Fall is Here!
While the temperature outside is still hot, the seasons are changing here at Animal Wonders. Summer camp shows are ending, Cas the Arctic Fox is starting to get tinges of white in his grey summer coat, and our garden is reaching its end, providing a good harvest for the animals' diets. We had a very exciting summer with the addition of a new animal ambassador, baby scorpions (or scorplings), and baby walking stick bugs! Many of our animals got renovations to their habitats as well as the animal compound getting a new look too. It seemed we were always busy out in the community this summer and we couldn't be happier!


What We've Been Doing

Animal Wonders had a great summer in the Missoula community! Our schedule was packed with shows. We kept busy bringing the animal ambassadors to several summer camps. It's great to be able to continue educating kids even while school is out! We also kept western Montanans educated and entertained with our open to the public show including. Our biggest events were River City Roots Festival in Missoula and Riverfest in Hamilton where Daisy the 7-foot Red Tailed Boa got a chance to amaze the audience. The ever more popular SciShow, a Youtube show dedicated to educating the public on science based topics, has continued to invite us back too. Jessi has been bringing in the animal ambassadors to discuss their unique adaptations and to share them with entire world! No really, the entire world! We've decided to venture out and create our own YouTube channel to expand our reach internationally; free education for all! Join us on our adventure and subscribe (it's free) to our channel to see all of our videos! Here's the link!

In between all of our outings we were able to get some improvements made in the animal compound. The Mammal Room had its renovations with a new flooring for the porcupine, cavies, and foxes, and we built a new enclosure to house our newest animal ambassador: Lollipop the Striped Skunk! The Bird Room looks spiffy with new enclosures for our feathered friends. and to top it all off our Diet Prep room has a completely new look: brand new linoleum flooring, newly built and freshly painted walls, tile back splash, and the installation of shelving units to provide for more storage as we continue to expand!


Future Plans

We have been diligently working on making the expansion of Chili Pepper the Patagonian Cavy and Patches the Guinea Pig's habitat a reality. Some of our amazing volunteers spent an entire day clearing a space behind the compound where the planned expansion will go. We hope to provide our cavies with an outdoor dirt floored enclosure in addition to the current indoor habitat. Cavies are natural burrowers and we would love to provide Chili Pepper and Patches more opportunities to do what they love - dig! If you would like to help make this project a reality please visit our donation page and give any amount you can spare. Any amount helps and is greatly appreciated!


Fundraiser!

Liquid Planet is sponsoring a fundraiser for Animal Wonders throughout the month of September. Lollipop invites you try her delicious specialty drink: the Striped Mocha. A blend of dark and white chocolate swirled with espresso is a delicious way to start your morning, and what's more is that $1 of every Striped Mocha sold during the month of September will go to support Lollipop and the other animal ambassadors. Here at Animal Wonders, every cent goes to providing the best care to the animals and to reaching out to share them with the community. This is a great way to help!

Some photos of the goings on at Animal Wonders on a typical day. Work, work, work.... looks like fun to me!

I think we've made some animal science friends. Hank asked us back for more animal interviews on YouTube's SciShow Talk Show. I love meeting other animal enthusiasts and it's great getting to know people with other animal related interests like Emily Graslie and her knowledge of skeletons. I wonder what goes through her mind when she sees a legless lizard or other animal with unique adaptations to their skeleton. Probably not the same thing that goes through my mind.

Again, we had so much fun and love being able to share these amazing animals with subscribers across the world! Thank you SciShow!

Here's episodes 3,4, and 5

Quigley the Brush Tailed Bettong
Kemosabe the Prehensile Tailed Porcupine
Blueberry the Blue Tongued Skink

We were asked to bring some animals onto a YouTube talk show called SciShow. we were expecting to be behind the scenes wrangling the critters while the talk show host did his thing in front of the camera. Things got a little weird when they put a mic on me and had me sit at the table with the host....

That's when it occurred to me that not only would I not be "behind the scenes" I would in fact be talking and wrangling the animals and making sure I didn't look really stupid on camera all at the same time. I guess it was a good thing I didn't know that SciShow has about 500,000 followers or I might have been just a bit nervous. As it turned out, we had a lot of fun with the host, Hank, and his special guests. Here's a tiny snippet of video from the shoot.

To see more of our appearances check out the SciShow channel on YouTube or follow these links to see the first 2 episodes.
Cas the Arctic Fox
Professor Claw the Emperor Scorpion