. As always, I'm happy to answer any questions and I welcome any comments. Until next time....

- Eli