New York Wildlife Rescue: Coon Release

Another weekend of getting ready for winter. The new roof on the office will hopefully be put on this week. I think that we are getting to the point that it could snow and we are ready. This weekend, I had a bunch of volunteers from the SUNY Wildlife program. I love the students from SUNY COBY. They have helped me out so much, I definately wouldn't be as prepared for winter without their help. Stephanie Parsons is the ring leader, she often gets students to come over and volunteer that do not even have to fill community service requirements for a class. Thanks Stephanie. This weekend, we got more "things" put away. We wrestled the snowblower out and got that mounted on the tractor. The only thing that I am worried about is getting the roof put back on the office and I think that we have that ball rolling now. I realized today that I never put any photos up from the day that we released the raccoons a month ago.
It was actually HWeen day, Eric Brown came a long to take some photos. Daily volunteer Bruce Bartels came along to check it out as well. Last year, we had some small minded people try to figure out where I had released our coons by the slideshow on our website. I love the slideshow that Gayle did last year and we left it up even though some people thought that it would be a good place to go coon hunting. What goes around, comes around, bad karma. This year, the batch of coons that we let go on Hween was in a posted secure spot. I was very pleased with the release. The area has lots of running water. I also kept these coons longer than I normally do so they were bigger and better equipped to defend themselves. There was also millions of acorns covering the floor of the forest. I feed our coons lots of things that they will need to find in the wild to survive. They knew what the acorns were and were not in any hurry to explore once released because they were too busy sitting around feeding their faces. Gayle will post the photos for you to enjoy. Releasing the coons is always a mixed blessing for me. They are so needy and labor intensive that I love seeing them get released. It is tough for me because some of these coons Ive raised since they were the size of newborn kittens. I always get pretty emotional watching them wander off into the woods.
reminder this friday night is Miracle On Main Street in Middleburgh. The 3 wise owls and I will be downtown. I will also have our nesting boxes there as a fundraiser while supplies last (see our previous post about this). Have a great week everyone. WES