One aspect of a wildlife specialist's job that most people do not realize upon first learning of our career is that animals don't take holidays and therefore wildlife specialists don't always take them either! We take turns celebrating our holidays with all of the critters at the museum because animals need care 365 days a year... You can't take a holiday from eating so someone has to be there to feed them. However, you won't hear complaints from me or any of my fellow coworkers about working holidays because they are very different from our usual day to day work and can be pretty interesting for all involved.
For starters we work a shortened day so we do actually get to spend most of the holiday with the humans in our lives, but for about 4 hours out of that day we are at the museum making sure all of the animals are healthy and well fed. We will, however, change up the feeding habits of some of our animals. For example, since the museum is closed many of our carnivores and omnivores will get an extra special treat in the form of a rabbit. We do this when the museum is closed because it can sometimes be a rather gruesome feeding to watch, but that is the food chain and the way life goes. We never feed live rabbits or any other live food, however, because live food can fight back and potentially hurt some of our animals so everything we feed is dead.
This 4th of July our bobcats and our red fox all received rabbits and showed their excitement over this great enrichment in a couple different ways. Huxley, our red fox, took his rabbit and ran around with it for a few minutes until the wildlife specialists left so he could cache it and come back for it later. This is a behavior red foxes exhibit in the wild when they find a large amount of food and they want to save some for later. They find a good hiding spot, dig a hole, and bury their large prey until they can come back later and finish eating it. Bob, our male bobcat, immediately started chowing down on his rabbit, but Bitty, our female bobcat showed her true natural instincts. She would hunker down and stalk her rabbit and then she'd pounce on it and throw it up in the air like she was catching live prey! This "game" of hers continued on for a few minutes before she finally gave in to hunger and started chowing down like Bob. Her attack on the rabbit though is an example of great enrichment. It keeps her mentally stimulated and keeps those natural instincts sharp and intact. This attack also illustrates what we tell people every day... bobcats do not make good pets!
Feeding out the rabbits is probably the highlight of my 4th of July, but we also make sure all of our other animals are healthy, well fed, have fresh water, and are enriched. One type of animal we definitely cannot forget on this all important holiday is our nation's bird... the bald eagle. Our two eagles on exhibit, Saturn and Venus, were hand fed their diets of fish and rats while our education bald eagle, George, had his food put in a plastic ball with holes stuffed with newspaper and in the center of hula hoops so he really had to work to get his food out. These birds have a higher intelligence level than some of the other birds of prey found at the museum, so we make sure to enrich them a little more often than the others and especially on our nation's birthday for which they serve as a great, patriotic symbol.
So while we wildlife specialists may not spend our 4th of July in the usual way that most people do, we still have a great day even though we are working. Fireworks pale in comparison to hand feeding a real live bald eagle on this special day. We get to leave knowing that the animals we care for were well fed and enriched and we leave pretty enriched ourselves after watching them benefit from all of our hard work.
Nikki McClellan, Wildlife Specialist
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