It’s so different to have a fox right near you instead of on video. You can see their intelligence. – Shay
In the eighth post from A Summer of Stories, I had an opportunity to chat with Shay, 13, and her mum, Vadette, about her lifelong love of animals and her adventure earlier this summer working with animals at a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre. You can read the previous posts from the series here.
I really appreciated them taking the time to fill me in on so many great details and Shay was discussing her time there with such passion and speed that even with her slowing down, I couldn’t capture it all. When describing some of her experiences, she quickly referenced other animal facts – it was fascinating to hear the base of information she’s picked up over the years from her own interest.
To provide a bit of background, Vadette talked about the reactions to animals that Shay had, even as a very young child. From the time she was a baby, she was fascinated by animals and Vadette remembers that at 18 months of age, she would comfortably get nose to nose with dogs and was already comfortable around large animals like horses. She has been drawn to both animals themselves as well as information about animals for years.
Vadette was thrilled that Shay was able to go to Soper Creek Wildlife Rescue camp this year as a teen to be able to be part of actually working with and for the animals. She loves the idea of supporting a place that has played such a substantial role in helping animals and supporting wildlife.
Shay was thrilled too. She described with enthusiasm the different opportunities to work with animals that are being rehabilitated as well as animals that need to stay there permanently. She had full and busy days repairing and making enclosures for animal enclosures. She and the other teens didn’t build the outer frames, but reinforced the structures with sticks and rocks. She described how much she enjoyed setting up the animal pens, sometimes taking sticks in to set up. Different animals use them for different purposes. “Danny” the weasel used them for climbing, the quails used them for shelter and the foxes used them for play. She thought the cutest thing was that the porcupines would sit on the bench of a mini picnic table when they put watermelon out and munch away:). I really wish I could see that!
What I noticed kept coming up naturally in Shay’s conversation was how much appreciation she had developed for the individual personalities and situations of the animals. I heard about how grumpy “Danny the weasel” was, how shy the skunks were, the playfulness of many of the foxes and the cravings for certain foods the rescued coyotes had from having been fed such a strange and inappropriate diet. They had been kept as pets somewhere prior to being rescued. She loved them all – the blind possum, “Pancake the Badger,” the baby skunks that she couldn’t touch because they were being rehabilitated. She was a bit blown away by the smelliness of the baby ducks and found their droppings to be much grosser than expected. Last but not least was Ruby, her favourite fox😊.
There was an essence of wisdom and knowledge woven throughout our conversation as she spoke about the characteristics of different species, habitats, diets and ethical issues such as people using skunks as scarves and the sad situation of fox farms. She met arctic foxes that had been in fox farms and noted they were, “kind of beaten up, not as majestic as a regular arctic fox.” It was interesting to her how thin and bony foxes actually are in general and that people often perceive their size differently because of their fur.
She described her experience so positively and as an opportunity for growth and learning. She explained, “I’ve always loved animals but had been getting more interested in the Arts lately. This time at the wildlife rescue inspired me toward hands on work with animals or wildlife research.” Her respect for animals was evident throughout our conversation. At one point, almost spontaneously, she reverently said, “It’s so different to have a fox right near you instead of on video. You can see their intelligence.”
Is there anything that could have made the experience better? Likely only if there had been even more reptiles. Shay explained, “I love reptiles but I still really appreciated the mammals.” She did have a chance to interact with some reptiles, including a type that is one of her favourites, the hog-nosed snake. Not surprisingly, it has a distinct snout. Shay mentioned that its “bark is worse than its bite,” so to speak, explaining that it makes quite a hissing sound but is not a particularly dangerous snake. She also spent some time with a gray rat snake, which she says is more commonly known as a Texas Gray Rat Snake.
Shay is able to get a bit of a reptile fix at home because she does have her own gecko. His name is Rex which she explained means “king” in Latin. The inspiration for his name came from both the character in the movie Toy Story as well as the Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur. She described her gecko as a “starter” reptile, meaning that he is reasonably straightforward to care for. Apparently there are also reptiles that are considered “mid” reptiles as far as the complexity of managing aggression and taking care of them and then there are ones that would be considered “hard” and would really only be managed by professionals. Something interesting she’s found out is that chameleons might be in the “hard” category, not necessarily because of aggression, but because of being picky eaters and drinkers. Apparently some people have found that chameleons wouldn’t drink still water because they were accustomed to the motion of rainwater.
In her own words, Shay summarized her thoughts about having this opportunity come about this summer:
Summer had been a little boring. I already did (and still do) not like summer. Yes, I had the pool but not talking to a person my age was not the best and I’m not the most social person. But when my mom told me that my dream camp that I have wanted to go to for a few years was open and had spots, it made me very excited. Since I was 13, I had a chance to work in the Rehab part of camp with the animals at Soper Creek. This is not a normal camp like the ones from when I was younger. We did work that normal staff do. While the little kids did regular camp stuff like games, art etc., we fed and cleaned most of the time, but it was fun for me. There were the Rehab animals which will most likely be released into the wild. The area they were kept in was in the forest. The little kids were not allowed there since those animals liked the quiet. Then there were the ones who live there all year round to live their happy, little lives. We mostly worked with the Rehab animals in the forest. In the Rehab, there were a few animals who stayed, like the roosters; most of the staff did not know why they were there. They were so loud you could hear them all the way at the entrance. I loved that all the animals had stories like Freddy the arctic fox who was rescued from a fox farm. Fox farms are farms where the fox lives for a year and then they unfortunately kill the fox and use the fur for big companies for coats and scarfs. There was the main building that has all the animals that are too weak or need too much special care to be in an outside enclosure. There are too many animals and things to write in a small paragraph but to let you know, Soper Creek took many steps to keep all the kids safe such as taking our temperature every morning. The staff were very kind to everyone and that it was an amazing experience.
Thank you, Shay, for sharing your experience, knowledge and passion for animals:)!
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Wow, what a great post! Thank you Erin and to Shay for giving so much information and so many animals facts. What a great experience it sounds like this was! The animals are so fortunate to have caring people like yourself available. I very much enjoyed hearing about the various names and personalities of the animals.
Yes, one of my favourite parts was hearing about the names and personalities of the animals:). I learned a lot from my conversation with Shay. Thank you for your comment, Allie.