Yesterday, I blogged about how it was such a gorgeous day to be open.  Doug Lindstrand, an amazing photographer that always emails us his latest photos, also made it into the center yesterday.  The next six photos are the most recent photos he emailed us. 

 CUTE, CUTE, CUTE, CUTE, ........CUTE!!!!!
I love this picture!  Gilly and nelson must have been checking to see if Doug had any treats for them.  I am sure by now all the animals even recognize Doug. 

Today, I also went out to visit them.  I got some hair samples from all three moose for that ecological study I mentioned earlier. 

Today is not quite as pretty of a day.  However, I have yet to get sick of the scenery that I live in.                                                                                 photo: courtesy of Doug Lindstrand

The next 2 pictures really show how much snow we still have around the center.  A tour bus came in yesterday and still had a tough time turning the corners; even after our roads had been plowed in the morning. 

                                                      photo: courtesy of Doug Lindstrand
 Just one of many snowbanks that have built up from plowing all winter....

                                                       photo: courtesy of Doug Lindstrand

 The musk ox are looking very happy and healthy.  This summer, if any calves are born, we are going to be bottle raising the calves.  I am very excited to get to have a new experience working with animals.  I could put this up on the list with bottle feeding moose and porcupine. 









                      photo: courtesy of Doug Lindstrand

                    One of our bull musk ox...I would hate to run into this guy!
                                                   photo: courtesy of Doug Lindstrand

Construction of our bear boardwalk has officially begun!  They have started bringing in the pipes that will be put in the ground. 

I imagine once the noise really picks up with construction our bears will officially be done hibernating.  However, on a day like today, where we have had about 6 inches of snow over night they are still sleeping on and off all day. 

                                                                                       photo: courtesy of Doug Lindstrand


Today, my old room mate/co-worker Meredith spent part of her Sunday volunteering for a few hours.  It makes all the difference when I have extra help.  A task like cleaning out snickers house is made much easier when someone can distract him with food while I clean the house out.  Otherwise, snickers is climbing all over me while I am trying to clean the house.  Not only do I end up really stinky, but I do get nibbled on a bit out of curiosity. 

These next 2 photos Meredith fed Jewelie for me.  It was also nice to have an extra pair of hands to shovel a bit of the fresh snow away from the gate entrance. 

                                                    Thanks again Meredith for helping today! 
Goodnight Lower 48,
ErIn

and....we are open!

woo....it has been a busy past couple of days.  Jonathan and I did 2 days worth of school presentations back to back with Snickers the porcupine.  2 Days may not seem like a lot....however, we did have about a 3 hour gap between presentations in anchorage on wednesday.  So we decided to see a movie between presentations.  Snickers decided to take a nap while we saw the movie. 

 Wednesday night we had our first family night presentation at Mt. View Elementary in anchorage.  They fed us pizza and cookies for volunteering.  It was a fun presentation.  Basically, we set up 2 tables for an hour and just hung around answering questions while snickers looked pretty for everyone....I guess I should say handsome.

Jonathan was hanging out at the table with all our porcupine information.  I was keeping snicker's food supply stocked.  We would switch tables every so often.

The booth to our right was a booth from the museum.  They had a mammoth painting hanging up where the kids would use a spear representing how the hunters hunted mammoths.  Jonathan snuck over and even attempted to use the spear. 

 We decided to take the opportunity to pose for a picture.  It seems we can never booth be in the same picture at once since one of us is always talking while the other takes the picture. 

You can see on the table we had a variety of treats to keep snickers busy.  That night he had carrots, oranges, an apple....and of course peanuts. 

I think he is even working on a few peanuts in this picture.


Today, Saturday, was the first weekend we have been opened this year.   What a nice and lovely day to open on as well.  I have gotten so much done today.  I mega cleaned out Jewelie's enclosure.  Everything is finally starting to thaw out.  I wanted to clean Jewelie's enclosure while the wind and rain were away finally.  The reindeer were checking out all the action going on around Jewelie.

Since it is February you can see that the reindeer have all shed their antlers.  Except one.....

 Burt!  I mentioned a few months ago when we got Burt in December that he is a steer.  He will not shed his antlers till much later than the other reindeer.  Burt will be turning 5 years old this year.

A bus should be arriving to the center any minute now!  My first bus tour of the year!  I just hope they don't think I smell too bad since I cleaned snicker's enclosure out earlier....

Goodnight Lower 48,
Erin

My first famous photo...or something like that

Remember those last 6 pictures I posted on my blog yesterday?  Well I posted one of them on the AWCC facebook page and our PR guy also passed it on to the local news!  I know its not that big of a deal; I am just really excited to have my first AWCC photo picked up by the news.  Here is the link to the local anchorage news website if you are interested:

http://www.adn.com/2012/02/21/2329582/bears-emerge-during-warm-days.html

Today was another beautiful day again!  2 in a row!  Also, I had another day off.  Typically I don't like taking consecutive days off because I feel like I have missed so much when I return.  However, next week Jonathan, the other intern, will be having his parents visiting.

I was excited to get out again and just walk around the center taking photos.  I haven't been to the observation deck in a while; so I decided to start there first.  I always enjoy the scenery from high up and looking across to see the mountains.  The moose calves saw me and came over to see if they could get anything.  Jack is in the very back eating grain.   

                 Gilly is the one in the front.  I think he will always be the smaller one of the 2. 
They also still have their ear tags in that Fish and Game tagged them with when they were first rescued.  I believe we will be able to remove them soon.  They were left in until we were absolutely positive that they were not going to be released back into the wild.  Now, they are to old to release back to the wild.  They are to used to human interaction.

 This is the scenery that I am talking about from the observation deck. 

You can see the bull wood bison in this photo.  We should be expecting calves in early spring again.  I remember how exciting it was to drive around the corner and spot the newborn calves.  Last spring we had 18 calves born.   I expect we will have at least 20 or so born this spring.  

 Driving just past our bunkhouse this is what it would look like.  I was leaving the bunkhouse after a lunch break and snapped this photo.









On sunny days, this time of year, we can almost expect for all of our bears to enjoy the nice sunny weather.  Kuma seems to be the most active of the 7 bears we have at our center.  He is always the last bear to start hibernation, and the first one to wake up.

 Once he realized I didn't have any food for him he just kept on walking

Man!  That's 2 blogs in a row!  If this nice weather keeps up I will even be able to post another blog soon.  Tomorrow we have a very long day in anchorage doing porcupine presentations.  I expect it will be too late to post a blog tomorrow night, but I will be sure to get photos of our presentations for the next blog.
Goodnight Lower 48,
ErIn

Yay! Finally a day where both the sun and my day off happen at the same time!  It sure is hard to get anything accomplished on a rainy, and windy day; other than sleeping!  It has been very nice to be able to grab my camera and walk around the center without getting blown away.  I first took some snapshots of our lynx.  They turned this dog house into a kitty house I guess you could say.  They are always lounging around in here.

                                  Kaltag is the one that is inside the house while Venetie is on the top.

 If you look very closely you can see a notch in Kaltag's right ear. 

 This was done as they were kittens at the anchorage zoo in order to be able to identify them.  In case treatment ever needs to be given to one of them; it will be easy to identify between the two sisters.






Venetie is lounging on top of the house.  Kaltag seems to like the inside of the house more than Venetie.  It is interesting how much these lynx act like any other normal house cat...they are just a bit more dangerous.                                                                                                                                          

Adonis has been venturing around in his enclosure.  Jonathan, the other winter intern, has changed his branches up a bit since we had some strong winds this winter.  We also like to change up all the enclosures so the animals can have a change in scenery as well.






As I was taking pictures Adonis was moving around and I happened to get this photo of his wing.  It is amazing just how big their wings can be!  They don't look very big when they are tucked in.  Male Bald Eagles, like Adonis, can have a wingspan of about 72-85 inches.  Female bald eagles can have a wingspan of 79-90 inches! 

I wanted to collect some feathers from Hooty and Snappy; our Great Horned Owls.  I am helping a professor from the University of Anchorage in an ecological study on diets of captive animals.  By getting hair and food samples from our animals at the center they can tell how an animals diet changes seasonally.  Along with our owl feathers I have also collected some porcupine quills and Wood Bison hair so far. 

I would also like to collect lynx hair eventually.  Kat, our gift store assistant manager, came up the idea of placing a brush on the entrance of their house so when they walk in and out the hair will collect on the brush.  I will keep you posted on whether or not this invention actually works.

 As I came back around the corner I quickly ran over to our cubs...or now I guess I should say younger bears.  Taquka and Shaggy have been venturing out more and more as the sun comes out.  They were very sluggishly playing around.  They even came to check on me at the fence. 

 Of course, Taquka is still the more curious of the two.










Taquka then started tugging on shaggy's ear to play with her.  I know it looks like it is very painful....but trust me shaggy didn't even flinch.

                                             Then shaggy gave her piece of mind to Taquka

But seeing as they are still sort of hibernating they get tired fairly quickly after they started rolling around. 











Well the sun is still peeking around the mountains for a few more hours or so...better go take some more snapshots while I can...
Goodnight Lower 48,
ErIn

Happy Valentine's Day

Finally another sunny Day! What a great day to have the sun out. I have been here just over 2 weeks and this is the 2nd day we have not had wind, rain, or both at the same time. However, the 2 sunny days sure make up for the 12 other yucky days.

                                      I thought the mountain looked beautiful covered by fog. 

Even the animals were peaking out of their enclosures.

Snickers was enjoying his orange and cauliflower.

Jewelie doesn't really like cauliflower so I gave her some lettuce instead.

Jonathan and I have started our education programs recently. I snapped this photo of Jonathan during our Bones and Fur presentation.  Jonathan is holding a snowshoe hare skull.  The kids are trying to guess what they think the animal is. 

 We do a program called bones and fur where we divide kids into about 4 groups. They are typically fourth and fifth grade ages. They will get a skull and additional clues throughout the presentation to learn what their animal is. They learn how determine differences between herbivores, carnivores, or omnivores by looking at types of teeth. They learn about prey or predators by looking at the eyes. They can even tell if some animals are young or old, male or female.

Next week will be a very busy week for us. We will be doing a porcupine presentation for over a hundred kids at once! I made 3 batches of play doh this morning so that the younger kids can make their own porcupine at the end of the presentation. The use spaghetti noodles to represent the quills on their play doh porcupine.

The third program that we do is a puppet show. We teach younger kids about the story of our black bear named Kuma. We also teach about bear/moose safety.

Today is my day off and it is windy and rainy outside.  I sure can't wait for the sun to come out again and stay out!  My bed looks awfully cozy on days like today.  I think I will hop back in bed and enjoy a nice hot cup of tea!

Goodnight Lower 48,
ErIn

How to give a moose a manicure

About 5 days ago we had so much snow built up that Snickers, the porcupine, literally walked out of his enclosure.  We found him the next day tucked underneath the observation deck all cozy and warm.  We had him back in his house in less than 10 minutes no problem.  The naxt day we noticed that Jack, our bull moose, had quills in his front left hoof.  I am not sure that this happened when snickers escaped or if snickers quilled Jack through the fence.  Anyways, we needed to get the quills out before they worked their way any further into Jack's leg. 

 We also decided that since we were going to dart Jack in order to remove his quills that we might as well trim his hooves.  Hence the name of the blog. 
When we have to sedate an animal we always wait about 10 minutes before going in with them so that they are nice and comfortable....... and asleep.  Jack just layed his head down and helped the procedure go as planned.  He did very well. 



Gilly, on the other hand, was getting in my way!

 Jonathan and I began removing the quills while Mike, the executive director, trimmed his hooves. 

Once everything was done we needed to lubricate Jack's eyes.  After they are sedated the medicine can cause their eyes to dry out so we always apply a thin layer of special gel in their eyes to avoid dryness.



Here, Mike is just keeping an eye on Jack and making sure that he is waking up around the time he is supposed to.  We also hang around to make sure the calves don't bother Jack as he is waking up. 

Once Jack was lifting his head up I was able to lubricate the other eye.

We saved the quills so that we could count how many Jack actually had in his leg.  It was a grand total of 76 quills!  It is amazing how so many quills can be in such a small amount of area.  It makes since that a porcupine can have an average of 30,000 quills on their body at one time!

Well, the day is coming to a close.  We just did our first puppet show of the year!  The show went smoothly...especially for having about 50 1rst graders in such a small area!  They were a great audience.  Next week we are going to be very busy with more education programs.  This is going to be a very busy year....but I can't wait!
Goodnight Lower 48,
ErIn

Yesterday was a B-E-A-UTIFUL day!  It was the first sunny day we have had since I have been back.  But you know what...it definitely makes up for the 6 rainy, and yucky days we had before.  All the animals were out and about.  Snickers had his house cleaned out and even enjoyed some oranges and cauliflower afterwards.

 The moose calves were sunbathing all day.  You can see Jack laying in the back right with Gilly.  Nelson was walking around before settling down with the other 2 moose. 

 The bears even made an appearance!  Joe Boxer and Patron were peaking out of there dens when they heard us calling for wiley to come out.  Eventually, we had to walk away because they were coming over to the fence to inspect the food we had. 

 We walked onto the top of Balck Bear mountain to get a last few glimpses of our sunny day just before the sun went behind the mountain.  The walk up was a very interesting climb considering the entire mountain was basically an ice rink!







So we thought we would make it easier by sliding back down the mountain/hill. 

 We ended ou day by driving about 15 miles to the Turnagain Pass.  The turnagain pass is a very popular place for cross country skiers and snow machiners.  There is a rule, to keep it safer, that the snow machiners are only allowed on the right side of the road; while the cross country skiers are only allowed on the left.  You can see that this picture is the side that the snow machiners use. 

Sort of a short blog tonight on account of I am very tired after a long day of work.  I will post a blog tomorrow talking about the interesting events that went on today.   I would talk about that right now but I really have to go to the bathroom.  So that means I have to walk all the way back to the bunkhouse since the water is turned off here at the giftstore.  Stay tuned for tomorrow's blog......How to give a moose a manicure.

Goodnight Lower 48,

ErIn