Week 1

My adventure started on June 2nd when my Dad and I left San Antonio, Texas at 7:30 in the morning (yes I got up that early believe it or not) making our way out of Texas, up to Oklahoma, and east stopping in Lebanon, Missouri for the night. It was around 8:30 when we stopped at the hotel. When we got up in the morning we drove about an hour and ended up at a Waffle House restuarant, interesting to say the least. We must have hit the breakfast rush hour because it took us close to an hour to get out of there, but now I can say I have finally been to a Waffle House! We took off again and made it through St. Louis, into Illinois, and dun dun dunnnnnnnn....into the homely town of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin :) I must say Dad and I did pretty good together, not too many disagreements, and we made good time. I drove most of the way, about 1000 miles out of 1400. One thing I did learn was that I would much rather drive than be the navigator, right Dad? ;)

So now the fun part begins. Once we got into Oconomowoc we met Linda, the woman who is letting me live with her RENT FREE, at her house. This is Linda!

She showed us around and I unpacked my car and moved it up to my room. My room is on the second floor:

She has been very kind and welcoming even though it has been a while since she had a roommate. I should also tell you that I found out her birthday is Friday! The house is an older farmhouse type without air conditioning so we keep the inner windows open all the time, but it does have heating for when it gets cold. The mornings are a little chilly for me, I usually sleep with a blanket. Here is a picture of the living room, dining room, and kitchen (left to right).                                       

Once we met her in person we headed over to my great aunt and uncle's house closer in the city, population 15,000. We went to eat at a local restuarant and then they showed us around. Some of the ritzy houses equivalent to Ocean Drive homes were on the lakes, Lake Fowler and Lake LaBelle were two of the bigger ones. I didn't think to bring my camera, sorry about that. I was kind of scatterbrained when we got here so I didn't have my camera for most of it. The next day Dad and I ran errands like finding the bank, grocery store, and unpacking my stuff in my room. I spent the night at my new home and started work at 10:30 the next day while Dad caught a flight earlier than that back to Texas.

I officially started my internship on June 5th at Wildlife in Need Center (WINC).

 Look at me!

There are 3 full time staff members and they are all great, they let us watch when they do some medications and are very good about answering questions. The first day was a little bit of paperwork, orientation, tour of the facility, and then they handed me off to a volunteer. I shadowed her for a while when she did her charts and then got handed off to other volunteers and interns to observe. When I say charts that means each animal at the facility has their own well chart that has all their information: diet, any medications, location, frequency of feedings, habitat preferences and care, and whether they have special needs or restrictions. We have colored folders that are supposed to correspond to the different types of animals based on feeding frequency, class of animal, or location but this doesn't always match as I have come to find out. Volunteers have their charts that they are allowed to do and interns and staff have theirs as well. Some animals are only handled by interns with special training or by staff due to the nature of the animals. So to break it down, there are different rooms inside and different enclosures outside for animals/patients/residents. We do have resident animals that are used for educational programs such as Daphne our duck that wanders freely within the halls of WINC. She is more of a pet than anything else, she rules the roost.

 DAPHNE

 There is the reptile room which mainly houses turtles and the occasional snake, aka Turtle Town. There are two aviary nurseries one with baby songbirds and the other with baby ducks which includes a snapping turtle in a ground enclosure, he has superficial damage on his head but he is awesome! Then we have the wood duck room which is isolated from the rest of the ducks because they are very stress prone. Next is the mammal nursery that has mainly squirrels, flying and ground squirrels. The mammal nursery has a viewing window open to the public so they can see us feed the babies if they come into the center. Then the resident animals include obviously Daphne our duck, a pair of salamanders, a toad, two snakes, Jewel the painted turtle, two good sized woodchucks, two flying squirrels Peanut and Acorn, Grace the kestrel, Raenah the red tailed hawk, and Dakota a great horned owl. I think I got everyone. The outdoor enclosures hold some of these guys like the raptors and then other patients when they get older like the squirrels, eventually our baby raccoons, mallard ducks right now, a screech owl, and a stubborn gosling who doesn't know what he is poor thing! We also have an ICU where the really critical patients are such as a baby turkey that we have right now. I saved the best for last, we also have a raccoon nursery separate from the mammal nursery because they are so numerous usually and they carry diseases moreso than the animals in the mammal nursery. Only interns that go through a training course are allowed to handle them, there are 4 of us that get to do this besides staff and I am one of them. They chose interns with prior animal experience to work with the raccoons. I have bird experience but not mammal experience so this was new to me but it is very fun because they are so cute!!! Most of them are either TID or QID meaning they have to be fed 3 or 4 times a day so they keep our hands full especially because there are only 4 of us that can do this and we alternate shifts. We feed and clean these little balls of fur. Most of them were orphaned so we bottle feed them formula to substitute their mother's milk, once they are weaned off of that they get "real food" in the form of softened puppy chow because it is full of protein. Then when they get older and bigger they go to an outdoor enclosure and are eventually released...Yippeeee!!!

All animals get fed and cleaned once, twice, three times, or four times a day; their chart gives us this information. In the baby bird nursery with songbirds some of them have to be fed as often as every 30 minutes which is why we have baby bird feeders (BBFs) that volunteer to do this. At least one intern is always in there with them too. In between charts we do laundry, dishes, prepare more food for nurseries or the kitchen, clean, etc. We just find things to do like all good workers do. Sometimes there may be special projects for us or we work on the afternoon or closing intern checklist depending on the time of day.

Our shifts are 8-8 1/2 hours long with a 30 minute lunch/dinner break included. Our two shifts are from 8 am-4:30 pm and 1 pm-9pm. From what I have seen we usually work 5 days and then have 2 days off but it also depends on other interns schedules and what is needed for the week. Schedules change weekly. We have 16 interns!!! To me this seems excessive especially because in the past it has been less than 8 interns. Most of us are just here for the summer but there are 4 of us that are here until October including me. There is one more out of state intern besides me and she is from New Mexico, everyone else is from Wisconsin. The interns are hmmmm.....should I say difficult to read. They weren't very helpful or welcoming when I came into the picture. They have all been here 2-4 weeks already and I was the last intern to arrive so I would imagine they are a little tired of more people coming to work. I asked a lot of questions so each day I picked up something new but the interns didn't take too well to my questions. They acted like I asked a stupid question or that I should know the answer to my question already. Oh well, as someone once told me I am the little fish in the big ocean right now. I am used to being the one at the top but now I have to start at the bottom again. I am just trying to find my place. It will come with time. I only have to hold out till August when most of them leave :)

I made it through my first week as an intern and am heading into my second week tomorrow. I will try to take pictures of the animals but it is hard to work and remember to take pictures even though we are allowed to take pictures.

On a different note, I haven't talked very much about my home life or life outside of work. I don't really do much on the days that I work. I have been watching the French Open, I know...just soooo exciting jk, probably not to you. Like I said my aunt and uncle showed me around some of the town and I found the grocery store, two in fact, so I am good to go for now. Linda and I went on a bike ride yesterday around our closest lake which is literally less than half a mile away from the house. There are lakes everywhere!!!! She pointed out some of the farms around here like bison, llama, and cattle farms. We saw some sand cranes on our ride:

Then we got gelato, upon my request. I hunt out the ice cream everywhere I go because I am an ice cream fiend muahahahahahaha!!!!!!

Linda is very active and likes to go camping, canoing, kayaking, bike riding, and plays tennis. She is in two or three tennis leagues. I am sure we will play tennis from time to time. Yay!

One of the best things about the house is that Linda puts out bird feeders so I like sitting on the porch and watching all the birds and other assorted animals. We get birds, squirrels, and chipmunks, probably some raccoons and opossums at night too. Oh and of course deer. Here are some of the native animals that I get to see from the porch!

This is a red winged blackbird, we have them in Texas too!

Our friend the cardinal.

A rock squirrel.

Not sure what this is but I thought he was pretty.

I don't have any pictures of chipmunks yet, they are fast and elusive. We also have 13-lined ground squirrels that I don't have pictures of yet either along with a noisy hummingbird.

Here are some views from the house: front porch, back porch, and the side. On one side there are crops.





This is one of my favorites, it is the sunset when we were coming home from getting gelato last night.

Linda likes to travel and go on adventures on her days off. She goes camping, canoing, etc. so as "payment" for staying at her house I have to water her plants lol. She has a lot of flowers around her and I also have to water her little garden that she planted. 

 

This is the garden that she is growing. It has different kinds of pepers in it and lettuce, yum yum! She has offered to share the yield with me :)

If you are interested in learning more about WINC or in reading some of the stories of our amazing resident animals here is the link to WINC's website. Enjoy! http://www.helpingwildlife.org/

It is gorgeous up here. There are a lot of festivals and activities during the summer because people can actually get out and do stuff this time of year. I am looking forward to all the festivities. I really love my home life and work should get better with time. Thanks for keeping up with my adventures. I hope you find them worth reading. More to come eventually.

Sarah :)))