AVWS - Week Three.

Three weeks already! It was a quiet week, no new babies, no injured animals...a regular week at Aspen Valley. But we do have some remarkable highlights! Up in the woods we have eight bearcubs in rehab, they've slept for a very long time but they are awake now, waiting to be released! They are marked with eartags to recognize them because they have to be released where they are found but first we need a permission from the MNR (Ministry of Natural Resources).

And Tuesday was a special day! Elly's big removal. Everybody was a little bit nervous. After installing some fresh Sprucetops and filling Elly's little pond, it was time for some action. She played me for a few minutes, hopping from perch to perch in the top of her enclosure. When I finally got her in the net, it was stuck on a perch and she jumped out to a lower branch. Janalene managed to throw a blanket on her, nice catch!!! We put her in a cardboard box, a big moment for Aspen Valley.

A few weeks ago, Joe and I have been building the frames for a temporarily otter enclosure. The otters -Lenny and Addie- will be released whenever the ice on the lake is gone and it almost is. Janalene found a beautiful spot to release them and that's where Ed and I built the enclosure this week. The otters will be in there for two weeks and then they'll be free. The ice is almost gone and you can see in the head of this page that the Common Loon (Gavia immer) is back, so there's fish!

You know that Hannah is responsible for Petunia. So we decided to refresh her enclosure. She needs some exercise and some enrichment so we installed some logs, some rocks, a sand box, a woodchip box and some real small Spruce trees. What a difference!!! We also hung up a bucket with holes. The bucket contains woodchips, sand and dew worms. Once in a while, a dew worm will fall out into the sand box...a nice snack for the skunk!

There are a lot of wild skunks on the sanctuary causing trouble. They are nocturnal and they keep us awake during the night scratching and fighting under the Bunky...and beware if they release a StinkBomb!!! So we try to trap them and we release them somewhere else far away from the sanctuary. I placed three traps this week and I had a very special catch on friday...Ripley, Marilyn's 10 year old Jack Russel got trapped the day before her birthday, hilarious!

I told you that we saw our first wild bear! Here it is, this rather shy animal comes to our compost pile for lunch after it's hibernation. We saw bear tracks near the bear enclosures so the wild bears are wandering around the sanctuary! And Elly...she's doing great in her new enclosure. We were afraid that she wouldn't eat the first nights of her stay but she did so that's a great sign! She can fly from perch to perch now...a happy ending for The Great Horned Owl!

Coming up: we're going to move Billy Bear, Thurber is going for a Vet-check, the big GM is coming up and the Giftshop is almost ready!

Happy Birthday Sis, Dad and Nico!!!

Kisses from Rosseau

T&H and the Rocket.