Soon its back to AK

Well my fellow Texans, and all others in the lower 48, it is about 1 week till I will be walking down this road to work again.  I will be both excited and sad to leave the lower 48.  On the one hand I will miss my family and friends, walking to get groceries, basking in the sun, and simply being able to wear shorts without getting frostbite.  However, I am excited to jump back into action and work with the animals again.  Just 2 days after I get back we began our education programs again.  I know this is going to be a busier year for me since word about our FREE education programs in schools is spreading. 

Meanwhile......

The past 3 weeks have been busy.  I have traveled to 2 different states all in one week.  First I went to Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I attended college at McNeese State University where I received my Biology degree.  I wanted to visit some friends, coaches, and even my landlords that I rented an apartment from during college.  I always enjoy my visits to Louisiana.  It is NEVER a boring state to be in.

Just hours after I got back from Louisiana we packed up the car and headed to Arkansas.  I was born in Arkansas so I still have a lot of family there.  My brother also attends college there.  We wanted to visit him and his wife. 

My Grandmother lives on a farm in Vilonia,Arkansas.  I always enjoy staying at her house.  It is very relaxing and beautiful there,  This picture below is an old barn that is used as shelter for a few horses. 

Back in Alaska Doug Lindstrand sent me a photo of what our barns are looking like after some heavy snowfall these past couple of weeks.

 

 One of the lucky horses to live on my grandmothers farm.

Can you guess what this interesting looking animal is on the left?

 This is a Zedonk.  Part zebra and part donkey makes this character a very popular attraction when visiting searcy, arkansas.  Most of the locals know about this little guy.  My brother wanted to introduce my mother and I to him. 

Before we headed out I wanted to get a quick snapshot with my grandmother.

One adventure I was sure to check off my to do list while visiting texas was visit the Houston Zoo.  I worked two summers here as a volunteer keeper aide.  I basically followed a zoo keeper around all day and helped in any chores they needed done.  These 2 summers were when I really found my passion to work with animals in life. 

I was kid-sitting (baby sitting but I can't say they are babies anymore) and decided what a better way to spend a saturday with 2 kids. 

One of the first animals we visited were the Asian Elephants.  This young baby and its mother were getting hay from this box hanging up.  This is a similar contraption that we use for the bear cubs to play with while getting their food.  It is another way to keep the animals thinking and staying active. 

No, this is not Adonis....this is Liberty.  She is also a permanent resident at the zoo due to a gunshot wound. 

Hey Adonis...need a girlfriend?

These two were the most photogenic animals at the zoo yesterday.  This is a 10 month old baby orangutan named Aurora.  Cheyenne is the surrogate mother that she is clinging to.  Aurora was born to an orangutan named Kelly.  However, cheyenne is taking care of her. 

The houston zoo has a new Africa exhibit that I was really excited to see.  I love giraffes!  When I mentioned to this giraffe how cold it was in alaska it was speechless.....he even dropped his jaw in awe!

 These last 3 pictures were also sent by Doug Lindstrand.  He has been keeping me posted on what the center looks like right now.  I feel cold just looking at these next pictures!

 Goodnight lower 48, and Hawaii
ErIn

Happy New Year

 Happy New Year!  It has been 11 months since I started my adventure in Alaska.  I am still visiting family in Texas; but I have still managed to find some animals in Texas to play with.  These 3 dogs on the left are some friends of mine.  Christmas day I dog sat these three.  Thor is the Black lab in the front.  Duke is the dog on the back right.  Sadie is on the left. 





When it came to bed time Duke seemed to think he could use my bed!

 Before I took the internship in Alaska I was an intern at TGR Exotics in Spring,Texas.  It is basically I privately owned zoo.  In order to apply for the internship in Alaska they wanted the applicant to have some training experience.  Fortunately, I was training a camel named "Cookie" at the time.  Cookie seemed to remember me...or she was just not a fan of my camera. 

 I was very excited to return to TGR and visit the animals again.  I was also excited to meet the new animals.










Here is one of the newest additions to TGR.  I have never worked with a Water Buffalo before.  This is "Buffy".  She was so sweet.  She is basically just a big puppy dog.  She loves people and when you scratch her she lays down. 

 Also, another new addition was Walter.  Any ideas what Walter is...I will give you a hint.  He is in the movie the Lion King.  He has a friend named Timon.  Walter is a Warthog!  He is only 4 months old.  I can't imagine how crazy he is going to be when he is fully grown!

This is "creature".  Do you know what creature is?  They come from Africa.  They are very good diggers....Aardvark!  Creature was sleeping.  They are nocturnal animals so I imagine he is very active at night time.   

 Scarlet AKA Scar was one of my favorite animals that I was able to work with while at TGR.  Scar is a Binturong.  They are sometimes called bearcats.  Yes they do exist.  They are found in asia.  Scar was an attention hog.  She is very vocal when she wants to be let out of her enclosure.  I was able to hold her for a short time until she decided to hide under Creatures bed.  Binturongs have a very unique smell.  They smell like popcorn or fritos.  No really!  If you ever get within smelling distance of one you will understand.  They also spend most of their lives in tress.  Their tails are what helps them balance in trees.  Scar had her tail wrapped around my neck to help herself balance. 

You can see here just how important their tails are for balance.

Ahhhhh another 2 animals I missed working with. 
Meet Clairece and Lector.  I know...their names are awesome.  These 2 are called African Crested Porcupines.  They look a bit different than Snickers from alaska don't they.  They have a few differences in their adaptions.  For example, these are found in Africa.  Also, you may notice that their quills are much longer and thicker than Snickers'.  However, their quills do not have barbed ends like Snickers does. 

This animal is also another type of rodent.  In fact this is the largest rodent in the world.  Thay are called capybaras.  They are found in South America. 

And que the Darth Vador theme music.....THOR!!!! One of the only animals that has not really taking a liking to me.  Thor is a Kune Kune pig.  They originate from New Zealand. 

 Buffy is very photogenic.  I had to stop by and say bye to her before I headed home. 

Goodnight lower 48, .......upper 2 in this case.....
ErIn

Feliz Natal!

Well Hello Lower 48!  I'm back after being away for nearly 11 months!!!!!  I arrived in Texas on December 15th to a muggy day.  I left Alaska just before a blizzard hit the center causing it to close down.  Only to arrive in a Sunny Texas where it was 75 degrees that day.  You could say it was a bit of a climate change.    The first night back we had our annual moms vs. moms soccer game.  My youngest brother plays soccer on his highschool team.  Every year they have a fun game where the moms from all 4 highschool teams play in a game.  This picture is with my mom, corey, and parker (my 2 younger brothers). 

I was very excited to meet the newest member of our family...Low Rider AKA Rider!  She is a rescue dog.  One day my brother, Corey, and mom were at Petsmart.  They had dogs up for adoption and it was love at first site for my brother.  On her papers it says she is a mix of Lab and Basset Hound.  I am convinced that she also has a bit of pit bull in her.  Pitt Bulls have a bad reputation for being aggressive dogs.  However, I believe that it is not the dog that is bad but the owner that trains it to be aggressive.  All dogs have the potential to be aggressive and threatening.  I believe that a domesticated animal, such as a dog, if given attention and love can be a life long friend.  So here she is making her first debut on my blog....Low Rider!

 One reason why I headed back to Texas a bit earlier for the holidays was because my brother Parker was getting married!!!!!  This wonderful, cute, couple on the right became Mr. and Mrs. Parker Leighton on December 17th 2011.  Lauren and Parker went to Cancun for their Honeymoon.  After they got back on the 23rd they still had a few wedding gifts to open.  I think one of my favorite gifts they received was a pair of Bride and Groom frogs.  You can see Parker looking at the frog as he opens it.

Here he is loving his first ornament with his new bride; a pair of bride and groom frogs!

 On Christmas Day we headed to Church.  Church is one of the things I miss most being away from my family.  I also can't remember the last time Christmas landed on the same day as Church.  On Christmas morning it is tradition to open our stockings first in our new pajamas.  So after opening our stockings, going to church, opening gifts, it was about time for lunch.  Here is my Dad with my dog, Delilah.  Delilah is also a rescue dog.  I found her near a dumpster in Louisiana.  She is a miniture Dachsund.  Don't let her size fool you...she is a HANDFULL!  She is constantly trying to get people to play fetch with her.  On christmas morning we had to give her new toys to distract her while we opened gifts.  It didn't really work.  She quickly got bored with her new toys and found one of her favorite tennis balls to nicely drop in our laps to throw to her. 

Parker and Lauren also joined us for their first time as Husband and Wife.  It was fun having a new family member, my sister-in-law, with us on Christmas Day.

After spending the morning with parents and siblings; we meet up with my cousins,aunts, uncles,grandfather, and Great Grandmother.  This year we ate lunch at Bouca Di peppo.  It is an Italian restaurant.  In all we have 21 family members on my mother's side that live all in Texas...(except me). 

 On the left side we had the "adults" sit together.  On the right the cousins, and now my brother's wife, all sit together. 

 A somewhat new tradition that has gone on for 3 years now is our White Elephant Gift Exchange.  Because there are so many family members it can be stressfull to buy everyone a gift.  So a few years ago we decided to switch to  white elephant gift exchange.  You can either buy a really cheap gift or even find something from around the house.  I wanted to make my gift something alaskan.  I bought a moose hat from our giftstore at the center.  I was thinking that the younger cousins (around 10 years old or so) would be fighting over the moose cap.  I never would have thought that my 21 year old cousin and his sister in highschool would have been competeing for it!  All in all you could say our gift exchanges are always a lot of fun. 

 I do go a little photo crazy when I am home since it may be a while till I am back home.  Here is me and my mother. 

This is my great grandmother.  We all call her Nana.  She just celebrated her 94th birthday!

 You go Girl!!!

Now since I will be away from the center for another month or so; I still get wonderful emails from Doug Lindstrand to keep me filled in on whats going on up in Alaska.  These next four pictures are what happens when you play with a 350 pound, 6 month old, moose named Nelson. 

Don't worry no interns were injured during the filming of this event. 

Thanks Doug for these pictures!

I also wanted to explain the title of todays blog.  I was catching up on my facebook today and noticed that I had 2 un-read messages from people in Brazil.  Both were viewers of a television documentary about our center.  Earlier in the summer I was interviewed by a journalist from Brazil.  I completely forgot about the interview.  When I was reading the messages today it reminded about the interview.  They were very interested in learning how the cubs were doing.  So todays title "Feliz Natal" is simply Merry Christmas in portuguese for the loyal followers of our animals at the center.

Here is the latest picture of Taquka and Shaguyik.....

Shaggy is on the left with Taquka on the right

Feliz Natal Lower 48....and I guess now Alaska and Hawaii....y Brazil!

ErIn

Tis the Season

Gilly, aka the sweetest moose ever, was posing very well a few days ago so I decided to take advantage of this opportunity.  The calves are getting huge!  Gilly must weight over 300 pounds!  I remember when we first got him this past summer, and he weighed 40 pounds.  We have to now start being careful around them because of their size.  Even though we bottle raised them they still have natural instincts when they are scared or feel threatened.  I suspect Nelson will be the dominant of the 2.  He has learned that he can kick now.  It is amazing how a wild animal can still develop their own unique personalities.  Nelson is the boss and straight to business.  Gilly is the lovable and playful calf. 

On wednesday I had a day off.  I didn't really have any plans and didn't want to waste a day laying around indoors.  Mike, our executive director, was going to an event wednesday with a reindeer.  I asked if I could tag along if he needed any help.  I am very glad I went.  On the way to the event Mike decided that he wanted to buy a reindeer from the reindeer farm in Palmer,Alaska.  At the center we have all male reindeer.  This means that they have all dropped their antlers already.    The reindeer farm had a 4 year old steer that still has his antlers.  So here is a little bit of reindeer knowledge:  A steer means that the animal has been castrated.  In reindeer this means that they will retain their antlers much longer than the typical male reindeer because of the difference in hormone levels.  This picture above is our newest addition to our herd.  This is Bert the reindeer.  He is very lovable and is fitting in well at the center.  After picking him up we went to an aviation museum at the Anchorage airport.  They were having an event celebrating a certain type of retired airplane.  There was lots of food, music, games, and Bert the reindeer.  So we hung out for about 3 hours letting people meet Bert and talking about him.  I have to say this was  the first time I have ever felt like it could not have felt anymore like Christmas time.  I was standing outside in Alaska while it was snowing holding a reindeer, and listening to christmas music. 

This previous photo was taken by Clark Mishler, a photographer that emailed me this photo from the wednesday night event.   

 This picture was taking by Doug Lindstrand.  Mike and I had just gotten Bert ready for the event. 

Mike posing with Bert.  We now have about 11 reindeer at the center.  Bert will be making more appearances since he has been trained very well to be comfortable with people taking pictures with him. 

Photo again by Doug Lindstrand.














On Friday I gave a behind the scenes to tour to some returning friends who also brought 2 friends from Michigan.  I always love giving these tours.  It not only adds some variety to my day, but I always get to meet cool people.  We actually ended the tours in August;however, if we get requests for specific days and we have a guide available we would love to give a tour.  The tours are also a way to not only get to meet the animals up close, see how a day in the life of an intern is, but it also contributes directly to the animals 100% since we are a non-profit organization.   Here I am introducing Snickers to my tour.  Doug Lindstrand also got this snapshot. 

Well fellow readers I am sad to say that I will be leaving Alaska in 4 days to return to Texas for the holidays.  But fear not!  I will be returning the the wildlife center in Portage,Alaska.  I will still be updating my blog during my vacation.  Who knows...I may even get to meet some animals from a previous internship...bearcats, sloth, hyenas, camels....and many more!  Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!!!!!
Goodnight Lower 48...and Hawaii
ErIn

Yesterday, I had a porcupine presentation in Whittier.  It was Snickers first trip through the whittier tunnel. 

I did a presentation to the pre-school/kindergardeners first.  Then, I went and introduced Snickers to the junior high/highschoolers.  The whole school only has 37 kids!  I graduated with 1,063 seniors in my highschool!  That is more than the entire town of whittier!  You can see the kid in yellow on the bottom row is holding Stanley. 

After we got back from the presentation I still needed to feed the owls.  This time I wanted to capture the feeding on camera.  I was feeding them one quail each.  The first owl to usually eat is the female.  In birds of prey the females are typically larger than the males.  Our female,Snappy, loves to fly to the hollowed log on top of the enclosure.  The male, Hooty, usually eats the mice/or quail off of the lower branches of their tree. 

                            Here, Hooty is jumping down to the branch with the quail placed on it. 

After the female grabbed the quail from the upper log she flew to another perch.  You can see her holding the quail with her talons.

I really liked this picture!  The male usually holds onto his food a bit longer than the female.  He was holding the quail with his talons.  The way he was holding it makes it look like it is standing up just under him. 

Today at work the moose calves went into a Banana coma.  We used an entire palet of bananas to distribute through the center today.  At the end of the day Jonathan and I went to feed them bananas.  They had just been fed some of the bananas from the pallet.  They were so full that they didn't even get up to greet us!  This was definitely a first.  Jonathan wanted to take advantage of this opportunity and take some snap shots with us standing in between the calves.  I also had to get a picture with my man Gilly.

 Nelson is on the right and Gilly on the left.  Nelson was even burping a little.  The moose had banana breath.  I think it is safe to sy that they may be sick of bananas for at least a day or so.  Well ok, so maybe only a few hours or so till they are ready for more bananas. 

Tomorrow we will see just how excited they are to get more bananas.  Until then.....Goodnight lower 48...and Hawaii
ErIn

Flat Stanley

 Well readers sorry for the absence.  Have you ever heard of Flat Stanley?  This is the second time I have been able to help out with a project called Flat Stanley.  Many kids in school seem to do this project.  They have a paper figure known as Stanley and then they take tuns getting pictures with Stanley all over the world.  I have to admit getting Flat Stanley sent to the wildlife center is a really unique place for Stanley to visit. 

In this case Stanley was able to meet with Gilly.  Gilly almost tried to eat Stanley, but don't worry readers Stanley escaped. 

 Next, Stanley headed over to help feed Jewelie.  Jewelie was more interested in her grean beans and grapes then eating Stanley. 

Last, but definitely not least, Stanley was introduced to Snickers.  Snickers is always happy to meet new people.  Snickers has been introduced to Stanley a few times. 

Stanley will be leaving for New York to share his adventures at the center to his classroom. 

We have 7 bears at the center and currently 5 of them are hibernating.  The brown bears are usually the first to hibernate.  Next, Uli the black bear will be hibernating until late March.  Kuma, the male black bear, will hibernate on and off all winter.  Last, we have our 2 Kodiak bear cubs.  The bear cubs are still awake.  They have never actually learned how to hibernate.  It will be interesting to see if they naturally learn to hibernate.  I think they will naturally learn.  We are feeding them less and less, it seems, every day.  They bears seem to be less active every day.  Doug Lindstrand was able to send me snap shots after I fed the cubs. 

Photo courtesy of Doug Lindstrand

Today, was my day day off.  I must say it was one of my favorite.  I skied for 6 straight hours!  I am very tired and yet I am excited to listen to some blue grass music tonight. 

Tomorrow, saturday, will be another day with the animals.  Who knows what the day will bring.  Well readers I guess you will wait and see!

Goodnight lower 48....and Hawaii,

ErIn