Hours Covered: 120-130
This journal marks my half way point at the wildlife center. I have completed six out of the twelve weeks. Things are very busy with at least 40 raccoons and 8 fawns, not to mention the countless ducklings, birds, and opossums. (I mostly focus on the raccoons and fawns as they are my favorites). Things have also been pretty repetitive these days. Jane made a schedule for each day of the week, so everyone knows who is doing what. On the days I am working, my main duties are the fawns and inside raccoons. However, when that is finished, if there are still animals needing to be fed and cleaned, I move onto those. The days go by so fast now with the amount of animals in the wildlife center. We officially had a couple raccoons big enough to go outside into cages. The cages are organized by county so that when it is time to release them, we don’t have to worry about getting certain ones. Right now, only cages 1 and 2 have raccoons in them. Protocol for feeding and cleaning outside raccoons is much different than the other outdoor mammal cages. First, the dishes stay outside, so we bring the food in buckets to them. Each morning feeding, we take out the old dishes, record leftovers, and put new food in clean dishes. Once everyone is fed, we return the food back to the fridge and then come outside to clean. The cages are set up in a set of two with a small “hallway” between them where we keep cleaning supplies. Each cage has a designated bin to clean dishes in. The bins get filled about 6 inches with water and then a cup of bleach. The old dishes soak while the cage itself is cleaned. To clean the cage, we go in and dump their kiddie pools (raccoons need a large source of water), disinfect and scrub them clean. The pools get rinsed and refilled. Next we scoop up feces and food scraps from the pebble floor. The last thing we do is fill a separate water bowl (even though they always dump these over) and thoroughly hose down the cage. This gets rid of any spilled food that was missed, as well as racoon urine and other germs that attract flies and maggots. Before moving on to the next cage, we scrub out and rinse the racoon dish and leave it to dry for the next day’s feeding. Soon when all the cages are full, I will be doing that 12 times total each day. The outside racoons also get fed again in the afternoon around 3pm. Because they get more nocturnal as they get older, they may not eat their AM food, so we just add the PM food to the dishes. The only cleaning that gets done in the afternoon is we empty and refill the pools. We do this for several reasons. First, because it has been sitting in the sun and warmed up. Keeping the pools cool help keep the racoons cool in the heat. Another reason we do this is because sometimes the raccoons poop in the pools and it is important that they have access to clean water. One of the things we do to help keep the raccoons cool is give them popsicles. We use large bowls and fill them with grapes, peanuts, and quail eggs. Recently I found a crate of mussels, clams, and oysters in the fridge, and we added those to the popsicles. So after the pool get refilled in the afternoon, we add the popsicles into the pool. The raccoons absolutely love them. They always jump right in and start pawing and chewing on the popsicles. It’s probably the funniest thing I’ve seen a raccoon do.
One thing I can connect to my courses it the nocturnal behaviors of raccoons. I know in comparative animal behavior we looked at the different cycles of animals such as diurnal and nocturnal. What I am wondering is why raccoons become more nocturnal as they get older. Is there a benefit to not being nocturnal as a baby? The only thing I can think of is being awake long enough to get enough milk from the mother. But it is very interesting to find out that it is a gradual thing, and something that just occurs internally naturally. I would be very interested to find out the biology behind it.
I’m pretty sure that I have found that the raccoons are my favorite animal to work with at the wildlife center. They are just so fun to handle and have so much personality. Seeing them have more space to run around outside is wonderful. Now that I know how much fun they are, I will need to make sure that places I look at in future job searches have raccoon care. Because they are a rabies vector species, not all rehabilitation centers will take them. I think that I really prefer working with larger animals rather than small ones. I would love if somewhere down the line I was able to work with bears and larger cats like bobcats and mountain lions, but I’d have to look into what territories they live in.
