Week #3!
Oh my goodness, we got to hold Kateri!!!
Okay, so that was definitely one of the highlights of my week! Yesterday afternoon, Nicole and I each got to experience twelve pounds of Golden Eagle AWESOMENESS for a short time. She is such an incredible bird, and I feel so lucky that I get to work with her. And though it doesn’t sound like it, twelve pounds gets heavy very fast—after about ten seconds without the cane, it’s time to set her down. But Melissa says it just takes time to build up our arms, and we will be holding her with no problem before we know it! We received a hooding lesson today using the stuffed toy hawk Sparky, and I think we will be just fine.
This week, the weather fluctuated from rain and thunder to stifling heat to cool breezes, and it seems to have affected some of our birds this week, which is always fun…
Kateri herself handled our sessions with grace and poise as usual, and has been pretty content for this week; nothing too exciting, except for the new perches that have been successfully installed in each mew. Everyone seems perfectly content, and it certainly gives us people peace of mind, knowing that the PVC will be much easier to clean and won’t get all moldy. One of the interesting things of this week was when Kateri had to be housed in Suli’s mew while our awesome maintenance crew worked on the perches—she decided she liked Suli’s swinging perch. This was all well and good until it was time to pick her up and move her back to her own room… not the easiest job in the world.
Isham has been jumpy this week, and keeps wanting to bate for no apparent reason. Melissa thinks that maybe the full moon, coming in one week, is affecting his attitude. Whatever the cause, he is hanging in there, and for the most part is as cool (and of course, as handsome) as ever. On Wednesday, however, when everyone seemed to be having a freak-out day, he was perfectly calm. Sometimes he is strange, but we still love him!
Poor Teasdale!. As the weather gets warmer, he gets more and more grumpy and uncomfortable; I almost completely soaked him with the spray bottle one day, and he was perfectly okay with that. Granted, he is a bit spoiled, like all of our birds, but hey, they deserve it! On Wednesday, he had to be housed outside his own mew while they worked on the perches, and he was very anxious. He did not like being outside his home!
Haya got a new swinging perch today; her old one was starting to wear down, so we replaced it, and she thinks it’s awesome! In other news, she is slowly getting more wins under her belt; for a while, she had quite the losing streak. Her score so far is nine losses / nine wins, so she is getting there! Also on Wednesday, Haya broke a blood-feather right on stage! For those who don’t know what that is (I didn’t either until Melissa explained it), it is a feather that is still growing out, and thus has a blood supply pumping to it. This is not a good thing when they break, as they are similar to an open vein and have the potential to just bleed and bleed. Luckily, Nicole and Melissa caught it before anything dramatic besides the bloodiness could happen, and they fixed her up with the help of LaDaun and Anne. She was unhappy about this, however, and happened to get a grip on poor LaDaun’s arm! Everyone was okay in the end, but it was a stressful afternoon.
Suli is being her goofball self, and strangely has had a very good attitude towards almost everyone over this week, even me! She is still having problems with Nicole though; she still thinks Nicole is actively working to kill her and will bate continually and also hiss at her… Hopefully, things will be better in that department soon!
Nicole has been an awesome intern and has been sorting a huge bag of mixed feathers. She separated them not only by bird, but also by what part of the body they came from… such dedication!! 🙂
It seems that Cody does not want Ali to leave; he is still here, though he has been trying to leave for two days now. The flights just have not worked out. So he has been still helping us with the programs and being awesome as usual! Everyone who has met him says he is fun to have around—and not just because he is the muscle who hauls all the heavy stuff around!
I think that’s it for this week! If I missed anything, hopefully I can catch up next week, just let me know! I will definitely post more pics next week!
🙂 Katie
