Saturday, May 09, 2015

Wild Visitors

Last year, toward the end of the summer, work began on updating our nature lab. The job is finally finished, and the new space looks great. While I went back to working nights this week, one of my coworkers was busy moving the animals back in. There is still some decorating work to be done, as well as some searching for new, more professional looking, display cages. Here are some photos of the empty space, in all of its Spartan glory:





There is a bold little gray fox hanging out at camp now. Early in the week, I heard that it had been spotted in the garden, so I set up my trail cam and sure enough, I got a couple of shots. In the first photo, I can almost imagine that the fox looks surprised at the presence of a camera, and in the second photo, there is just the gray blur of a hasty retreat.



On the way back up to camp from setting up the camera, I checked by the garden gate and found the usual kind of reptile.It was probably the most nervous rattlesnake I've come across. It spent a good portion of the night rattling, and my morning meeting with the cabin leaders was accompanied by its agitated buzzing sound. It eventually calmed down, and now it resides farther away from camp.


The fox came back on Thursday night, filling the niche once occupied by the local raccoons (I had seen a raccoon on Monday night - in fact, it didn't notice me at first and reacted to my sudden presence with a startled jump, but these days, there are rarely raccoons around camp at night) by rooting around in the compost buckets. This was my best chance yet to observe one of these foxes in action, and I was impressed all over again by how catlike they are. It reacted to my presence by moving off into the distance, eventually vanishing into the forest at the edge of camp.

As for the kids this week, they were well-behaved sixth graders from four different private schools. I had to dispense enough medicine that I felt like some sort of pharmacist. Some kids are definitely over-medicated, but this week, we definitely had our fair share of kids with serious medical conditions. There was a boy with diabetes, a girl with epilepsy, and a girl with cystic fibrosis. I'm reminded of a brief moment when Willow was barely a year old, when her mom and I were told that she might have cystic fibrosis. It was scary, and thankfully, a false alarm. My heart goes out to children struggling with chronic conditions, especially this one.

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