Kenora 2013: Shortest Day, Biggest Pay-Off

Kakabeka Falls

After a very restful night in Thunder Bay (followed by a delicious continental breakfast) we started out on the final leg of our journey west. It had rained overnight but had stopped long enough for us to load the car, although the air was cold and crisp and the sky dim. Almost as soon as we pulled out of the parking lot, however, the rain started up again and it was our nearly constant companion from there until about half an hour out of Kenora. As a result, our nearly compulsory stop at Kakabeka Falls was cut quite short: just long enough for us to take a few pictures from the viewing platform nearest to the parking lot and run for cover as the skies began to open up. In years past we have spent quite a bit of time at this gorgeous natural wonder, but this time we didn't even cross the bridge that you can see in the above picture. If I wasn't 100% certain we'd be back in the future this might have bothered me more; however, the single-digit temperature reading and the piercing rain washed any regrets right out of our heads.

Welcome Back, Inukshuk!

Inukshuk patrolling familiar ground

Yesterday I headed to the Zoo again, this time to attend a class on how to use the AEDs (Automated External Difibrillators) on site. It was a very short class, running from only 9:30 to 10:30—at which point the Tuesday Volunteers practically ran us over trying to set up the room for their pot luck lunch, but that's another story—so once it was over I had plenty of time to take advantage of the mild temperatures and occasional brilliant sunshine and walk around a little bit. I was especially interested in making my way to the Tundra Trek and specifically the polar bear exhibit, because last Thursday night—just in time for the "big storm"—an old friend returned: Inukshuk, father of Hudson. He's been off in Cochrane at their Polar Bear Habitat since last October (because Aurora was pregnant with three cubs that, sadly, didn't survive) and will be returning there at the end of March. He's back here purely for "stud duties"; a pretty good gig if you can get it! The keepers have their fingers crossed that he might actually "hit the jackpot" with both of the sister bears currently at the Toronto Zoo, Aurora and Nikita, the latter of whom has never been pregnant. It would be pretty special indeed to have more than one "Hudson" roaming around come the fall, but a lot has to go right for that to happen. Inukshuk won't really care either way: his job is done once he gets back on the plane for Cochrane.

Neither Snow, Nor More Snow, Nor Snowmageddon™...

Om nom nom—brownie kebob!

Today was supposed to be our final Volunteer training class at the Zoo, complete with a pot luck lunch. When I attended the presentation on "To Theme or Not To Theme" yesterday, Karen was wrestling with whether to postpone the class for one week because of the impending storm, but had not yet decided either way. So "Aussie Tom" and I got into Babar at about 7:45 this morning and, after five or six tries to get up the steep ramp leading out of our underground garage, began to forge our way out to the Rouge Valley (avoiding all highways along the way). When we had reached Markham and Kingston Road, a little over halfway to our destination, Karen reached us in the car to let us know the class had, indeed, been postponed. We decided to continue on to the Zoo, if for no other reason than to hand out some of the "brownie kebobs" that Sarah and I had made for the pot luck and which would not last until next week in any event.

Zoo Presentation and New Pictures

Spectacled owl pair at the Zoo (a bit fuzzy due to the low light)

My triple-decker presentation day was last Friday. I followed the three scripts I posted on this blog pretty closely, but I ran out of time and was "cut off" long before I could finish my talk about the owls or tie it all together at the end. This was pretty frustrating, especially since: 1) I was the only one this happened to, even though others in my group ran over their time limits; and 2) the other two groups had quite a bit more time allotted to them to get through their three animals. Luck of the draw, I guess, but a bit annoying. In any event, the prairie dogs were still "off exhibit", but that gave me more time to talk about the signage at the Zoo. (Unfortunately, the trainee who was supposed to talk about the black-footed ferrets immediately before me was absent which meant I had to touch on those animals briefly as well in my prairie dog talk.) Only one of the two spectacled owls (the male) was visible, too; I learned later that the female is brooding at the moment in a hollow trunk in the exhibit. But the wonderful octopus put on an amazing show for us: she was up in the corner of the tank when she noticed the whole clutch of people standing there, so she came down and pranced around in front of us for a while, sizing everyone up with her eyes and showing off her underbelly. It was pretty obvious she was interacting with the group and I'm finding the giant Pacific octopus to be more fascinating every time I see her.

Zoo Presentation Part 3: The Spectacled Owl

If you're still with me, thanks for hanging in there! On Tuesday I posted my presentation on the black-tailed prairie dog. Yesterday we looked at the giant Pacific octopus. In today's concluding segment, the animal at hand is the spectacled owl.

Juvenile spectacled owl in flight

Have you ever tried to sneak up on someone without them hearing you? Did it work? Have you ever tried to do it going as fast as you can? Not so easy, right? It would be much easier if you were an owl!

These are spectacled owls, mainly found in Central and South America, most often in rainforests. They have very broad wings and soft plumage which enables them to fly virtually soundlessly through the air. Their flight feathers have comb-like “fingers” which help to deaden the sound of their flight. This is very important to the owl in two ways: the first way is so that their prey will not hear them coming. Can anyone think of a second reason? It’s so the owl can hear their prey moving about even while they are flying so they can pinpoint its exact location.

Zoo Presentation Part 2: The Giant Pacific Octopus

Yesterday I posted about the black-tailed prairie dog, the first of three animals I have been assigned for a "mock tour" this coming Friday. The second animal, the giant Pacific octopus, is the subject of today's piece. Hope you like it!

Giant Pacific octopus

Has anyone ever heard of Harry Houdini? Why was he famous? Harry Houdini was a man who lived about 100 years ago and he was an “Escape Artist”. People used to pay to see him get out of very tight spots seemingly like magic. But if Harry Houdini had been an octopus, it might not have seemed so magical!

This is a giant Pacific octopus. It is an invertebrate; does everyone know what that means? Because it has no bony skeleton or backbone it can squeeze its body through unbelievably small holes; here is something to look at we call an “Octopus Escape Route”—please pass it around. The octopus in this tank can fit through that hole in the plastic if it really needed to! Underneath the octopus where all 8 arms meet you will find its mouth. Inside that mouth is the octopus’ beak, shaped a bit like a parrot’s beak, which is made of keratin—the same substance your fingernails are made out of. That is the hardest part of the octopus’ whole body, so it can squeeze through any opening larger than its beak. Now, I mentioned the octopus’ arms: that’s what they are called, not legs or tentacles. Each arm has about 280 suckers in two rows and these contain chemical receptors which the octopus uses for touch and taste.

Zoo Presentation Part 1: The Black-Tailed Prairie Dog

Black-tailed prairie dog family

On Friday of this week each of the trainees has to make a second and final presentation to the rest of the class. This time we are treating it as one long guided tour of the Zoo, with a Grade Four class in tow, having already theoretically participated in a "Habitats and Human Influence" workshop. Each of us has been assigned three consecutive animals on this tour so we can show some sense of fluidity for when we have to do these tours solo. The theme we are working with is "Humans have both a positive and negative influence on animal habitats"; from there it is up to us to figure out what to say, how to tie it to the theme and how to move on to the next animal. I will be picking up our tour from immediately following the black-footed ferrets; my three creatures are the black-tailed prairie dog, the giant Pacific octopus and the spectacled owl; I will then hand it off to another trainee who will begin with the boa constrictor. Again, as in the first presentation, we are supposed to keep each animal's presentation to three minutes or under (ha!), use plenty of interaction such as questions and props, and stick as closely as possible to the broad subject of "Habitats and Adaptations (and Human Interaction)". Today I'm going to post my prairie dog presentation; tomorrow I will talk about the octopus and Thursday I'll finish with the owl. I'll copy these posts directly from my presentation notes, complete with formatting; bolded words and phrases are things I absolutely want to include; underlined and italicized means I want to ask the group a question; everything else is fair game and might be changed on the fly depending on timing. Sections in square brackets might be removed before I actually give this presentation. So, without further ado, I give you....the black-tailed Prairie dog! (Note: there are implied "pauses" after each of the questions I ask; it may look like I am just running it all together in the "script".)

Goodbye Hudson!

CEO John Tracogna on Undercover Boss

One especially nice thing that our Volunteer Coordinator, Karen Conway, has arranged for us this month is a tour of the Nutrition Centre at the Zoo. This is a very rare privilege and I hope that our whole class takes advantage of it while they can. We had several days to choose from but each day's tour group was limited to fifteen people maximum—many existing Volunteers signed up as well—so it was difficult to find an opening. I decided to book it for yesterday, a Saturday, in the hopes that it would be a bit calmer and it was. As it was also the final weekend at the Zoo for our beloved polar bear cub, Hudson, who is leaving Monday for the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg, Sarah came with me and did her own thing while I was on the tour. I took copious and quite detailed notes on the experience but I get the impression that the Zoo would be most happy if I didn't share too much of the specifics of the centre's operations. If you have a chance to watch the very first episode of Undercover Boss: Canada you will see the CEO, John Tracogna, working at the centre for part of the show. I can report that the mural that was commissioned for the centre at the end of that segment is really quite nice. I wish I could show it to you, but I can't find a single picture of it on the web. (The Zoo has some pretty severe privacy issues with their behind-the-scenes tours.) In general terms, the work that goes on every day with respect to food preparation is astonishing. The budget for animal sustenance is approximately $900,000 per year, which is almost perfectly offset by the yearly revenues from the parking charges. We were quite lucky yesterday: owing to quite a few people being off for various health or family reasons, the two "big cheeses" at the centre, Jaap Wensvoort and Karen Alexander, were the only two people working so we got our information straight from the top. There was a very good article in Maclean's a couple of years back concerning Jaap's "browse diet" for the gorillas; there are many other innovations and concoctions that the Toronto Zoo's nutritionists have come up with over the years, some of which they receive royalties on when they sell them to other zoos. It was a fascinating tour and I'm really glad I participated!

My White-Handed Gibbon Presentation

White-handed gibbon in a rare spot: on the ground

Tomorrow I have to give a short (three minute) presentation on an animal of my choice to an imaginary class level of my choice as part of my Zoo Volunteer training. I have chosen the white-handed gibbon as my animal and a Grade 6 Biodiversity Workshop Tour as my audience. I am spending much of the day practicing this presentation and will likely not have much else to write about in any event, so I thought it would be fun to just print my entire talk out here for your amusement. I am having trouble keeping this talk below four minutes—and that's without allowing for any interaction with the audience—so I clearly have some work to do. It's entirely possible that my final "script" will be shorter than this one, although I have no idea, at this point, what part(s) I would want to cut out. Anything you see in square brackets ("[ ]") are sentences or thoughts I feel I could eliminate if pressed for time. Questions I wish to pose to the group are in italics and will probably be followed by a short pause for answers. The absolutely vital talking points are in bold. And now, without further ado....pretend you're eleven years old again and standing in front of the gibbon enclosure in the Indomalayan pavilion....

Friday is Zoo Day!

The older of our two female otters

Our training doesn't officially resume until next Friday so I had another opportunity today to do a walkabout at the Zoo on my own. I decided to drop in on some animals I hadn't seen in quite a while; I had hoped to catch up with the jaguars at the Mayan Temple but the whole area is closed for the season. I don't know why this fact had eluded me until now, but it did. While I was contemplating this turn of events, I heard a rustling from the ground around the pool off to my left and below me. When I went over to the railing I saw one of the otters was very interested in me—possibly expecting some food—and had come bounding out of the light brush in the exhibit to perch on one of the logs and stare at me. Unfortunately, my camera was still in its case and the case was still inside my knapsack; by the time I got it ready to go, she (the otter, for I have yet to anthropomorphize my camera) had slipped into the water and was swimming around, still watching me closely. I was there for quite a while, but could not coax her back out of the pool and onto that log, so I had to settle for a series of swim-related pictures, of which I think this is the best. None of them were remarkable but who doesn't love looking at otters? Obviously I had to include one here.

Wintertime at the Zoo

Sarah ♥s the Zoo!

As I mentioned in my New Year's Eve blog post, I got a fantastic Christmas gift this year (well, last year, to be technical): a Canon EOS Rebel T3 (EOS 1100D) DSLR camera. For regular—or even casual—readers of this blog or my Facebook feed, it should have been painfully obvious where I would almost immediately be heading to put this beauty through its paces: the Zoo. Sarah and I went on a little "walkabout" last Friday not long after the new (and first) snow of the Toronto winter had fallen and from the very first impressions I can honestly say that I am going to love this camera for a long time. I had an old Ricoh 35mm SLR for nearly two and a half decades which gave up the ghost in late 2003 (sadly, it was on a trip to the maritimes and the disposables I had to buy to fill the gap were really quite terrible). In the years since that loss I have made do with a series of crappy-to-decent point-and-click digitals (the most recent of which I actually won in a radio promotion a few years back) and, having abandoned thoughts of obtaining a DSLR for myself (out of my price range), I had my eyes on a Nikon Coolpix P500 that I was thinking of buying used from a friend of mine. Great little camera, but at the end of the day it's still a point-and-click. So when I opened my new Rebel on Christmas (and Sarah unnecessarily apologized for not getting me the Nikon!) I was absolutely thrilled; however, it wasn't until I actually took some pictures with it that night and viewed them on the computer that I realized just how much better my photo-taking life had just become. Over the following couple of days, as I read up on the functions and settings of my Canon, the old feelings started to come back and I realized how much I actually missed my old Ricoh and, consequently, how much I had pushed that to the back of my mind for the past 9 years.

Zoo Volunteer Training, Week Two

Hairy-nosed wombat
credit: Jeff Green/Toronto Star

The training was a little more intensive in our second week as we are starting to get some idea of exactly what is going to be expected of us. We focused on Grade Ones and Twos this time around (more the former than the latter, truth be told) and were taken on a short tour by a veteran Volunteer who stopped us frequently en route and explained the methodology she would use if we were actually six or seven years old. The Grade One curriculum explores "Characteristics and Needs of Living Things" with a special emphasis on the five senses. Grade Two learns about "Growth and Change in Animals", including life cycles and classifications. One especially nice thing about the tour yesterday was it took us through the Australasia Pavilion where we had a chance to meet the newest Zoo additions, two young southern hairy-nosed wombats who have come to join Hamlet, the thirty-year-old wonder already living here who has outlived his life expectancy in the wild by a factor of two. It is hoped that the new pair, Millie and Arthur, will breed when they are ready (likely a full year away, still) because that is something that Zoos up until now haven't had a lot of luck with. There are nine of these creature in captivity in North America; the Toronto Zoo now sports three of them. A let me tell you: these two youngsters are some kind of cute. One was braver than the other (we are not sure who was who), venturing past the wallabies into the outdoor enclosure and watching us from the fence there quite closely. I didn't want to stop and take any pictures of my own while I was "in class" and I didn't go back before I went home. Hopefully they will be just as active the next time I am in that pavilion and I'll capture them for posterity!

My Zoo Volunteer Training Has Begun!

My temporary badge

Today I was at the Toronto Zoo for the first week of my ten-week training program to become a "Weekday Zoo Volunteer". Each session (except the two weeks in the middle where we will be "shadowing" an experienced Volunteer on a walking tour) will be from 10-3 on Fridays, with a break of three weeks over Christmas and New Years. The intake group is very large this year—twenty-eight potential new Volunteers—because in their existing pool there are some members with increasing mobility issues who are unable to take on the task of a two-hour tour any longer. I believe there were a total of five new Volunteers last year (there may have been even fewer); that's quite a jump from one year to the next. It does appear that I came along at just the right time. It was pretty nice to sit in a room full of like-minded people, all eager to share their love of wildlife and conservation with young people, hoping to light that spark within each of them. I am very much looking forward to doing this for a long time.

An "Angry News" Week

Sea lions Sandy and Baker

It's too bad my neck's been so sore the past few days that I've barely been at my keyboard, because it's been one hell of a week for awful news and I feel like I've missed the chance to have some pretty important discussions. I've already posted about Toronto's ignoramus of a mayor thinking it's ok to drive while reading a speech (although we may have found him a new driver, if he'll be crazy enough to move here from Edmonton). I made a short, passing mention of the horrific goings-on at Marineland (former trainer Phil Demers has put together a short video which also was featured on the Star's website; now comes news that the Niagara Falls Humane Society will be inspecting Marineland and even singer Suzie McNeil wants her jingle pulled from their ads). I know I need to write a much larger piece on this story, but I haven't had the stamina to pull everything together this week. It's coming, trust me.

Pinched Neck = Low Productivity

For some strange reason my neck has been bugging me for the past couple of weeks. It has done this before, but usually it has something to do with straining it playing sports. Since that's not even a thing for me this summer, I don't know what's going on... but I do know I hate it. This morning I woke up and could barely move my head and arms, so I decided to take a bit of a sabbatical from the keyboard. I'm just going to be at my desk long enough to post a short blog piece then I think I am going to have to get a heating pad on it. If it keeps up, I could have a real problem. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Happy kitty outside her fort

Because my buddy has kept me company all day while I've been suffering, I've decided to dedicate yet another blog to her - although some of these pictures were from yesterday. Last week Sarah made Addie a "kitty fort" out of her two tunnels (one large and one small) and a fleecy blanket. Addie loves her tunnels and the addition of the blanket has sent her over the moon, because she loves being covered up. Yesterday she spent some time on the floor outside of the fort, though, at first rolling around just clear of the blanket as you can see and then settling down on the carpet right in front of where I was sitting on the couch. This put her directly in the air flow of the window a/c, however, and eventually she got too cold to stay there. I thought this would have made her get back under the blanket, but Addie took a different tack toward solving the problem.

Sarah's Vacation is Winding Down

We've been very busy while Sarah's been off work, at least by my own recent standards. Her vacation has been quite relaxing for her, but I am going to have to rest up once she returns to work next week. In the meantime, we spent a day just decompressing around the apartment today, which was fine because it was kind of miserable outside and really not worthy of getting out into the world.

The bronze-medal-winning women's soccer team
credit: Paul Hackett/Reuters

I watched quite a bit of the Olympics today for the first time in several days and it was at times quite invigorating but mostly...it was frustrating, mainly due to the erratic (to put it kindly) coverage of the CTV-headed consortium this year. I did manage to suck it up and watch the last half hour or so of the the bronze medal game in Women's Soccer, so I got to enjoy the amazing finish when Diana Matheson scored the match's only goal with a few seconds left in extra time. I also watched Tonya Verbeek come away with a silver in Freestyle Wrestling in the early afternoon; the odd thing about this is that the bronze medal, even though I really hate soccer, felt so much better than the silver because Canada had to win their last game to get the bronze whereas Verbeek had to lose in the finals to gain the silver. Sometimes sports can be extraordinarily cruel in this way.

You'll Never Guess Where We Went Today*

*...actually, yes, you will.

The Eurasia section is closed until next May when the pandas arrive!

We went to the Zoo! See? I knew you'd guess where we went today. I was being ironic in the title. Sarah is nearing the end of her stayc...er, her holidays in which we don't leave the city, and I promised that we would go to the Zoo together before she returned to work. When we got up this morning we checked the weather for the rest of the week and realized that the window was rapidly closing for me to keep my promise, so late this morning we headed up to the Rouge Valley...with the obligatory stop at Timmy's first, of course. It was a sweltering day and I wondered if it might cause some of the animals to be having a "siesta" once we got there. I needn't have worried, apparently. I wonder if they've just had time to get used to the extreme heat because it has been omnipresent since about May this year.

Awenda 2012 - Day Three - Chippy Party Time

Sarah and her "students"

Sarah and I got up fairly early on Sunday morning in order to cram as much fun as possible into the day, the last we would spend with the Ramendas on this trip. Kristen was the first of her family up and she hung out with us for a while until the rest of her family joined her. We cooked the last of our bacon and fried up some more eggs, then popped over to our friends' site to see what their plans were for the day. The kids wanted to do some soapstone carving and we knew that their time would be tight because they needed to be off their site before 2PM, so Sarah and I offered to take the three over to the amphitheatre area while their folks packed up to leave. This is not an area of expertise for me to say the least, but Sarah - being a sculptor and former art teacher - was a huge help to the kids as they worked on their shark, turtle and bear paw (which Erin later turned into a bird, from what I understand). There were a few other people there but it certainly wasn't crowded. If you didn't want to carve the soapstone you could make your own canoe paddle, but I didn't see anyone doing that while we were there. That would have been my preference had I felt compelled to do something.

Back Home in Body but not Spirit - Awenda Day One

Not our plates...but they should be

Sarah and I got back home from Awenda yesterday evening, relaxed but utterly exhausted. We spent a good chunk of our time away playing with some pretty energetic young folk (our friends, the Ramendas, met us up there, replete with their brood consisting of one nearly-13- and one nearly-11-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy), which will go a long way toward explaining our exhaustion. Add to that the overwhelming heat (thankfully our campsite was in the shade about 90% of the time), the overnight rain on Sunday which caused some issues with our tear down, and the leaking mattress which, in all honesty, we likely would have been better off avoiding altogether and sleeping on the ground. It reached 36 degrees in Penetang yesterday afternoon, about the time we were sitting in the "World Famous Dock Lunch" beside Discovery Harbour, trying to find an appetite to fuel up before driving home. But I'm getting ahead of myself: I have enough material here for one blog post for each day we were away so you'll have to wait until week's end for the story of the drive home.

Hot Enough for Ya?

The sun was angry that day, my friends...

It's stupid hot in Toronto today. It was over 30C before 10AM and eventually reached 35C in the early afternoon, refusing to budge from that mark for several hours. If you didn't go outside, you likely still had a pretty good idea of how hot it was if you checked Twitter, Faceboook or any news sites, listened to the radio, watched local news, or just tried to look out of your window. I had to go out: we were out of beer. Had we been out of, say, food there's no way I would have gone outside. And when I did go out - brief as it was - I felt like I was asphyxiating, slowly. Sarah said it felt like she was "standing behind the hot exhaust of a car". Yes, it was that hot here. So I've decided to do something a little different with my blog today, because you know the old saying: "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it."

Well, I'm doing something about it. I'm going to tell you all about a trip to Minden, Ontario that Sarah and I took in February of 2007. In the winter. With snow and everything. I hope you enjoy it.