Tonight we had a Snicker's presentation in Cooper's Landing about an hour or so away.  Alexis led the presentation and I assisted feeding Snickers and helping answer questions.  There were a few kids and they were loving him!  One kept "dancing" with him while Snicks was in his cage.  Porcupine are a pretty cool animal, definitely smelly though.  I didn't know much about them before I came here...actually I didn't know much about wildlife in general but I was able to find this Alaska Fish & Game notebook on all the animals here in Alaska and it's SO informative.  I even read the portion on porcupine before the presentation so answering questions went well and I could give good information.  A few fun facts about porcupines, they are the third largest rodent in the world, second largest in the U.S. and they also have one of the longest gestation periods (210 days).  Porcupine can't throw their quills, a common misconception due to their muscular tail used for defense and has the appearance of throwing quills when it wags.  Snickers was found by a family in a firewood pile as a baby (a porcupette!!), mom was most likely around however the family took him in as their pet.  He even slept with the kids!  AF&G took him since it's illegal in Alaska to have a pet porcupine and he's been at the center ever since.  He does many of the educational presentations around for schools, etc.  All of our animals here at the center (a non-profit organization) are state owned and we get them through AF&G.


Afterwards we went to Russian River to go bear watch.  We came up on a mama brown bear and two cubs which some fishermen were yelling at because they wanted to fish in that spot.  She ended up charging them.  It was pretty scary...definitely don't want to mess with mama bears and make sure to respect them.  

Today was a GREAT day at work!  Alexis and I started the day being duck herders (I can now add that one to my resume haha).  The mallard ducks we recently bought were put in the moose enclosure to live in the pond and apparently today they weren't feeling it and felt like going on an adventure.  We found them all the way up at the gift store.  We put them back in and blocked the hole they went through but they got our again through Snicker's enclosure.  So we ended up putting them in their pen again.  I also did a behind the scenes tour for a family and couple.  They were great to work with and I think they really enjoyed the tour, especially playing with the babies.  The women in the couple in particular was fun because she knew a lot about animals and agriculture and she challenged me (in a good way) allowing me to utilize what I've learned from my animal science degree.  I actually got to use my knowledge from school!! It was one of those days I guess, I also explained a lot about grain eating for ruminants and their digestive systems as well as how that can relate to hoof growth rate (Mukluk one of the muskox LOVES grain so she has to have her out of control hooves trimmed) and laminitis/founder in horses.  I ran into a lot of interested great people today who asked some good questions about our animals here.  The rest of my day consisted of a moose bottle feeding, a bus tour, and my favorite, the bear shift.  The first hour of my bear shift all three were napping but finally Patron came out to play in the water and then came up to the fence.  Even though most of the shift they were napping I had really good conversations with the visitors and it was rewarding with Patron coming out eventually for the people that were patient and waited or came back to check.