Groundhog Fun-day 2013!

Eddie the Groundhog painted his first masterpiece of 2013 earlier this week!

Painting is a good enrichment activity for our animals and also produces unique animal artwork humans can enjoy. Eddie paints by walking through non-toxic paint and then onto a blank canvas. He is rewarded throughout the process with tasty banana chips, his favorite treat.

His artwork will be raffled at our Groundhog Fun-day event on Saturday, February 2nd. Eddie will make two appearances in the museum's auditorium as well. This Groundhog Day festival will also feature crafts, activities, and live animal programs showcasing Ohio hibernators.

More information (including the schedule) can be found at this link:

http://cmnh.org/site/ClassesandPrograms/SpecialEvents/Groundhog.aspx

I look forward to spending Groundhog Day this year with a real live groundhog and hope you will come join in the fun too!

Michelle Leighty
Perkins Wildlife Center Co-Manager

Christmas Trees for Critters!

Each year after the winter holidays the Wildlife Resources department takes donations of Christmas trees. The trees are wonderful natural enrichment items for the animals and they also dress up our exhibits a bit.

This year we received a record number of trees, so nearly every animal at the museum has had a chance to interact with one. The birds use them for perching, the opossums and snakes climb in the branches, and the bobcats and hares like to hide deep within the greenery.

Here are a few pictures I took earlier today of the raccoons enjoying one of the trees! I hid some of their vegetables for the day far inside of the evergreen so that they had to climb and forage in order to get their snack. Click the images to enlarge.

Thank you to everyone who brought us a tree and helped provide the animals with a festive and fun enrichment activity!

Michelle Leighty
Perkins Wildlife Center Co-Manager

Spaulding

All,

It is with sadness that I have report to you that Spaulding, our exhibit gray fox for the past ten years, was euthanized on Monday, November 26 upon the recommendation of Dr. Lewandowski, Chief Veterinarian at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.

Spaulding had shown symptoms of distress on Saturday and was taken to the zoo. Chest films showed lungs and pericardial sac full of fluid and his enlarged heart barely visible. Needless to say, Spaulding was in respiratory distress. Intensive treatment with oxygen tent therapy and large amounts of diuretics brought some relief and improvement by Sunday morning enough so that Spaulding ate some medicine laced meatballs. However his condition deteriorated on Sunday night and into Monday. He wouldn't eat and thus wouldn't take his medications. He again was in distress. Dr. Lewandowski felt that if we pursued herculean efforts, perhaps Spaulding would recover and linger a few more months. But the reality of the congestive heart failure is that he would be in intense pain, stressed by constant handling to administer medications, and he would have zero quality of life. Based on his assessment, I gave the go-ahead to euthanize Spaulding and permanently ease his suffering.

I want to thank Nikki McClellan, Melissa Terwilliger and Joe Dell'Anno for quick action on Saturday, identifying the problem and getting him to the zoo. He received world class care over the past three days.

Spaulding was a scrappy little fox with a great personality. Coming from a fur farm where he was kept under horrendous conditions, he was obtained by CMNH in 2002. In the move from the Raptor Center, where he was temporarily housed, to his exhibit, his leg broke. Upon treatment he was discovered to have metabolic bone disease, a condition that would lead to a lifetime of arthritis, dislocations and dental problems. This condition was a result of the abhorrent conditions of the Grand River Fur Farm where he was kept in darkness and fed a nutrient poor diet for the first year of his life.

And yet in spite of all of that he was a great exhibit animal, very responsive to training and enrichment and very interactive with visitors, often spending time in the very front of the enclosure, curious at passers-by. For ten years he was an outstanding ambassador for the Museum, educating and entertaining our visitors, giving them insights into this little known Ohio canid and only tree climbing member of the dog family. I will always have fond memories of him joyfully rubbing his back in the otters' towels, provided as enrichment, as well as lounging from the top of the artificial tree in his exhibit.

And in the end I am appreciative that he was able to spend his life with us, rather than be housed in a crowded wire cage suspended from the ceiling of a low dark pole barn, where his only use to his master was as a source of urine.

He will be missed.

Harvey

Charcoal Update!

Charcoal the Coyote has been living at CMNH for over two months now so it is time for an update on how she is adjusting to her new life!

When she arrived at the museum Charcoal weighed 12 pounds. She has more than doubled her weight since then and is still growing! Her preferred diet includes rats, mice, quail, chicks, and ground meat, but she is not a pure carnivore. She eats a variety of fruits and vegetables as well and particularly likes apples. She also welcomes yogurt and raw eggs as a treat.

The wildlife staff works hard to socialize Charcoal and give her stimulating enrichment items. She prefers enrichment activities that involve digging, especially in big tubs of shredded paper or piles of mulch. Her favorite game to play with staff members is tug, with either a towel or a rope toy.

Charcoal is extremely food motivated and eager to please so her training is going very well. Here is a picture of Charcoal standing on her station a few days after her arrival:

And here is a recent picture of her stationing. One can see that we had to upgrade to a larger station to accommodate her rapid growth!

Charcoal is also kennel trained so that we can take her to the vet and target trained so that we can move her to desired areas around her exhibit. We have been doing some tactile desensitization with her too so that if we need to give her injections in the future she will be used to us touching her. She has been receptive to this and I don't think any staff members complain that part of their jobs is to pet a young coyote!

Overall Charcoal has adjusted very well to her new home. She is healthy, playful, and captivating. Come stop by the Perkins Wildlife Center for a visit and watch as she continues to grow!

Michelle Leighty
Perkins Wildlife Center Co-Manager

Spiders!

They’re creepy, they’re crawly, they have eight legs and they send people running whenever they enter a room. No, they’re not Pittsburgh Steelers fans. They’re spiders. Did you know there are over 50,000 species of spiders in the world, and more are being discovered every day! They are awesome animals that play a very important role in our environment. What do you say we play a CMNH style game of Myth Busters all about spiders?

Myth #1. Every spider is venomous and can hurt us.
True and False - While every spider is venomous only a very small percentage of spiders are dangerous to humans, and of our over 500 different spiders found in Ohio only 2 can be harmful to humans and those are rare species and easily identifiable if you take the time to look before you squash. They are the black widow and the brown recluse.

Myth #2. Spiders are insects.
False - Spiders are not insects. Insects belong to a totally different class of animals and there are some easy ways to tell them apart. Insects have 3 main body parts: the head, the thorax and the abdomen. Spiders have 2 body parts: they have the abdomen like insects but they have combined their head and thorax to form the cephalothorax. Spiders have 8 legs and insects have 6. Insects have antennae and spiders do not.

Myth #3. Spider silk is stronger than steel.
True - Spiders can produce many types of silk, some used for webs, some for non-sticky support lines, some for trap door webs, and even some webs used for parachutes that allow them to float on the wind, and each species can specialize on making different types of silk. Studies have shown that certain types of spider silk, especially silk from the orb spider family can be comparable and even stronger then steel at the same diameter.

Myth #4. Spiders are dangerous to humans because they are dirty and pass on disease.
False - In fact, spiders play an important role in keeping infectious disease cases down in human populations around the world. Spiders are among the most prolific predators of mosquitoes and flies. These are two of the biggest vectors for animal to human related diseases in the world. The more spiders we have the less mosquitoes and flies we have which means we have a better chance of keeping infectious diseases like malaria and West Nile from spreading through our human populations.

If you would like to satisfy your curiosity for arachnids stop down at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. You never know when our very own Chilean rose tarantula Anansi will make a guest appearance at one of our live animal shows. Get an up close look at all the cool features that make spiders spiders. Maybe after meeting Anansi you will think twice the next time you see a spider and instead of smashing it remember, they are more helpful to us alive and catching insects than they are at the bottom of your shoe.

Joe Dell'Anno
Perkins Wildlife Center Co-Manger

Skunks: Will Work For Food

Willow and Lilac have lived at the museum since July of 2011. Born in captivity, they have turned into fantastic program animals for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Both the wildlife staff and the education staff use the skunks regularly in classes.

Training the skunks to go in and out of a kennel for travel to class has been unusually challenging. Many of our animals are frightened of their kennels and need to be rewarded for going into them. The skunks, on the other hand, love their kennels! The problem is getting them out when it is time for class to start. Training them to come out has been a multi-step process. The first step was rewarding them when they just poked their head out of the kennel. When they mastered that, they got rewarded for putting one foot out of the kennel, then two feet, three feet, four feet, and finally for coming all the way out. During this process, whenever the skunks got rewarded, they would take their treat and rush right back into the kennel. So the final step was rewarding the girls when they would come out and stay out while we either picked them up or closed the door behind them.

Each girl has her own personality and training them required attention be paid to their individuality. Willow is farther along in her training. She will come out and stay out long enough to be picked up, without closing the door behind her. Lilac is more nervous and the door must still be closed behind her or else she will dart back into the kennel before you can pick her up. With staff attention and the right treats, Lilac will be coming out of her kennel perfectly in no time. What is the perfect treat to train a skunk? Willow loves raisins while Lilac prefers worms.

Kaitlyn Gabriel, Wildlife Specialist

Meet our new female Red Fox!

Look who arrived yesterday!

This young female Red Fox was born in the spring of this year. She was orphaned and raised at a rehab center in northwest Ohio. Weighing in at just under 9 pounds, she has not yet reached her adult size. She is out on exhibit in the Perkins Wildlife Center and is adjusting well to her new home. She is a little on the shy side but her playful nature has already made its appearance. The staff is thrilled to have her and has begun working on her socialization.

We named her "Scarlet."

Stay tuned for more updates!

Michelle Leighty
Perkins Wildlife Center Co-Manager