The Day Before....

I woke up really early today and decided to go for a run.  As I was making my way around to the musk ox enclosure I noticed that we had a new musk ox calf.  We had a baby born 3 days ago and now we have another!  Sping time is in the air!  We are about to see babies born left and right.

The day before mother's day was very busy.  We are all preparing for our one day of the year when everyone gets in FREE!  First, we started by walking around the bear enclosure to make sure they are not digging any holes.  Then we threw some cantalope over for them.

Then we finished making our rounds and we noticed an addition to the Wood Bison!  We now have 2 bison calves.  Our first one was born yesterday and we had another one born this morning.  

We also had a bag of spinach that Jeremy, another employee, gave us to give to the animals.
We gave the spinach to the Elk.

This is our biggest male Elk.  You can see that he is growing his new antlers.  While they are growing their antlers; the antlers can be very sensitive.

Next, we needed to cut some branches off of our cottonwood trees.  It took us about 2 hours and we were exhausted! 

Here is a picture of one of our wood bison. 

Wood Bison are the largest land mammal in North America.  They can get up to 2,200 pounds!  They went completely extinct in Alaska due to hunting.  They were even on the extinction list for 13 years.  They believed that there where no more wood bison on the planet.  Some guys were flying over a remote part of Canada and spotted a herd of pure breed wood bison.  From canada we have received our original herd.  We are up to almost 90 wood bison.  They would like to re-introduce wood bison to Alaska.  In 2 years they may be able to release the first batch into the wild. 

Around the center we have signs explaining the dead trees on the property.  In 1964 there was an earthquake that completely destroyed the town of Portage.  There are still dead trees that are left over from the earthquake.  The ground sunk about 10 feet which caused salt water to kill the trees.  These forestof dead trees are now called Ghost Forests.

Then I ended the day by cleaning snickers' enclosure.  I gave him an orange to distract him.  Otherwise, he just trys to climb my leg and whines the whole time.

Well, I am starting to fill the soreness from cutting the branches down today...

Goodnight Lower 48,

ErIn