Pictures!

The intern housing, raccoons, chipmunk, and the otters!

what am i doing here?

I realized I never really explained what it is I'm doing here at Wolf Hollow. This place is wildlife rehab center and they take care of animals from the islands and neighboring areas. They only work with birds, small marine mammals (mostly harbor seals), and small land mammals (no big cats or bears or wolves, ironically enough). There is a really neat internship program they have set up where we get to participate in pretty much everything they do here. The cool part is that this internship also counts as part of my senior project , plus I really want to learn more about wildlife rehab because I want to do something like this in the future. We have free housing, a double wide mobile home that they set up recently, but inside it looks straight out of the 70's. It's so nice living RIGHT next to the center because it makes for a short commute. I was on the early shift this morning (7:30am) and my alarm didn't go off so I literally rolled out of bed and went to work!
I didn't get to post anything yesterday so I'll try and update for the past two days.
Yesterday I fed formula to a cotton tail bunny, fed the mallard ducklings and baby merganser(water fowl) and let them have a swim, did a lot of laundry,
gathered wild plants for the animals to eat, and observed the harbor seal feedings. We have two baby harbor seal pups in right now that have been here for a while. One was a premature female who is still pretty tiny and the other is a bigger male. They are super cute, but more care is taken when feeding them because a tube has to be inserted into their stomach (Today I got to work with them, it was so cool! they're squirmy buggers though).
Last night we had a BBQ in honor of two of the interns who'll be leaving soon. All the staff and a few volunteers came over to the intern housing and we ate A LOT of good food! It was nice getting to know everyone out side of work, but of course we mostly talked about work and animals in general because that's what everyone loves! We did have a discussion on East vs. West coast, because I'm the only intern from this side of the states! Sarah, who is from Florida, made a cake for the dinner and when asked what it was she said "It's a Poke Cake", what? "a POKE cake", what the heck is a poke cake! None of us West coast people knew what she was talking about, it was just like in My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the Bunt Cake scence, we were all rolling around laughing. But apparently it's a cake that you poke and then pour jello over and it tastes pretty good!

> So Nolan, my little brother, said he wants a pet river otter, so I told him I would see what I could do about bringing him back one (just kidding, but I think they're adorable so I was only kind of kidding). Come to find out there are two little otters here right now! Everyone kept talking about how messy the otters are; I thought they were exaggerating, but today I got the truth.....their room was DISGUSTING!! Otters are naturally really playful, so the floors and walls were covered in food and poop! What a blast I had cleaning that up, and it has to be done every single day....Sorry Nolan, I don't think you'll be getting an otter for your birthday.

Today I had to do a lot more work on my own, which was a little nerve racking because there is so much to remember, plus the stuff I haven't even learned about. All in all it was a good day, except for the heat wave...82 degrees here! These were record highs for the island, and some of the locals were melting. Also Dad was asking me how much gas is here: $4.76 for the cheap stuff. I think that's pretty much the same as back home, so I guess things are priced more similarly here than I thought.

A little about my roommates: Laura goes to Virginia Tech. When I found out she does belly dancing I had her show me some moves. It was a lot of fun but I am not very coordinated so it was a failure.
Alec goes to school in Massachusetts and his girlfriend is also living on the island for the summer. He is into Medieval swordsmanship and has some homemade sparring swords here. Again, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to learn something new, so I asked him to give me a lesson. I guess he gives lessons back home so he was a really good teacher and and I actually learned a lot! I ended up getting jabbed countless time, but it was still pretty sweet. Who knows how many other random things I'll get to learn this summer!

All in a day's walk

I took some pictures on my walk trying to find cell signal. It's a complete dead zone at the center so I had to walk about a quarter mile near that old barn and stand on the side of the road. I felt strange standing there as cars would pass...pretty soon the locals will probably grow accustomed to the odd girl always standing in the weeds. hehe.

Needless to say the best way to get a hold of me is by e-mail because the wireless Internet is flourishing here!! (unlike at my old college house)



Today was orientation. I got a tour of the place by Shona, the intern coordinator who is a super sweet gal from Scotland. Wolf Hollow is on 40 acres and it's gorgeous here. It feels like a vast open countryside, but then I remember I'm on a tiny island. They try and keep the habitat natural here for the animals sake so we were bushwhacking through tiny trails in tall grass to get from one animal enclosure to the next. The grass was so bad in one spot that Shona grabbed her scythe and started blazing a trail, looking like a cute grim reaper type (if that's possible). I was mostly following one of the rehabbers around to get a feel for the place, which was good because there's a lot to take in and they only explain things briefly. I'll be getting to do a lot of hands on care for the animals but primarily cleaning, feeding etc. until I get more experience. One thing I did get to do today was hand feed the baby birds. There were 2 tiny newborns in an incubator, 2 crows, 3 starlings, 5 robins, a black swift and a pigeon. I would take little bits of food in tweezers or on a stick and they would open up their huge mouths and guzzle it down. My favorite was the little humming bird that ate out of little syringes of formula. It doesn't quite know how to fly yet but was trying, so it was buzzing all around like a big awkward bumble bee. I went into the woods and cut down some browse (ocean spray), a tree/shrub with soft leaves and gave it to the fawns. They were really cute but we have to be very careful around them because they habituate (become accustomed to humans) very easily. I also followed Penny (one of the rehabbers) into the barn owl pen to feed them their mice. She was getting all up close in personal with them while I cowered in the back trying to not get hit or pooped on as they fluttered around. They are beautiful awesome creatures but I wasn't kidding about the pooping part >:0P

No pictures yet of what I get to do, but hopefully soon. Maybe on my days off I'll get a chance but things are too crazy right now. Plus I'm the only one here who has to do homework! Good ol' Cal Poly with their Senior Projects, they know how to keep us busy. It shouldn't be too bad, I have to write a paper, keep a log book, and then write another paper and present the final product when I get back. Mostly it's just doing the everyday stuff here, but it does take the fun out of it a bit.

I'm glad every one's enjoying the blog!
Love you all!!

I made it!

Welcome to Friday Harbor!
Some mountain I don't know the name of yet

View from the ferry


I had an early start this morning, woke up before five and barely made my flight out of San Luis Obispo. I flew south to LAX, which was strange because I'm going north...hmm. Then I flew up to Seattle, took two shuttle buses and then the ferry, which took me home to Friday Harbor! It was a little crazy doing all that travelling on my own, but I eventually figured it out and only got lost in LAX once! Two of the interns were there at the ferry landing to pick me up, what a relief. We went to a little mom n' pop grocery store, and they weren't kidding when they said food was expensive here! I guess it costs a lot to ship stuff here, plus it's a tourist town. The town is small and reminds me of Morro Bay a little bit, but more rural than beachy. I haven't had orientation yet so right now it feels like camp or something, but there will definitely be more info to come once I get the rundown of the place, so stay tuned! I met my fellow interns tonight, one guy and three girls, and we played a game of SPOONs. Our stays here are staggered so one girl will be leaving next week and someone else will come, etc. So there will always be new people, which is kind of exciting.
That's it for now!

getting ready to go

I'm leaving tommorrow morning so pray I have a safe flight(and finish packing)!
I'll be there June 25th-August 20th