Winter can be a tough time for all the squirrels as there is a lot of snow in the ground and it can be hard to get and find all your nuts! Even harder if you were released late in the season and weren't able to store any nuts for the winter, like Bright Eyes, Tough Stuff & Little Girl. So here are a few updates to show you how well they are doing!

Here is ToughStuff! With a cashew. He is doing great!

Above is a picture of LittleGirl contemplating the snow. I don't see very much of her, and was very worried, but she appears to have turned up again. Female squirrels seem to disappear for a while and then reappear. Perhaps females are the sex that disperse, I don't know. Perhaps she found better squirrel feeders?! What is always amazing to me is how the little squirrels can be full of playtime one day and the next day they are wild and serious and being sqwerlz! Below is a picture of her playing with a stuffed toy before she was released- she is having so much fun!!

BrightEyes is also doing great (pictures on left). He & ToughStuff usually turn up together. They often fight over nuts, but there is plenty to go around!


And Lil'Mo is also doing fantastically! I see her usually at least once a day and she is very polite coming to say hello and ask for a nut. Below is a recent picture of her- hasn't she grown!! The person who found her wanted her to have a life as a wild squirrel, and she sure does ...with a few trips back for yummies!


Lil'Mo, ToughStuff & LittleGirl are easy to spot because of their dark reddish colouring, BrightEyes is easy to spot because he has such classic colouring, with a super white belly and a sweet, sweet face! Plus the little ones have had funny looking tails as they grow into their winter thickness!

By the way, you will all be pleased to hear that the Angry Young Man opossum, featured in the last blog, has gained almost ONE POUND in the last 2 weeks- that is about 30% of his original WTS body weight (i.e., he came in at 3.4 lbs and now about 4.5lb!)!! WOWEE. As soon as it gets warmer he is outta here!

And Ophelia, the little Screech Owl written up a few posts ago, has been sent to another rehabilitator with big flight cages (one day I hope WTS will have some!), where she will be tested with live prey (mice) to see if she can hunt on her own. I appears that she will never be able to see out of her left eye, but her right eye may have some vision- only time & testing will tell. If she shows us she can hunt, she is good to go, if not, I will try to find her a permanent home.

Not everyone is a happy patient at Wild Things. Despite being rescued as a starving and very small (probably born late in the season) Virginia Opossum and being given a second chance to survive and make it in the world, this little guy is definitely NOT a happy patient!

He will bite and thrash every time I have to pick him up, and his favourite defence mechanism is explosive very stinky diarrhea. He also sticks out his "bifurcated," or forked, penis at me. This is a special anatomical trait of opossums. It is interesting to see, but I'd be just as happy if he kept it to himself! ;)

Opossums also have their scrotum located in FRONT of their "forks," so it really is a unique set-up!

WTS has also seen lots of "snowbirds" or Dark Eyed Juncos visiting. I love these little birds as they are always the first out in the harshest of winter snows (see the one on the feeder below?!). There is one that has a strange marking- it looks like he has a white collar around his neck. This is the 3rd year I have seen him- he has been here ever since I moved in! The juncos stay around WTS in the summer as well, though many of their brethren have different winter and summer areas.

WTS also has quite a few White Tailed Deer visiting. The group below comes almost everyday and appears to be made up of one baby, two young does and an older doe- perhaps a mother and her 3 daughters. No sign of Andre Button this year so far.

And who have we here?? A little Eastern cottontail. It may actually be Silver Blaze, who if you remember was released here last year and stayed around for months enjoying the WTS woods. It is incredible to see this little bunny outside on the coldest nights of the year. How it manages to survive and find food I have no idea. I feel a mixture of pride for its success and fear for its vulnerability...but by all accounts it appears to be doing great!

Things have been busy at WTS over the holidays!

Meet Ophelia, a young Eastern Screech Owl. Ophelia was hit by a truck shortly before Christmas and if it wasn't for the quick action of her rescuers who took her off the road and kept her safe & warm & called WTS, she might not have survived . Amazingly no bones were broken, but she sustained injuries to both eyes. This is a common injury in Screech Owls when they collide with objects. She has been on various anti-inflammatory medication and eye-drops with the hope that they will recover. Many species of owls, such as Screech owls, rely so much on their hearing when they hunt that even with the loss of an eye they are still able to be released and hunt successfully.

She was clearly doing well on her own and was nice and plump and very strong. She arrived here still with evidence of a recently eaten meal- so she was probably hit mid-hunt.

But as you can see in this picture to the left, when she arrived, her eyes were very sore and she was keeping them closed. But they are doing so much better as you can see in the above picture, but she does NOT like her eye drops (below)!

And this is a young male Virginia Opossum. He was  brought to another rehabilitator but came to me so the vets could take a look at him at Cornell. He too had been hit by a car and sustained injuries to one eye (a corneal ulcer) which will probably leave him blind in that eye. He also had some intestinal issues similar to hemorrhoids, but is now well on his way to recovery. He is very gentle and loves to sleep all day in his blanket...but at night he is super active.

And when I get a good picture of Jose teh blind squirrel, another car victim who came to WTS at the end of 2008, I will post that too.

Biut for now we are all sending you a big Happy New Year and many great wishes for 2009!!

The time has come to tell the story of Mister H. Lecter, a 4 month old Virginia Opossum. He's about 4oz, or 110g. Lecter arrived about 10 days ago. He was disorientated, possibly due to an imbalance of calcium, to which opossums are prone. Lecter is adorable, and as with all opossums has crazy strong grasping hands that give him the ability to climb anything, and therein lies his tale of multiple escapes and various acts of troublemaking.

 
For the first few days I thought, how cute! He loves to climb in my hair! But being a still a bit wobbly, I had no idea what he was really capable of...

A few days after his arrival I received 5 more baby opossums, these are about 3 1/2 months old (NB: as with all marsupials, opossums are born much earlier in development than placental mammals- those animals who are nourished by a placenta in the womb- which means that a 3month old opossum is about equal in development to a newborn placental mammal.) Well, the next day I went to feed the new arrivals at 6am and the cozy lump in their hideyhole was much bigger- here's why...

That's Lecter- the bigger opossum in the box above, and you can see him with the little ones to the left. He had escaped, I have no idea how, from his cage and snuck into the babies cage next door.  So adorable! So I set up a bigger cage for all of them. What was great was that the little ones started figuring out how to eat solids by following his lead.

Well, the next day, that little Houdini had done it again...

So after this escape I secured the cage even more...

And, what do you know? He was gone once again the next morning! Not only gone, but there was plenty of evidence that he had been very active around WTS (I've got to get this darned room finished to eliminate all the fun hiding places for little runaways!).  However, I was confident that he would come out when he was hungry. Several days passed, and I thought that he may well have found a hole in the wall through to the outside.

I actually wasn't too worried as amazingly opossums are usually on their own by Lecter's age, though I did want to keep him for observation and until he was about 2lbs to give him more of a chance outside.

Day by day passed. And one afternoon when I was feeding the little ones, that funny hissing gasping opossum call suddenly started...it was Lecter, and here's where I found him (see below)- in the bin.

Little Lecter is now in "jail"- a big bird cage! I've separated him from the babies as I've since learned that opossums will cannibalize other opossums if they get a craving for their much needed calcium & protein. Oh my! I wonder if he was just fattening up the babies for a little midnight snack...!