The Norm

Work went by as usual. Not too much excitement this week. However in home news, Thursday night or should I say Friday morning I encountered a visitor in my room. You see, I thought I heard something outside my window like a squirrel or raccoon crawling on the roof (there is a non-functional balcony outside my widnow). Naturally, I turned on my light (2:30 am) to see what was out there because I figured they could come busting through my screen window if they really wanted to. I looked in vain for there was nothing outside so I turned my light off and laid back down. However, not a minute later I saw the silhouette of something fly diagonally across my room in the dark. I immediately sat upright in my bed, turned on the light, and spotted a large blob on my wall above the window. I looked closer and determined it was no bird........it was a bat!! Yes a bat, didn't get close enough to see what kind of bat. Once I saw what it was I got outside of my room, closed the door, and texted Linda-"There is a bat in my room." She came out of her room and asked me if it was really a bat, she looked for herself and was dumbfounded. We decided on a gameplan: we opened my window, I got the broom and a blanket and we attempted to direct the bat out the window. We also used a fan to blow the bat out the window. Thirty mintues later the bat was successfully booted outside of the house. I was more terrified than Linda; I credit her with the courage and I took the credit for the plan. In the morning she asked me if it was a dream or reality.
This weekend I went to a musical with Linda called Aida at a community theater. The story was set in Egypt and consisted of a forbidden love with original music by Elton John and story by Tim Rice. Considering it was put on by a local theater it was pretty impressive. Sunday we meandered over to the outlet mall about 15 miles up the road and at night we played tennis. I have been watching the Olympics like everyone else, big surprise.

The state fair starts up this week. I have a ticket to go see one of the concerts at the fair next week, building up excitement for that :) Linda is looking into entering Hannah (her dog) into a dog jumping contest, we shall see if that comes through, it would be fun to watch since Hannah loves the water so much.

No pictures this time.

Adios for now!

Ten Day Stretch=Mini Vacation oh yeahhhhh

Hi there. Most recently I worked ten days straight due to an intern taking vacation. As you know we raccoon people are limited in number so when this raccoon intern went on vacation we had to fill in for her shifts, hence the ten day work week. I must say at about day 7 I was getting a little loopy. However, in return I am finishing up my four days off (more like my mini vacation!), I didn't get my two days off from last week so they were bunched together with this week's days off. I call this set of days off my Tourist Weekend :) On my first day off Gale and Steve, my great aunt and uncle on my Dad's side, took me to the International Crane Foundation (ICF) and the Wisconsin Dells. I met an employee at the ICF who was a falconer and makes raptor hoods. He talked to me for a few minutes about his career, the opportunities at the foundation like internships and volunteering, and then gave me his card. Thank you Mr. Bryant from the crane foundation. By the way, there are only 2 native crane species to the United States, the sandhill crane commonly found up here and the rare and endangered whooping crane. Here are some pictures from the ICF.

Grey Crowned Crane, Native to Africa

Blue Crane

Whooping Cranes

White Naped Crane

Next we were off to the tourist trap town known as the Wisconsin Dells. For those of you who don't know what the Dells are, they are along the Wisconsin River and probably a few other places but basically they are the sandstone rocks that have been weathered and sculpted into layers by the glaciers that moved through that  area many years ago. It is kind of like the limestone up in the hill country of Texas. We took a boat tour on the river and made two stops that had interesting rock formations. The entire town known as the Wisconsin Dells is teeming with tourist attractions, they boast about the best water parks and hotel/resorts with water parks in the state. They have museums and attractions like the mysterious house seen below.

The Dells along the riverbank.

Gale walking along the Witches' Gulch

One of the more obvious carvings of the Dells.

First stop on the boat called Witches' Gulch




Second stop called Stand Rock

So that was my big adventure for the weekend. I was very appreciative of Steve and Gale for showing me some of the beautiful places Wisconsin has to offer and for being a tourist with me for a day. In the last couple of days of my weekend I went kayaking with Linda which I found out I wasn't too terrible at, just a little slow or so it seemed that way.

Kayaking on the lake

Sunset on the lake

 I played tennis, getting better every time now that I have found my serve again. Watch out Linda! I did the usual grocery store run and laundry, nothing too exciting. I wanted to catch some fireflies so that I can take a picture of them, but that hasn't happened yet. Oh I almost forgot, Linda's property has some wooded areas on it so we took the doggies (yes we had them for a day or two)out for a walk in the woods. To me the woods were more like what we would find at a state park in Texas, not really massive trees or underbrush aside from all the tall weeds. I thought I might be able to go running on the path in the woods but no such luck, too many tall weeds. We saw a lot of patches where deer had been laying though. One good thing about the wildlife up here is that they don't have many biting or stinging animals like snakes, scorpions, or harmful spiders so going into the woods was no big deal. Normally deer flies are pretty thick, but even they can't take the heat right now. One other thing I did on my days off was go to a drive in restaurant called the Kiltie after kayaking. The Kiltie gives ice cream, excuse me custard, to dogs and they put these things called jimmies  on human ice cream. Apparently they are known for their jimmies which are chocolate sprinkles made out of real chocolate so they taste like chocolate, unlike the fake sprinkles you buy in the store. Linda had been trying to take me there and we finally made it. I think one of my goals while I am up here is to try all the different custards I can, a custard connoisseur if you will. There is a cheese factory that also makes ice cream in Milwaukee that is on our hit list. I had been itching to go swimming in a lap pool so today I went with Gale to the YMCA to swim while she helped someone with some physical therapy. I felt like a fish that had finally made it back into the water, I am definitely at home in the water. I hope to go back more often now.

I just had to put this in here. This is a little baby, and I mean baby baby, that we got in right before I left my 10 day stretch. He was the cutest thing, I didn't even care that he would be the only one we still had to bottle feed he was so darn cute. He knew how to eat from a bottle already and go potty, easy peasy lemon squeezy.

That is the extent of my much appreciated extended weekend. Now back to work tomorrow, back to my raccoons. It will be nice to work only 5 days instead of 10!

 Sarah :)

Weeks ?.....not keeping track anymore

Hey guys, so when I last wrote I left off with my Chicago adventure. It was back to work after that and the usual daily activities. However, one thing I have not mentioned yet are all the fireflies they have up here! They like to come out right when it starts getting dark, but it is really hard to take pictures of them unless you have a professional camera. Nonetheless I thought that was a neat tidbit, I can sit out on the front porch and watch them. Also, I have seen a lot of sandhill cranes, deer, and raccoons at night. Linda and I had quite an adventure the other night with a deer, a bunny, and some raccoons in the road all on the SAME night. They were all safe thanks to her mini cooper's swerving abilities. I have to say I was eating ice cream during this so I was just trying to swallow. We have many moments of laughter, it is like having an older sister :) Such as the other night we had a little houseguest, a junebug the size of a nickel! I had never seen a junebug that big in my life and Linda said that is what they normally look like up here, up until then I thought she was kidding. At Summerfest, "the world's largest music festival", we had fun looking for her a boyfriend, we found her a guy with an ice cream cone on his head and then one with a light up hat. We had a good time and I tried sour cream and chive fries for the first, yummmmm. Here are a couple of pictures from Summerfest.

                                          Flying high above the crowd in a cable car.                                   

I thought this was a neat shot.

The epic gates of Summerfest! 

Delicious turtle cheesecake from a place famous for it. Yes I ate it allllll by myself.

The trademark of Summerfest :)

My birthday is here!!!! July 3rd Linda helped me celebrate my 22nd birthday. I didn't do much for it because I had to work, but Linda made it special. This was waiting for me on the table when I woke up on my birthday thanks to Linda:


A balloon, flowers, a note, and my own flower birthday cupcake.



A better picture of my flower cupcake.



When I got home from work she gave me a gift while we enjoyed cheese and crackers with some rootbeer and watched fireworks. It was a great birthday.

I have a couple of pictures to share with you of the animals at work. I finally remembered my camera. More to come eventually.

 



Me and Dakota, a great horned owl that resides at WINC. He is much bigger than he looks.

  


A little orphaned mink that we are currently caring for.



In the past week or so, as you know, we have had intense temperatures across the country and we are no exception up here. We have been in the 90s and 100s, breaking all kinds of records. We don't have air conditioning in the house so it was pretty brutal. We had to go buy a fan for my room but even with that it was just pushing the hot air around. When we went to bed it felt like you were laying on a heating pad the bed was so hot, room temperatures were around 95 degrees. Thankfully the past two nights have been much better. Linda was considering going to a hotel at one point. I just hope it doesn't get that hot again for a while, it was miserable but we toughed it out and made it through because we are tough cookies!

At work, animals were overheating in outside and inside enclosures so we were giving them ice cubes, putting frozen bottles of water in their water dishes, spritzing them with water, and plugged in fans to help cool them down. My little raccoons were the only ones outside that got ice cubes with treats in them, they are the largest mammals that we have outside.

Lastly, I con Linda into playing tennis whenever she is off hehehehe so we played tennis the last two days which I absolutely LOVEEEEEEEEEEEE!! We watched the men's championship match at Wimbledon yesterday at her friend's house so we played with her two doggies and the puppy her friend was puppy-sitting.

 



This is Hannah, she is a sweetie, Linda's favorite. 

  
 


Linda with the puppy named Hitch but we renamed him Tucker.

  



BAXTER!!!! He is my favorite, part border collie so he is soooooo soft. He is the oldest out of the two dogs but he enjoyed playing with the fuzzball on the left here.

  


Baxter again.

 Hope you enjoyed it.

 Sarah :)