Busy Busy Busy

I apologize that it's been a while since I've last posted, but I've been pretty busy lately and I've been too tired/lazy to type up a new post until now. But even now, I'm kind of swamped with taking care of a baby lamb, a duckling, and a baby robin, who all need feeding and love and attention. Therefore, I'm just kind of giving you the highlight of my week: going to a museum and eating a reindeer (I'm such a party animal).

So I've been working at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve for a little more than a week and a lot has happened here. I've been learning so much about the native animals of the Yukon Territory AND I've built up some arm muscles from shoveling so much hay ;) But it hasn't all been work. The animal care assistant here is named Cassy and she's been a great person to get to know. The other night we went into town and went to the Beringia Museum followed by dinner at Klondike Rib & Salmon. It was a ton of fun and the food was DELICIOUS! The Beringia Museum is dedicated to teaching people about the lost continent of Beringia (otherwise known as the Bering Land Bridge) and about the animals and people that crossed over to North America from Asia back during the last Ice Age. It was kind of a smaller museum, but it was still really interesting and cool and I definitely recommend it if you're ever in Whitehorse. After the museum, Cassy and I went to Klondike Rib & Salmon for dinner. In the end, I ate waaaayyyy too much food. I ordered the reindeer stew and it tasted "magical" (see what I did there?).

Jefferson's Ground Sloth

Tooth of a Jefferson's Ground Sloth - awfully big tooth for a vegetarian

Scimitar Cat

Steppe Bison

Wooly Mammoth Tusk!

Short-faced Brown Bear - they were bigger than a large polar bear!

Saiga Antelope - still found in Asia, but very endangered :(

Mural depicting different everyday activities of the ancient people that crossed over Beringia

Giant Beaver!

Baby Mammoth!

Mmmm reindeer stew :)

Baby Robin

Duckling!

Oh and one more thing to mention. There's a Northern Flicker currently trying to break into the apartment I'm living in. He's cute, but he could at least buy me dinner before trying to move in :P

So rude!

A Baby Lamb, Eh?

So I have unfortunate news, the baby moose did not make it :( He was fighting off a bad infection due to puncture wounds from a barbed wire fence and his left femur was dislocated from the hip joint. We had given him plenty of fluids and antibiotics to fight the infection, and Dr. Hallock had made a sling in hopes that the leg would go back into the socket and stay in place. The antibiotics worked, but the sling didn't. His leg would have kept popping out of that socket, and when you are supposed to grow up to be a 1000 pound moose, you can't have a leg that won't stay in it's hip socket. So yesterday was a very sad day indeed :(

Now for the happy news! (I need to make up for how depressing that first paragraph was). We have a baby Dall's sheep and he is doing quite well! There are two herds of Dall's sheep on the preserve, and one of them is suspected to be contaminated with Johne's (pronounce YO-knees) disease. I had to do a little research, but here's what I found:

Johne's disease is caused by the anaerobic bacteria Mycobacterium johnei and is spread by feces and milk. It affects all ruminants, but it is considered a huge problem in cows due to the fact that it can lead to a reduction in milk production, which can be a big economic problem. Johne's disease can be fatal, but it depends on how well the animal fights the infection and how soon the infection is diagnosed and treated. Now, why the microbiology lesson? Because the lamb we currently have came from the herd that is suspected to have Johne's disease. In order to prevent the lamb from contracting the disease itself, Dr. Hallock actually hand delivered the lamb and brought it into the rehab facility and has been bottle feeding milk ever since. According to his records, the lamb has now been inside for about 20 days. Now that I'm here as an intern, it's my duty to feed him every 4 hours each day and take him outside to play for an hour in an enclosed pasture about 2 or 3 times a day. Let me tell you, he is a rambunctious little guy. Dall's sheep typically live in mountainous areas and this little guy definitely demonstrates the adaptation that these sheep have for climbing up and down rocky terrain. Whenever I take him outside to play, he almost always takes off bounding through the pasture and jumping off the big rocks that are located in the middle. It's really very cute :)

Monday, we're going to try and introduce him into the other herd that doesn't have Johne's disease so hopefully that goes well!

Canada, Eh?

So quick recap cuz I wasn't able to post yesterday:

Monday we did physical exams on all of the birds. Everyone looked fine except for Aspen - she ended up opening up the old would on her amputated wing tip so we had to bandage her up.

Tuesday was an easy, laid back day. However, we finally received our Merlin! We know for sure that he's a boy now because he has some slate blue feathers coming in. He's a loud little guy, but we're still very excited to finally have him!

WEDNESDAY was my 21st birthday :) It was also a cruise ship day and we were swamped with people all day long. It was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun. Except for the part where Claire got up after I finished my presentation with Sarah and had all the people in the room sing "Happy Birthday," that part was unexpected and embarrassing (but also very thoughtful and nice). We then went out and celebrated my birthday at a place called Fireweed and I ordered my first legal glass of wine :) Afterwards, we came back to the apartment and the girls gave me a present - a brand new set of kitchen knives! (long story).

So now today:

Currently, I am in Whitehorse, Yukon in Canada. And right now, as I'm typing this post, I am babysitting a baby moose that had a run-in with some barbed wire :( I'm going to be spending the next two weeks at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve helping out Dr. Maria Hallock and the rest of the staff with what they do here. Lucky for me, summer is baby season! So I will be mostly helping out taking care of the baby animals that are born on the preserve. The Yukon Wildlife Preserve has about 750 acres of land, with about 250 acres viewable by the public. To my understanding, the rest of the land isn't really being in use right now. They currently house a great variety of animals: musk ox, moose, mountain goats, Dall's sheep, arctic foxes, caribou, mule deer, and lynx. It's a pretty cool place, but it sounds like I'm in for a lot of work!

More Countdowns...

Okay so countdown number 1 is out of the way. Now just two more important ones:

~3 days until my 21st birthday (bwah!)

~5 days until I go to the Yukon Wildlife Preserve in Canada

This summer really is starting to speed up. It feels like it was just yesterday that I arrived in Haines, and now it's already the end of May! Luckily, it's been a ton of fun so far and all of the people have been super nice and welcoming. Now to give an update on what's happened so far:

On Friday, we met another intern in town. Her name is Julie and she's interning at the Hammer Museum over the summer. Yes, I said "Hammer Museum." The world's first Hammer Museum is located right here in Haines and it contains pretty much any kind of hammer that you can imagine, even one's that the Ancient Egyptians used. Anyway, she's a student at the University of Georgia so there's yet another southerner spending her summer here in beautiful Alaska.

Saturday was kind of an easy day. It was raining outside so we just tidied up around the Foundation. Oh, and we are currently in the process of receiving a new addition to our raptor family. We are due to receive a Merlin this week! Merlins are small falcons (comparable to American Kestrels) and are found all over North America and most of Eurasia. I've been told that the one we're receiving is a male, but I guess I'll find out for sure once he gets here! Male and female Merlins have different feather coloration - males have kind of a slate blue coloration, whereas females are a drab, brown color. His flight is scheduled to leave on Tuesday so hopefully everything goes according to plan and he has a safe trip here!

First Cruise Ship!!

Our first cruise ship of the season came in today! That means that today was our first "real" day of work. There were people coming in and out of the Foundation pretty much all day. I was given the privilege of doing the eagle presentations for today so I had to present Scotty, our mature bald eagle three times to three different groups - a grand total of 96 people today. In addition, Claire, Katrina, and Marjorie did live raptor presentations with the birds that they were assigned. Which reminds me, it has been a few days since I've posted so I'll give you a brief recap of the past few days:

Monday:
 - We were given different tasks to complete for the day. The biggest one was we had to was take apart and redesign Aspen the Great Grey Owl's mew. This actually ended up taking us two days to complete because the original setup was a bit difficult to take apart. We had to do this because Aspen recently had part of her wing amputated so she has trouble maintaining her balance, which means that she had a tendency to fall off perches and stuff. So what we did to help her out is take everything in her mew and lower it down to about 18 inches off the ground so, if she did fall, it would be a short distance and she wouldn't really hurt herself.
 - Another task for the day was digging out a new pond for Bella the Bald Eagle. Myself and Tracy (the Raptor Handler for the ABEF) completed this task. And my back is STILL sore. The hardest part was that the ground of Bella's mew is mostly gravel and big rocks, and it's hard to dig through gravel and big rocks.
 - After all that was completed, we took an internship test over all the stuff we had learned the past few weeks. It took an hour and it was actually quite difficult. Luckily, everyone passed :)
 - Finally, at the end of the day, Dr. Hart told us which birds we were assigned to take care of for the summer. Claire was assigned to Dylan, Katrina to Hunter, Marjorie to Warrior and Sitka (the Red-Tailed Hawks), and I was assigned to Sarah the Great Horned Owl (yay!).

Tuesday:
 - We finally finished Aspen's mew. Then we gave her one last little look over before putting her back in there. She seemed pretty happy with the new design!
 - We went over our tests and discussed which areas we needed to focus more study time on.
 - We each started spending time with our respective birds. It is expected that we now spend at least an hour each day working with our bird.
 - At the end of the day, we had a big staff meeting about what to expect when cruise ships dock in Haines.

Which brings me to today:

Like I mentioned earlier, we each did raptor presentations for the people who visited the Foundation today. I don't know about the other interns, but I was very VERY nervous to be speaking in front of the various tourists today. However, as the day wore on, I started feeling more and more comfortable in front of everyone. I even got to practice some Spanish when I met a couple from Puerto Rico! In the end, I feel that everything went pretty smoothly. We're all super tired now though!

Red Velvet cupcakes that I baked for the bake sale today

Claire giving a presentation about Screech Owls

Taking questions from the audience

Marjorie talking about Red-Tailed Hawks

Dylan - the cutest, angriest Eastern Screech Owl you will ever meet

Warrior the Red-Tailed Hawk

Marjorie and Warrior

Claire and Dylan

He blends in so well!

Feeding Scotty!

My favorite girl, Sarah :)

Hunter looking very deep in thought

Sarah and I :)

Katrina giving her presentation on Barred Owls

Countdowns

There are a few major countdowns going on in my life right now:

~3 days til the first cruise ship arrives in Haines

~10 days til my 21st birthday (woop woop)

~12 days til I head up to Canada to spend 2 weeks working with baby animals at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve

So many exciting things!!

Lately, most of my time has been spent preparing for that first item on the countdown list: the arrival of the first cruise ship. The stores in Haines make most of their profit from the summer cruise ship season when thousands upon thousands of tourists come in to visit the town. The American Bald Eagle Foundation is a non-profit organization so we're not worried about making a profit, we're just worried about making wonderful memories for the people who come to visit us (I know, I know, that sounded really cheesy). So for the past couple of days, myself, Claire, Katrina, and Marjorie have been studying and practicing so that the first group of tourists get the best experience ever at the Foundation. We were able to practice our natural history and raptor presentations in front of Dr. Hart and a few of the Youth Raptor Handlers, which went alright. We're all still a little nervous about doing our first presentations in front of large crowds of people, but I think it'll all work out in the end :)

The Radio Shack Shack

Okay, so before you ask why I gave this post the title "The Radio Shack Shack," let me just explain the situation:

Haines is a really small town. Like a REALLY small town. Like no traffic lights small. Well, since it is such a small town, there aren't really any big chain establishments here - only family-owned businesses. The only major chain establishment is the Radio Shack...it's in a building that actually has shack-like qualities...so it's the Radio Shack shack...

It's Radio Shack...in a shack

I thought it was kind of amusing, but I digress. The important news of today is that I was able to hand-feed Scotty today! I've been trying for the past few days and he still didn't quite trust me, but today we had a major breakthrough (or what I thought was a major breakthrough, it could've been a fluke, but I would like to think that Scotty and I are BFFs now). Now this is great news but you have to keep in mind that, while I might refer to a lot of the birds as "cute" or "my BFF," all of these raptors are still very much wild birds at heart. The Foundation (and really any raptor center in the country) only has these raptors because they have special permits from the US Fish and Wildlife Service to keep them. One of the conditions that must be met in order to own a native bird of prey is that the bird must be non-releasable, whether from some injury or if it imprinted on people. All of the birds that the ABEF houses are non-releasable due to various injuries, therefore, they're allowed to keep them for educational purposes. That being said, we always use proper safety techniques when handling the raptors here to prevent injury to ourselves or the birds. So when I say "I hand-fed Scotty," I really mean that "I held a fish in my hand while wearing a thick leather glove and patiently waited for Scotty to come to me and take the fish out of my protected hand with his rather large beak that I'm slightly afraid of." But it was still a great experience. I've had a little experience with Auburn's "War Eagles" but I've never actually hand-fed an eagle before. It's really something when you can stand in the presence of a bird as powerful as a Bald Eagle and have it approach you and take food out of your hand. I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning :)

The Box of Life

So this week we are working with Tracy, the on-staff raptor handler, and Dave Olerud, the founder of the American Bald Eagle Foundation. Yesterday we learned about food prep, which entails dissecting the rat and removing the gastrointestinal tract. As you can imagine, it's very messy and kind of gory. Dr. Hart explained that we have to do this because the rats have a far way to travel to get to Haines and it's better not to risk some sort of organism traveling along in the stomach. (Also, the birds like to sling intestines around, and that's a pain to clean up after). Today, we did food prep again, but this time Tracy allowed us to do it all on our own, including figuring out how much to feed each bird.

Each day after food prep, Dave has us for fun afternoons of natural history education! And that is not a sarcastic statement. Dave is the founder of the American Bald Eagle Foundation and he's been living in Haines for the past 50 years. He really is one of the greatest guys I've ever met and he really has a way of telling a story that makes even the most mundane things seem interesting. He told us about the history of the area and about the native people, the Tlingit (pronounced klinkit). The biggest thing that he told us about, well the thing that stuck out the most to me, was the Tlingit idea of the "Box of Life." Now I might be mistaken, but here is my understanding of the Box of Life from what Dave told us: Basically, in life, you live in your area, known as "your space," and in your space, you have certain resources available to you. As long as you live in that box, you must learn to use those resources to your fullest advantage and in the wisest way, without using them to excess. For example, the Tlingit tribe here has many different types of fish, and one of the most important fish they have is a type of smelt fish known as hooligan. Thousands of years ago, the Tlingit figured out that when you let hooligan sit out in the sun, their fat liquifies and starts leaking out of their body. Well, they would take that liquified fat and purify it into an oil.  The oil turned out to be an extremely valuable trading tool as well as a staple in the Tlingit diet (hooligan oil is very rich in amino acids and omega-3, leading to a healthier, more powerful Tlingit people). Since the oil ended up being one of the most valuable things to the Tlingit people, it can be said that they were using their available resources to the fullest. Box of Life utilized.

First Alaskan Hike

Today it finally stopped raining. It's been raining pretty much every day this week. So we went on a lovely 5 mile hike up to a location known as Battery Point. I have to say, it was some of the most beautiful scenery that I have ever seen! Along the way, Katrina showed us various edible plants that grew along the trail such as fiddlehead ferns (which reminded me a lot of spinach leaves). Also, we were able to see a few cool birds - Red-breasted Sapsuckers, Varied Thrushes, and a Yellow-shafted Flicker. Once we got to Battery Point, it was like a mob a ducks everywhere! There had to be at least a thousand Scoters! There were also some Buffleheads and a few Harlequin Ducks out on the water as well. Needless to say, it was a very fun day :)

This is a burl. Burls form on trees when they have an infection. So it's kind of like a growth that the tree makes to sort of engulf the infection.

Me letting out my inner tree hugger

Those are all ducks...it was ridiculous! And noisy...

Katrina up on the point

Me sitting at the point, enjoying the view

Claire at the point

Bring on the Birds!

Yesterday (Saturday) we finally got a chance to handle the birds for the first time! It was Claire and Katrina's first time actually handling captive raptors so it was a very exciting day! They started off working with Dylan the Eastern Screech Owl then, once they got comfortable with him, they moved up to handling Hunter the Barred Owl. We practiced the proper technique of how to place and secure them to a perch and then we practiced transferring a bird from one handler to another.

Claire and Dylan

Katrina and Dylan

Katrina with Hunter

Transferring Hunter like a pro!

Claire with Hunter

After doing all that, Dr. Hart gave me the opportunity to try and feed Scotty, the resident mature Bald Eagle. However, I'm a stranger to him so he wasn't really feeling like taking any food that I offered him...no matter how hard I tried :(

Oh well, maybe next time!

So after all that excitement, Dr. Hart gave us our next assignment - making new cuffs and jesses for all the birds for the summer season. An assignment that we decided to take to a very creative level! We already made the jesses and cuffs for Dylan - with his name imprinted on them :) Our plan is to make personalized jesses for each of the birds so I'll be sure to post pictures once the masterpieces are finished!

Raptor Vision

Today we learned about all the cool aspects of raptor vision and how a hawk's eyesight is so much better than a human's. In a human eye there are two kinds of structures - rods and cones, the same goes for birds of prey. However, the major difference is that humans have only 3 kinds of cones (they're the structures that let us perceive color) while raptors have 4. Our cones are red, green, and blue. Raptors have red, green, blue, and ultraviolet. Because of this and other aspects of their eyes, raptors have the equivalent of an HDTV whereas humans have eyesight that is more like an old analog TV. It's just ridiculous thinking about how there are colors and other things that birds can see that we can't even comprehend!

Another thing we did today was learn about leather working and how to make the cuffs and jesses that go around a bird's leg. The cuffs are the anklet part and the jesses are the pieces of leather that dangle from the cuffs. Dr. Dan showed us how to cut out the strips then we used our own fingers to guesstimate the size that we needed to make the cuffs. We then had to add jess grease to the cuffs and jesses and had to massage the leather so it would be softer and not as stiff. Needless to say, a side effect of making the leather softer was having the softest hands ever!

Claire with her cuffs and jesses

Cuffs and jesses that I made

Internet is a Beautiful Thing

I have now been in Alaska for 4 days. And it's been cold and windy every single one of those days! I'm a Florida girl through and through so it's been kind of rough trying to adjust to having highs in the 40s in May. Also, we do not have wi-fi in the apartments so, as much as I hate to admit it, that's been a hard thing to live without. Fortunately, there's a little coffee shop nearby that has wi-fi so I've finally been able to create a new post!

All cold weather and lack of internet aside, it has been absolutely wonderful being here! Haines is a really small town in the middle of the mountains so there is tons and tons of beautiful scenery everywhere. Plus, everyone here is super nice and welcoming.

Isn't it beautiful??

As of right now, 3 of the 5 interns for the summer are here. Myself, Claire, and Katrina are the 3 raptor interns that are here. There is one more raptor intern, Marjorie, and then one intern for the natural history museum that have yet to arrive. We're living in apartments above the museum and each of us, except the museum intern, has a roommate. I'm going to be rooming with Marjorie, who arrives next week, and Claire and Katrina are rooming together. So far it's been fun hanging out with these lovely ladies :) Today, we started our intern orientation and tomorrow we start doing some real work - cleaning out the birds' mews. Yay.

My apartment

Sunset on the river....at 8:45PM

Some mountains at Picture Point