Wildcare

I did my Sunday morning shift at Wildcare today.  It's always a bit of a challenge to get out of bed at 8:00 on a Sunday morning to go scrape bird poop off towells and dump waterbowls with possum turds floating in them. But I always feel I am a better person as I'm driving home than I was when I arrived.  It's good to be reminded that I am just an animal among other animals. 

A young hawk with an injured wing
 regards me with hostility. Even tiny and
damaged, it knows it's a predator.

I work primarily in the bird room:  a small space filled with cages of screaming baby birds, all wanting to be fed NOW.  My job is to get all the cages cleaned so they can go outside in the yard and get some fresh air and sunshine. The little birds are fearless, and they jump on your hands, begging for food, as you clean their cages. I love the feel of their warm, soft little bodies in my hands when I need to move them to get the paper in their cage.  I love the feel of their little dinosaur feet holding my finger.  They are so amazingly, astonishingly and wonderfully ALIVE.  And hungry! 

Today there was a whole fresh crop of babies.  Gone were the starlings and woodpeckers and most of the jays. Now the cages were full of blackbirds, grackles, and robins.  Rondi told me you can tell what month it is by what kind of babies you are getting.  All the different species have different seasons.  At home, all five of the little baby finches in the nest on our porch have flown away. 

After the birds, I troop out to the "play yard" to clean the bank of outdoor cages I call "Possum Row."   Usually these are full of either older juvenile possums, starting to get their adult evil-possum attitude, or large litters of babies, all goofy and curious and utterly unaffraid. I enjoy doing this, in spite of the fact that it's hot, smelly, swarming with flies, and a good place to pick up the occasional tick.  The possums are so hilariously, frowsily cute.  Their fur stands out in every direction, they have bright, curious bead eyes, they can grab the cage with their scaly, naked little tails, and their front feet look like hands in little black, fingerless gloves.  ("Thieves' gloves," my friend Michael calls them.) There was a surprise for me, today, however. 

Skunks!

A cage full of the most adorable baby skunks.  They were all piled up together, snoozing. But when I approached, they got all brave and some would charge the front of the cage, tiny tail up and threatening, and stamp their little front feet to warn me off.  I don't know at what age they get their smell... but I was being very careful not to piss them off, I can tell you.