3 COOL Animal Stories

In our house we love animals.

Yes, it is mostly my fault although it is an easy sell and I get no arguments - only followers :)

So one of the places we LOVE LOVE LOVE

is the World Bird Sanctuary

Recently they met with lots of trouble - a fire and then a bad storm - each destroyed important therapy enclosures where they work to rehab injured birds.

About the same time the fire truck struck a Barred Owl on their way to a 3 am call - and later discovered the owl still clinging to the top of the firetruck - and brought the owl to the WBS.

Not long later, the WBS was able to raise a large amount of $$ strictly from visitor donations (field trips & scout groups - little kids throwing in their drink money etc.) and then Home Depot donated the lumber - and the fire department came back and rebuilt the enclosures!

The ironic part is that it all happened on and near April 22nd - that is Earth Day - and Isabel's Birthday. We had tried to have a service birthday party this year where we played in the water and took donations for the WBS in lieu of gifts - but the weather turned cold and we changed our plans - but several friends made donations anyway! It feels good to be a part of something that had a cool outcome - so often we give and don't know if it made any difference or not!

The sweet little owl is still there and last week we got to meet him and suggest a name for him....

Alex choose SPOTS.

SO - last week we saw that they had brought 2 Pelicans from Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary - in Florida ( right near where we play when we visit the beach there) .... to stay at WBS in order to make room for oiled birds in Florida. Again they were asking for name suggestions.

We decided to take a large stack of old towels to donate and meet the pelicans whom Isabel decided to name - Frosting and Sprinkles.

The coolest part there was that they didn't just happily accept our towels - they also took us in to the animal hospital where we got to meet THE Barred owl - and an injured Red Tailed Hawk, 2 young Peregrine Falcons and 3 itsy bitsy Green Heron orphans!!! SO COOL!

And Finally, our last animal story is really just a video of

the crazy raccoon that comes for dinner every night at 9:00.

We have been trying to get video of her "dunking" but she is always in a dark spot.

So this time we were better prepared by setting up the area in advance - and got good shots.

The first time we ever watched her do it - we had set her plate of scraps in a dry spot since it was pouring rain. She grabbed a cracker - and ran with it dragging it across the deck in the puddles - we thought she'd gone bonkers -

then she spotted a random dish of water sitting in the rain and went straight to it and began to dunk - no actually bathe her cracker - like it was an Oreo!

We have found that she likes pop tarts better than graham crackers, and cheese over just about anything. She will never pass up a good June Bug either. She will not eat anything that is a fruit or vegetable. She is like a dog who cleans up all the crumbs from the floor.

(Still trying to figure out how to get the video to load)