It is officially baby season!! and Henry is a Red Sox fan

On Thursday we got our first baby!! AND it was the baby animal I was most hoping to get to see: A fox kit :) It is the cutest thing I have ever seen. But pictures speak louder than words:

Sorry the quality isn't so great. My camera hasn't really been the same since Henry licked it. Anyway to make things even more ridiculously cute she also makes this little sad cry when she is hungry:



The replying squawk is the seagull behind me. I don't know what they are saying to each other but I think something is lost in translation.

More updates on her and pictures to come! I'm thinking she looks like a Daphne (my mom actually suggested that). Anyway I will close with a cute video of Henry so he knows I still love him best.

The Trouble with Gooses

Hello everyone, today was 62 degrees and it was officially too hot for me...but the animals are enjoying it. I can finally open my skylight too which is night because currently I can hear spring peepers outside....and raccoons fighting (mating?). Last week I went to Drew Thursday to speak at the grad school panel which was fun, and after Emily and I went out for drinks with Fox and Windfelder (our two favorite Drew professors) and the other graduate student Drew alum. We also got to see Windfelder's baby Maggie earlier in the day and she is still the most adorable baby I think I have ever seen :) EW I just officially found the first tick of the season on my arm! Anyway, here are some more animal photos:

Wild Turkey at dawn
Can you find 3 turkeys?*
Our lovely volunteer Marissa and Henry (I hope it's ok to post this Marisa!)
Delicious
*just kidding there are only 2 turkeys

Oh and also to make the title make sense I have a brief story; We had two geese come in from a woman who takes our geese that were having some motor skill problems. One stayed with us and the other (a domestic goose which we had no room for) went to the vet office that we work with a lot. Anyway, to make a long story short the geese got better and the domestic one was dropped off to us after being at the vet for a week or so. The first morning we had him I put him in a bucket to bathe. The bucket happened to be next to the other goose's cage. Goose number 1 went...."honk?" uppon seeing goose number 2 in the bucket. Goose number 2 went "HONK?!" uppon seeing Goos Number 1. Then they honked joyously at each other for a good 5 minutes. It was adorable. I had no idea geese would recognize each other like that. Here is Goose 2:



and a video of goose 1 in the bucket from a few days before:



I am aware the bucket is pathetically small for them, but it is generally used for the ducks aaand they are now back to their home with our goose and pigeon woman with a pond and a lot of land so they only had a few days of bucket bathing. That's all for now!

Lies!

So I said I would post over the weekend and I didn't, however, I have some good excuses. 1. I was busy having fun with Meghan and Sarah and then later busy dealing with health insurance, UVM, and filling out stuff for my summer job. 2. I am having issues loading pictures for some reason, aaaand 3. I'm lazy! Here is a brief review of my life in recent weeks. I will post more later! Maybe!

1. Last weekend was AWESOME with Mary and Laura and Russ (and Delilah, Laura's sassy guinea pig). We went to Reading Terminal Market, South Street, got lost a while, and coolest of all; Eastern State Penitentiary!! Here are a few pictures of how cool and spooky it was:
The tour was good and very interesting, but since it was 2 in the afternoon, not very scary. Also you may notice the last picture is actually of Laura and Mary and me wearing silly hats. I also had a ridiculous time attempting to be on time to a movie with John (friend met through Casey like 3 years ago) and then again the next day. The first time I was late was due to my inability to read my GPS, and the second time was due to Russ forgetting he had set his GPS to pedestrian (um why does it say we will arrive in 10 hours?). Soooo I blame all tardiness on technology. Anyway, on to my only other major news:

2. I CAN GO TO UVM!!! Yay, it's official! I just got word that I am all set with a Teachers Assistantship and a Research Assistanship which should cover me. So now I have a summer job and I'm going into graduate school.....now the part where I need to freak out and get a ton of shit organized and done...but still yaaaaay!

Last bit of news: My last day is officially (it's in the calendar! In pen!) May 8th. I am staying an extra week to have some more time training the new girl who is coming the very end of April. Anyway, after that I will be heading to Philly for a few days to see my Laura again (Mary you are invited, if you see this please make contact with the outside world when you get a chance). And on my way back I was planning on seeing anyone else who wants to see me before I disappear into Vermont. OH ALSO OMG WTF BBQ. This summer in Maine, all my Drew people (and Meg and Sarah) are invited to my cabin for a crazzzzy weekend. If you are reading this and you are from Drew, this means you!!

OH ALSO ALSO, we found out that Eastern State Penitentiary will let in groups of people at night to do ghost hunts/investigations, which is so cool! So if you enjoy ghosties, let me know and maybe we can set something up sometime. We are thinking a group of around 15 to 20, because otherwise it would be prohibitively expensive...BUT SO COOL. Anyway, that's it for now.

UVM why do you tease me so?

So I will do a longer post about last weekends wonderful adventures next weekend when I have some time. Right now though, I will briefly tell you why I am currently not a happy camper. I got a cryptic email on monday from a woman at UVM telling me to call her ASAP. Thinking to myself "haha, they are going to be like, JK, you didn't actually get in!" Which would be funny if it weren't close to what happened. I finally reached the woman who had left her office, but very nicely gave me her home number. I called and said it was Cori and the woman on the other end answere "YAAAAY!" which was a bit of a surprise. She informed me that she has been feeling aweful about this and apparently it woke her up thinking about it at 3am last night, but that they may have "jumped the gun" on letting me know I was admitted. Apparently they really want me in the program (she stressed this part which was nice but did not make up for the next part) however, because Dr. Donovan (my prospective adviser) is technically working for Vermont Fish and Wildlife, her students have to have 100% funding for her to take them. So far they have only been able to piece together a TAship and one other thing for me which will not completely cover me. There are other things in the works and that is not to say I WON'T get 100% funding, but just that they don't actually know for sure yet....bbbuut I was accepted!......WHAT?! So anyway, now I have to wait and see how everything plays out before I can do my little happy dance. I'll give you details as I know them, but in the mean time this calls for some serious turkey taunting:

My Day: by Cori Brauer Age 23

So tonight I am driving down to Philly with Mary to visit Laura and I am super excited. I woke up this morning thinking "ok, today will be a nice easy day. Marissa is coming to help out and she is an awesome volunteer, we have 2 fewer animals than yesterday, etc, just have to stay conscious until I get to Philadelphia". Anyway, the morning was indeed very easy. I successfully convinced a veterinary clinic we work with to treat a goose with lead poisoning instead of handing it over to us (it would have to have its blood chelated to remove the lead which is rather expensive). theeen someone called in and brought us a possum in rough shape that looked like a car had run over it's tail....then right after than a woman I had never met basically ran in and handed me a goose without working legs. It turned out to be a woman who I have spoken with over the phone who awesomely takes all our pigeons and doves and ducks....but in return aparently we sometimes get surprise geese. The goose is nice anyway. Just kind of took the situation in stride and then daintily started sipping water and went to sleep. Anyway, I'm sure I will post next week about my crazy weekend in Philly seeing ghosts and Naaaarnia. That will make more sense when I explain where we are going...which I will....next week.....ooooo a cliffhanger! Stay tuned folks! Also here is a series of pictures I don't think I ever posted of Sarah being slowly covered in blankets when she and Meghan came to visit:


THE END

Headin' North!

I got into UVM!!!! :) My mom wrote me and email that was like "SOMETHING JUST CAME IN THE MAIL FROM UVM, CALL ME SO I CAN OPEN IT!!" Although I am surprised she was able to wait for me to call : p I'm really excited about it, I have really missed being in school. I'm pretty sick of all the physical work at this point and I'm ready to go back to learninin'. Anyway, here is the woman I am going to be working with:

http://www.uvm.edu/envnr/vtcfwru/Donovan.htm

At the Rubentein School of Environment and Natural Resources:

http://www.uvm.edu/envnr/

I am hopefully going to be working on a conservation project using a brand new bioacoustics method to monitor wildlife populations in vermont (and with luck it will become a standard way to monitor species around the country!)

No news yet on what kind of financial aid or funding I am going to be getting...but I have a student ID number!!! Cool! Aaaand here are some pictures of Devil's Den where my parents and I went for a walk when they were here...cause everyone likes pictures :)

Sealion Kisses!

Well Emily wins the prize for both most nerdily awesome, and most belated birthday present I think I have yet received :) One of her old friends is now a trainer at the New York Aquarium and she brought me along for a behind-the-scenes tour which included kisses from TWO sea lions and TWO seals. Now if you wanted to know, and you should, sea lions do not actually kiss in the wild, what they DO do is a "breath exchange" which is a sort of hello, probably similar to dogs sniffing each others rear-ends. Thus when the KISS they are actually gently BLOWING AIR INTO OUR EARS AND HAIR. It was quite ticklish and fishy...and there is an AWESOME picture of Emily looking concerned while one is blowing in her ear on facebook if you have access to that. Anyway, I can't seem to post my pictures on facebook for some reason, so here are a few highlight pictures (for more see facebook):

In other news, my parents came down and my dad got to release a hawk as a Christmas present I had promised him. It was really cool because the one we ended up releasing was one that had come here a few weeks ago, so I got to finally see an animal come in, be treated, and be released (by my dad no less) which was nice. Also the release went well; the hawk didn't claw my dads eyes out or crash into a tree, which was nice. Also, also, I visited Mary Saturday night and after we had dinner with Emily at Bubba Gump's in Time's Square, I went back to NYU with her and became addicted to Firefly....Thanks, Mary : p

Here is a video of my dad releasing the hawk