Feathered Follies: Episode One

The best adventures for staff here at FortWhyte Alive always seem to happen right at the end of the work day.

I was due for an adventure.  My days had been ending far too normally of late - I was getting used to shutting down and heading home.

Yesterday, my number came up!

As I drove down Sam Fabro Way to lock our front gate, I passed FortWhyte Farms chicken pasture.  The pastured poultry live in large, moveable pens, called chicken tractors.  However, the poultry were not so much pastured as...everywhere...including outside the knee-high electric fence in place to keep out animals like weasels.

I pulled my vehicle over, and quickly took stock of the situation.

(One could even say I took "chicken stock" of the situation, if one was fond of puns..  Not being that person, I won't...but one could say it if one was so inclined.)


White meat birds mingled with golden laying hens.  A rooster was chasing hens, panicking them, and often as not causing the hens to take a short-hop flight, and land outside of their safety fence.

Stepping out of my vehicle and hopping the ditch, I realized that though I'm not a worker on the farm, this was my problem.  Everyone else was home for the day - judging by the food and water supply, the farm had set the chickens up to be self-sufficient for the long weekend.  I had to at least find some way of getting the chickens back inside their safety fence for the night.  After all, what if a mink, skunk or a...

WEASEL!!!*

There it was!  Fifteen yards from where I'd crossed the ditch, a long-tailed weasel popped up!  It crawled to the edge of the safety fence, and stood on it's hing legs to get a better view of its prospective dinner.

I ran towards the weasel.  It dropped to all fours, and slithered back into the well-vegetated ditch.  The instant I turned my back, it poked its head out of cover, scanning for an errant chicken close enough to catch.  I yelled, it hid.  We played this game for a few minutes. More and more chickens hopped the fence into the danger zone.

I had a multi-tool.  I had a first-aid kit; I wasn't sure how it might help, but there it was, on my belt.  I had tried calling farm staff as soon as I saw what was going on, and received no answer, so my phone was not very much help.  I had my trusty FortWhyte Alive ball cap.

I had escaped chickens.  I had a hungry weasel watching the escaped chickens.

It's been said that heroes are not born, they're made.  I tend to think they're not made, they're called.

An agricultural adventure was calling.  Collect.  I accepted the charges, and waded into the clucking, feather-flying, dropping-slicked whirlwind.  Where was this going to end up?  The only thing I knew for sure:  I was not going to lose a chicken to the weasel.

Does Barret slip on chicken poop?  Does the hungry weasel have a chicken dinner?  Is the first aid kit actually useful?
 
Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of Feathered Follies.

* This weasel image is courtesy of the US National Park Service, and is in the public domain.  The author acknowledges that though this is a fine-lookin' weasel, it is not the actual weasel from the story.  This image was used without the weasel's permission.

Saving Space For Making Tracks

10 am, Friday, December 4th: Having just met a school group and introduced their volunteer leaders, I sat down at my desk to check my morning crop of emails.

Then, the phone rang.

Somehow, when I started at FortWhyte, I chose the desk next to the Education Team's communanal telephone.  Perhaps it was a natural penchant for answering inquiries...perhaps it was an expression of my need to be connected to people...perhaps it was the proximity to the coffee station...whatever the reason, I usually answer the phone.

So, I did, as is my custom.

It was my colleague Melanie, calling from her cel. I immediately thought some problem had befallen her school tour.

Melanie did not have an emergency.  She had tracks in the freshly-fallen snow.

She wasn't quite sure what kind of animal had left the tracks - and had to lead a program.  She could not investigate the tracks.

I was more than happy to do some follow up!

The tracks at first appeared to be in a parallel line.  My first thought was mustelid...some member of the weasel family.

As I got closer, and could see the track pattern and size, I knew my inital guess was wrong.  Way wrong.  These were canid tracks - dog family.

I followed the tracks down a hill behind our Interpretive Centre.  The wind was starting to feel a little cold through my toque (this fall has been too warm, I'm still not acclimatised to cold!) but the quality of the tracks, and the story they told, were worth the chill.

Very little to no sign of coyotes had been seen at FortWhyte Alive for some time.  The official line in the fall had been we had no resident coyotes on site.  I still cannot say if we have resident coyotes, but sometime early in the morning of December 4th, we had two coyotes pass through FortWhyte Alive, very near the Interpretive Centre.

Coyotes have been on the receiving end of some negative attention lately, with a suspicious attack in Cape Breton this fall.  Some people may feel uncomfortable knowing coyotes are in Winnipeg.

I think it's kind of cool.  Coyotes are predators - we must always respect that fact.  They are wild members of the dog family - we need to give them space, and, in a chance encounter, remind them we are the bigger, stronger animal by standing our ground, and not harassing the animals in any way.  They are not cute and cuddly - they are wild.

It is this wildness I find enchanting.  I think it is absolutely amazing that we humans can share Winnipeg with wild animals the size of coyotes.  To me, these tracks are also a reminder of the fragile nature of wild habitat in the City...if we want to continue to have wild species within Winnipeg, we must keep wild spaces healthy.

Wild Spaces = Wild Species.

No Wild Spaces=    (I'm a writer, not a mathematician.  I'm sure you readers, many times more brilliant than I, can figure out the equation.)