Babies Everywhere

So I'm back! I missed 3 weeks at BTN, the first week because of Knights for Marine and Wildlife Conservation club's inaugural "Conservation Celebration", the second because I was sick and the third because I twisted my ankle. Joy of joys. And I'm going to miss 3 more weeks after this because of vacation time. So unfortunately you all will be getting very little of adorable wild animals for a bit, but then I'm back until August!

Apparently a lot of people thought I was permanently gone and had moved away. I am heartbroken. I would never leave without saying goodbye! BTN is my second family. <3

It was a Baby day. I started off by helping Nick take care of the baby birds. I swear there were at least 15 cages of baby birds in the back, oh my goodness. But, having been around for this last year, I was a veteran and got to work quickly changing bedding and feeding babies. Since I refuse to cut my gorgeous long nails for anything, I got a lot of wet dog food under my fingernails. And for those of you thinking "What? Dog food?" We at BTN soak dry dog food and use that, as well as liquid baby bird food from a powder, to feed our baby birds. It has proteins and oils that are good for them. Anyway, it's pretty annoying and I was constantly digging out food from under my nails. But those are sacrifices I make for the good of animals.

2 cages of just mockingbirds!

Baby cardinal

My next assignment was to tend to the 2 cages and 1 hutch of baby opossums. On the way I saw these little guys trying to tell anyone that passed by that they were hungry. D'awwwww.

"Please, miss, can I have some more?"

So. Many. Babies. Each cage had about 15-20 baby Virginia Opossums in it. But you wouldn't think so just looking into the enclosure: They were all bundled up together in the hammocks we hung up. All 15-20 of them. It was my job to clean out the old food, add new food, replace both water bowls and shake out their hammocks. Fortunately instead of being upset that I woke them up and shooed them out of bed the babies were more curious to know who I was and what all these strange smells on me were. Several times I had to gently remove a baby opossum as it tried to climb up my leg, hehehe!

Saying hello to the new lady

Little known fact: While all mammals can get rabies, it is very rare for opossums to get it because of their low body temperature. Still, please don't touch opossums or any wild animal for that matter. Even if you don't get rabies I have never seen anything scarier or fiercer than an angry mother opossum.

All nice and clean!

So yummy!

 So after the opossum cages were done I had one last task: clean and feed the flight cage in the back. That's simple enough. Fresh fruit, fresh water, some more bird seed. The tough part was making sure none of the birds got away while I was entering/exiting. They all got into a tiffy at the mere sight of me. But that's a good thing. The whole point of keeping the animals away from human sight in the back row is to wild them up. Everyone in the cage was flying around and had a healthy fear of me, so hopefully they'll be released soon.

Cardinal getting his adult feathers

After that I was finished! There wasn't much going on that day since we had a lot of people there to help. I'm so glad that BTN is becoming more and more popular! I myself promote it whenever I can and I'm happy to have convinced several friends to start volunteering/interning there! :D

See you in 3 weeks!

The Wild Dimes has Fainted!

P.S. John was checking out the empty cage in the back. And just after we were talking about the times we got locked into the lemur cage, he accidentally locked himself into the new cage. So OF COURSE I had to tease him and get a photo before I let him out.

Ain't I a stinker? ;)