This is an extremely large post, and for that I apologize. I hope that the clean breaks help. I wrote two-thirds one day and then the remaining didn't get finished until six days later. I'm quickly (hopefully) relearning how to plan blogposts again. Of course, read any/all/none of wildlife stories as you wish, but my personal favorite is the bunny. I came across a cute overload today that makes me believe the bunny was much less than a week old.
Bucket of worms:
Among the crazy things that have happened over the last year, there have been a series of not-so-hidden attempts at keeping pets, starting with last year's tadpoles who had a happy ending. In August I decided to do more green things, so when I visited the Alworth family, they happily gave me a bucket of redworms for vermicomposting. I've grown up used to recycling and composting, but composting in a small apartment with no yard was a challenge I waited to tackle until I had some time to do research in the summer. I have always been amazed at how much "garbage" I manage to prevent from ending up in the trashcan. Still, I continue to be baffled at how to best take care of worms but since they've managed to live quite happily so far, I'm not too worried.
When I had to move out of my apartment, I tackled my worm bin, which had occupied space under the kitchen island for ten months. This turned out to be much harder and took longer than I'd anticipated, because it was more mud than dirt. I'd noticed the wet problem a couple weeks earlier but hadn't done anything with it (both because I was busy and didn't know quite what I was supposed to do). It was actually fun to spread it out on a plastic sheet on the kitchen floor and pick up clumps, finding a mass of squirming worms on the bottom (they get away from any light as fast as they can since it can kill them). These worms did just fine of a diet consisting mainly of eggshells (which you could still see chunks of) and coffee grounds. The mostly worm-free mud (it was impossible to get them all) I gave to Susan, who was happy to have it for her garden. The worms went north to Colin's new apartment in the bucket they came in many generations earlier.
Orphaned bunny:
Laura and Mom came to pick me up right after winter semester classes ended and we took a car trip to Georgia (this itself should be a separate post). They dropped me off in Bloomington the Sunday before my birthday. The next day, I decided to walk to campus. My internet wasn't working that day and I'd left my netbook cord in the last hotel we'd stayed at, so I was carrying my heavy laptop and it was hot. When I was almost to campus, I noticed something alive, pink, and squirming on the sidewalk. It took me awhile to figure out what it was; I realized it wouldn't survive if I left it, so I picked it up and a closer look at its ears confirmed that it was a very young bunny rabbit. It was less than a week old and I still can't fathom how it got where it was; there were no bushes or covering anywhere near it. Since I didn't have internet at home, I decided to try my luck at the library and pressed on, cupping the bunny in my hands to keep it as warm as I could. No one really seemed to have more than a passing interest in why I was holding my hands like that in front of me.
One of the benefits of being a library student, you get to know the people who work in the university libraries. So I walked up to the main desk and said to a classmate I'd had "Okay, don't freak out, but I have a baby bunny and I have no clue what to do with it." He and another guy cooed over it before suggesting I take it to the zoology department. I walked there but they weren't able to help at all (in fact, the guy who I ultimately talked to that was supposed to help said "oh we can't have those in here, get out" and wouldn't even give any suggestions).
Back at the main library, I looked online (while I hid the bunny in the roll of my shirt on my belly) and found out it's illegal to care for wild animals and very very hard to raise wild baby rabbits. There was an address and phone number for a wildlife rehabilitator so I went home and put the bunny in a box with a warm water bottle and a t-shirt, called the place, and then drove over to drop it off. They said it would have my name (they don't name their animals but distinguish them by the names of the people who bring them) yet it was too early to tell how it was doing. Online, I found out if it squirms, it is not too stressed but it is very easy for them to be stressed and they are very sensitive to it. Sometimes it just rested but many times it would wiggle to get closer to my hand for warmth or to just plain wiggle, especially when I had it in the box. I also know it wasn't severely dehydrated. So I was optimistic. However, I never did call to visit or find out about it; I want to think happy endings.
It was strange; I had very strong desire to protect it when I saw it. I vaguely thought about diseases and whatnot when I picked it up, but they were overwhelmed with what probably is a mothering instinct. And usually I don't find myself overly fond of rabbits. Young ones, like most furry babies, are really cute, but I never thought rabbits were nice and never wanted one as a pet. Also, I'm quite familiar with their notorious ability to breed plenty of offsprings. Even though not all of them make it to adulthood, they still manage to run rampant quite easily. So, while my reactions were not entirely surprising, their intensity was.
Tadpoles, version 2009:
Colin was visiting me the weekend before I went to Georgia and we decided to try our luck at raising tadpoles again. We went back to the same puddle and collected about 12 small ones. It seems really strange that they would be planted there; it's a very barren mud puddle is in a "parking lot" that gets a lot of traffic. We didn't collect any big ones because last year the biggest died very quickly and we figured if we can catch them when they're little we can make sure they're better nourished. Again, we had no clue what species they were; they could have been salamanders, even (http://thelivingclassroom.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/tadpoles-salamanders-tomato-tamato/). Since we (or rather, I) had named most of the ones last year after the seven dwarfs, this year I named them after Disney princesses. It was a fun challenge trying to come up with a dozen princesses, including Mulan and Pocahontas.
Since I was heading on a road trip, Colin took them home for the first couple of weeks. And the results were making him believe he was a horrible tadparent; they kept dying. I still suspect that there was some disease or other uncontrollable factor in play. Colin said, "Maybe we weeded out all the good tadpoles last year." Some of them were still alive when I visited him and took them home, but by Memorial Day weekend, we had one. In fact, there were two when I started north to get Colin on our way to Michigan City but the smaller one died in transit. The last one was the biggest, bigger than any of last year's, earning her the title "Princess Fiona." Her size is the leading clue that they were probably toads instead of treefrogs. But we'll never know because she died while we were at the McBrides' beach condo. Although somewhat discouraged, the emotions weren't as bad as when they first started dying. The whole story and how much was our "fault" will never be known but I, at least, am not completely discouraged from trying it again. I say "fault" because, remember, they were in a very poor location and had an extremely low chance of making it to healthy adulthood in the first place.
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