Some pictures of the crazines which is my new life

Here are a couple pictures of the center and my apartment. Stay posted for some with actual animals in them!

Aaaaand here is a video of the turkeys following me...and then looking nonchalant about it when I turn around SO FUNNY

So I keep thinking of things to post about but then forgetting to actually post because we are getting done so late BUT here is a brief one! I will probably post tomorrow because it is my first day off, but for those of you wondering how my life is going, here goes. I keep forgetting to take pictures but I might do that tomorrow and then post because that is much more interesting. For now, here is a brief "day in the life" of a wildlife rehabilitator!
First let me set the scene; I am currently living in the apartment above the clinic with 2 other girls (both very nice and helpful) who are the previous interns and are training me.

My days thus far:

6:15am - rise and shine! It is still dark at this hour which is hard because it seems utterly unnatural to be up before the sun (and it is)

7am - must be down in the clinic to start work

morning, mid-day, and evening - putting out food for wild deer and birds, feeding and cleaning the cages of outdoor songbirds, hawks, squirrels, possums, raccoons, and cleaning and feeding indoor hawks, songbirds, turtle, deer, heron, and mouse (indoor animals are receiving extra care like medication or are being force-fed)

- animals are cleaned and fed/checked on 3 times a day (7am, noon, and 4 or 5pm
- birds (not including owls and hawks) are checked 4 times (7am, 11am, 2pm, and 5pm)
- hawks and vulture fed and cleaned twice a day (10am and 3pm)
- owls once a day (4pm) - hopefully before it gets dark or its freakin scary in there with all the hooting and hissing
- some animals get force fed, medicated, or bathed a few times a day
- other stuff includes answering the phone, taking in any new animals and assessing them/making up a cage for them, and chatting with the owners adorable 7 year old daughter Willow
6-7pm - take out trash, wipe down counters, sweep and mop floors, dump out wash water, put out food for wild raccoons, give all animals last check
7pm -DONE if all goes well

SO there is a day in the life basically. I think I might start doing little blurbs about the various animals in upcoming posts (more for me to remember them than for anything else, but also because there are some AWESOME animals here). Anyway, I leave with some favorites and least favorites:

Favorite things so far
- the 3 gulls and 1 duck that run around free in the clinic and "talk" to you throughout the day (I especially love the duck)
- the unfortunate baby deer who I think I have fallen in love with (more to come later on that)
- the 2 adult wild turkeys who are tame and follow you around outside causing mayhem like tipping over ANYTHING you leave you, sitting on the cars, stealing food, and pecking your butt when you aren't paying attention!

Least favorite
- force feeding the hawks (I am bad at it and they scare me...)
- handling the birds in general (they have delicate bones and I am terrified to hurt them)
- mopping (I just hate mopping)

The End! (for now)

So I am finally actually physically in Connecticut! yyyay. Although mentally I don't think I have really realized that this will in fact be my new home for 6ish month. But first, a story (of course):

SO we (my parents who follow me everywhere and myself) decided to leave this morning at around 9ish. Shockingly we were in fact on time for this plan until my mom looked at my front tire and said uuuuh that looks a little low. For those of you who were with my last night, that would be because I ran over the median a lil' bit and got myself a slow leak. Those of you who were with me will also recall me saying hmmm my tire sounds funny, but then not actually getting out to check. POOR CHOICE. Anyway, we then had to jack up my car and put on the spare (by we I mean my dad while I watched and commented) and then had to drive it to a place to GET a new tire because I then had to drive it a few hundred miles to Connecticut which you aren't supposed to do on a spare apparently. Anyway long story shortish we got a new tire from a guy named Scottie in a really random little tire place in North Reading and then went on our merry way only about 2 hours later than we had hoped. Anyway, on to Connecticut:

So here I am in Connecticut and it is raining like I should be calling up Noah to give me a hand with the arc, and also it is quite dark because we are in the woods and no lights are on outside...but I am actually enjoying it already :) It's very quiet and almost tree-housy in the apartment (which is very nice and has a TV and internet and every possible dish, pan, or pot you could ever need. Today I got to:
1. Feed a hummingbird
2. Wash a duck (SOOO FUNNY/WET)
3. wave dead fish at a heron (he did not eat said fish so I looked silly)
4. Chase the wet duck around the room after she hopped out of her bath and refused to be dried off/caught
5. VERY tentatively held a red tailed hawk
6. Corned the duck, faked left, dodged right, and was outsmarted by the duck who then ran under a table and laughed (yes laughed)
7. Changed a tire

All and all a good first day. I will attempt to remember to update this when I am up at 6 every morning and covered in animal poo!

Fall is My Favorite

Well here is a promised but quick post on meeting Jeff Corwin, which was less like meeting him and more like viewing him from far away in a room full of small children with severe ADD. It was fun anyway though because of Emily's child-like glee at each new creepy thing brought out (all reptiles and amphibians) and Meghan absolute disgust at the snakes (for pictures see facebook). Anyway it was interesting and he brought out a bunch of animals like a venomous Gaboon Viper and an American Alligator and then made small children hold them (again see facebook for pictures), and Emily got her book signed and a sneak attack photo with him. I also asked him about the lack of female nature show hosts and let him know that if he was looking for a co-host I was available...but I think it came off more creepy than I intended. Here is tiny, far-away Jeff Corwin:

Anyway, I then gave Emily a Crocodile Hunter action figure which SPEAKS and you can GO ON ADVENTURES with it, which she was pretty excited about :) but all the photos were taken on her camera, so I am waiting to see how ridiculous we looked playing with it. Then after bidding Emily farewell I went apple picking at Smolak Farm with Meghan, Sarah, Sarah's friend Andrew, and Sarah's apartment-mate Jacqueline. It was delicious and quite fun, and there was a table with squash and pumpkins and an empty space confusingly labeled "Pokemon":

Here are some pretty photos that almost make this post about nature. Two weeks to Connecticut!

I Think I Just Met Baba Yaga

Ok so I wasn't going to post again until this weekend when I see and marry Jeff Corwin, however, this story needs to be told to the widest audience possible while I am thinking of it: This is the tale of how lucky I am to have not been abducted despite being 23 and not really liking candy enough to follow it into an unmarked van. I got out of work early today and thought to myself, "hey self, you are pretty out of shape, how about a walk?" But I am sick of the bitty park in North Reading where I usually take my dogs and last time I was there there were young people running which just made me feel bad about my lack of inshape-ness. Anyway, I decided to just type PARK into my GPS and see where it led me and Lady (my faithful beagle mix for those of you who don't know). I then decided on Lynn Woods Reservation because I know LynnFIELD and I like the woods. This is where the bad choices begin. For anyone who lives in MA you may know that Lynn isn't the most awesome area and that Lynn woods is HUGE. Anyway, there were no maps left in the box but I decided I wouldn't need one since I was only going to wander for maybe an hour and I have an ok head for trails (wrong). SO If you know me, you know I clearly wandered off the main trail and onto little interesting side trails and promptly got lost. But rather than retracing my steps I continued on a trail that went vaguely in the direction I wanted until I got to the main path again...I then discovered that the main path branched into two equally unfamiliar looking paths and I stood there for a little while. Then I met Baba Yaga (if you don't know who Baba Yaga is please click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga). Here is Baba Yaga:

Anyway, Baba Yaga came around the bend suddenly, and being quite short and elderly and dressed all in black I registered her at first as a bear and jumped about a mile (Baba Yaga being the first other human I had seen on the trail in a good half hour). Anyway, I realised it wasn't a bear and just an old woman and asked her which way to the parking lot. She muttered something in Russian and then pointed to the right fork. Off I went to discover that Lynn Woods are HUGE and thus have MULTIPLE parking lots...So this time we met again as I was walking back from the parking lot that did not contain my car. Baba Yaga asked if I had found what I was looking for and I said no, and that I hadn't known there was more than one parking lot and had gotten turned around somehow. She directed me to the map box which was empty and then said something in Russian followed by "we will go in my car"...At this point I thought maybe the Russian part might had been "My, you would make a tasty soup" (please bear in mind that I had been wandering in the woods lost for about 45 minutes with a dead cellphone and was not in a great state of mind). Anyway, I declined and said I would just keep looking at which point she said "Oh no, we will go in my car, I know other parking lot". So I decided that despite being Baba Yaga, she really was probably about my height and I could probably take her if she didn't use ancient Russian magic on me. So my dog gave me a "what is wrong with you" kind of look as we hopped into Baba Yaga's car and began driving around. We then got lost a few times, she began swearing in Russian at other drivers, and it got later and later. I then began looking for a house on chicken legs (or possibly one made of gingerbread) which she was clearly taking me too at this point.

Anyway, turns out she wasn't Baba Yaga, she was just an elderly Russian woman who had moved to the states about 15 years ago. In Russia she apparently had a little dog who looked a lot like mine which maybe was the reason she took pity on me. She also kept up a stream of Russian conversation to my dog the entire drive which was adorable. She also got me back to my car eventually, and here I am now. Here is a picture of the witch from Spirited Away which she also had an uncanny resemblance to (only less terrifying):

I am aware this has very little to do with critters, but I was in the woods so it counts.

THE END

You can never have too much alliteration

Hey Everyone, I decided to jump on the blog bandwagon and let people know about my life after I disappear into Connecticut for 6 months of indentured servitude to wildlife. I'm starting now because I have negative computer savvy-ness and I want to learn what buttons I need to click to make things do things. Anyway, to make this more interesting I'm going to tell the story of field work in northern Maine. I got asked to help a masters student with her field work on amphibians which is taking place about an hour north of Bangor, ME and clearly I accepted. Despite a severe case of the sniffles and never having (sobberly) popped a squat in the woods, I was actually pretty excited about it. I think it would have been a lot more enjoyable for me if I wasn't sick and out of shape, but I still had a pretty good time and I got to play the rugged field biologist, even if I could barely get out of bed the next day. Anyway, I will tell this story primarily in pictures. Everyone likes pictures:

Here is one of the roads we drove on to get to the field sites -

Here is a road washed out from the apocalyptic amount of rain we have been getting (we hiked the rest of the few miles in...):

Here is a field site set up, basically a fence around a vernal pool with coffee cans burried in the ground to catch frogs and salamanders:

Lastly, here is what is was all about:

HOWEVER, the downside was that because of the ridiculous amounts of rain, the traps were full of water. This was fine for most of the amphibians who enjoy water, but not so much for the rodents who also fell in, couldn't get out, and then drowned and had to be gotten out of the traps somehow. Now I am not very squeamish, and I have had cats so I know the joys of removing dead rodents from undesireable places like the front porch or your bed, but smelling like dead things for 2 days was a little much. Anyway, all and all it was still another field work experience I was glad to have (dead rodents excluded).

In other news, in one week I will be meeting Jeff Corwin with Emily and he will then give us jobs as co-hosts for a nature show on the spot, as well as ditch his silly wife and kid to marry....us...in Utah I guess, where that sort of thing is less frowned upon. Then after that I'm off to Connecticut on October 26th to work here for 6 months:

http://www.wildlifeincrisis.com/

The rest of my pictures from Maine are up on facebook is anyone is interested. Ta!