Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary: MeetTheAnimals.

You already know that I'm responsible for Gandalf and that the sanctuary isn't allowed to treat injured birds. The injured birds go to a nearby Bird Sanctuary within twentyfour hours. Well I can tell you that I'm very happy because two of the permanent residents are Owls. So meet Gandalf, The Great Grey Owl (Strix nebulosa) of Aspen Valley. He lost his wing in a car accident. The Great Grey is my all time favourite Owl and to work with him, feed him and to rebuilt the interior of his enclosure to make it more attractive, is just a dream coming thrue.

The other bird is Elly, she's a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus). This Owl is the smaller nephew of our European 'Oehoe' (Bubo bubo). She's been raised by humans so she'll never be able to hunt by herself. All her life she has been in the wrong enclosure for any predatorbird in general so I carefully suggested to move here to a new one. They already thought about it many times and after talking things through and calling the Owl Foundation for their opinion, we're actually going to move her. I'm still working on the brand new interior of that enclosure so she'll have to wait a couple of days. It'll be an exciting moment for all of us because we don't know how she'll react to change after so many years. We'll have to be careful.

These owls were here before the totally new staff took over so they stayed. The sanctuary has some more permanet residents. There is Subira-the Lioness, Banshee-a Eurasian Lynx, Petunia-the Skunk, Chippy- The Chipmunk and five Wolves-the Arctics, Luna, Amarook and Mkom. I'll tell you some more stories on them later but you can already meet Luna, a beautiful White Timberwolf...she's very submissive and she's found in an abandoned house...nobody knows her story. Enjoy this picture Little Sora, : )!

A little Red Fox came in a few weeks ago. She was full of mange (Sarcoptes scabei). I didn't see the pictures of her first days yet but you could barely see her face. She's doing much better now. She's moved to an outside enclosure and Hannah and I decorated it. We made her a den from an old bathtub and covered it with wood and branches, she uses it now to play HIDE and SLEEP, : )! You can still see some mange on her ears so she needs one more treatment and some extra fur and she'll be ready to go, isn't she cute! Her neighbour is a Porcupine, it fell out of a three, he's recovering well and will be back in the trees in a few days.

There are many of last years Raccoons, Squirrels, Bears and Deer at the sanctuary so I guess you already know that this won't be my last story on this great place in Rosseau! And ofcourse there's a great staff surrounding us so you'll probably meet them too. I can already say that my college training will be an awesome experience and by the way...Hannah is responsible for Petunia...it's hard to take pictures of her because she's a nocturnal but we'll get her out this week to check on her. We will also be redecorating her enclosure...enrichment is what we'll work on! And oh yeah...meet Koda Bear, Brenda's beautiful Great Pyrenean Mountain dog, Handsome Boy é, Hannah's shot by the way!

So it's time to feed Gandalf, Elly and Petunia...and after that, we'll call it a day!

And I'm sorry but...you'll have to book a flight Frederick...: )

Sweet dreams and Happy Birthday Suk!!!

T&H.