My Daily Routine

        Under normal conditions here, the chores are divided up amongst four groups. There are now four of us volunteers, so we are each a "group." Since the chores are devised for groups of 3-6 people, you can see that we four are working very hard.  I for one am EXHAUSTED by noon, though of course I am hardly the typical volunteer, since I am more than 3 times the age of the others.


        Here are my daily chores, and the critters I'm responsible for. Chores start at 7 am, and it is expected that before then you will have fed your babies. So I'm usually at the "clinic" which is the center of the facility here, around 6:45 to feed my squirrel and my baby birds. I think they will be flying vigorously by the time I leave (in five more days). It is amazing how fast they grew. And my squirrel abruptly decided yesterday that he is no longer a baby. He will no longer take a bottle but insists on big boy food like sunflower seeds, peanuts, apple, and carrot.

  

         After I'm done with them, I make my way to the crow Winnie (after Mrs. Mandela). Winnie is quite friendly and is happy to see me with my bowl of dead baby chicks in the morning. 
        This place buys frozen baby chicks by the garbage bagful. They come from a chicken farm where they had the misfortune to be born male. We go through 100's of them per day. Winnie goes through 8-10 herself.
        I clean her cage THOROUGHLY!!!   Standards are amazingly strict here. We
sterilize everything with bleach on Mondays and scrub everything down twice daily every day.



        From Winnie, I made my way to Jumper's cage. Jumper is a black eagle--very very rare. Tragically (and commonly, which is even more tragic), Jumper flew into a power line and broke his wing so badly half of it had to be amputated. He's been here for more than 10 years and obviously never can be released, but he sings to me every morning very beautifully, and in return, I give him 5-7 baby chicks. 
 

 
Here's a drawing of Jumper I did for Natasha, who was leaving the Rehab Center after having been employed there for some time.  I offered to do a drawing of any of Moholoholo's inhabitants for her, and she chose Jumper, her favorite.  I decided to draw him as if he did not have the broken wing.
 
 Other birds share Jumper's large enclosure.  They include:

One of two fish eagles, this one half-blind from an old injury

And these tiny pygmy owls--can't be more than 5 inches tall.

 




After Jumper's enclosure is spotless and everybody's fed,  I move on to my two white-faced vultures. I don't feed them. They are fed perhaps only once or twice a week with fresh red meat. Just a couple of days ago, I saw them feasting on fresh elephant meat. There's been a lot of dining on fresh elephant meat lately (so far, not by me, as far as I know).

I found I quite liked my vultures.  They were surprisingly playful and personable.  One of them liked to steal my tools when my back was turned, and they were, well . . . . just rather pleasant!

I will finish my rounds with you next post!