Animals I Work With - Coyote

Jill wrote:

Some more salamanders! We have two species of mole salamanders, and the hardest ones to get photos of are these, the Marbled Salamanders (Ambystoma opacum).

We have two probably females, Bubbles and Bean. Males and females are sexually dimorphic, but it's pretty subtle. Male markings are white and female markings are silver or gray.

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Marbled salamanders are not very active. They spend up to 85% of their lives in their burrows, and are mostly nocturnal when they do come out, so really very bad exhibit animals. Our exhibits have half tunnels against the glass, and one of them (Bubbles) lives in there most of the time, but Bean is always buried. These photos were taken while they were out being weighed, because otherwise we do not have any media of them.

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I've read the last few posts here (read nearly all of them) and thought I had commented but seen that I didn't. - the snakes and turtles and otters and weasel! heart melting beauties:)
I really appreciate you sharing how amazingly wonderful and characterful all these special little beings are that you work with Jill! Thank you!
Your days must be filled with so much joy

I really love the first 2 pics of the very photogenic Bubbles and Bean!
they have such huge black shiny bright eyes and I love their patterns

and then the last couple pics of Kudzu - cannot say how much personality she has! She literally glows! plus she has the most gorgeous appearance, with such big big shiny eyes
I also love the photo of her peering out by her blue station. Sooo cute!

It's a real pleasure to read these fascinating and incredibly informative posts about such special little characters that you work with Jill. The photos are superb and with the background info on their stories and how so loved and very well they are looked after - I feel like I am there too, meeting them and getting to know them:D

Do their homes have their names and their histories/stories displayed there for all to see ?

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

I have been busy and have missed so many posts! All of these turtles are so great, I like the cheeky Linus and Button the most! I looked up my state reptile (as I knew most had them but never learned mine...) thinking it would be the rubber boa or something neat... turns out my great state only has a representative amphibian coincidentally. The Idaho Giant Salamander. Now I can tick that off with the Appaloosa, Hagerman Horse, Mountain Blue Bird, etc. as my state's official representatives.

I missed this earlier, but that's a very cool state amphibian! I agree that the rubber boa would be an awesome reptile choice. I don't think most people realize there is a boa in Idaho.

sunny wrote:

I've read the last few posts here (read nearly all of them) and thought I had commented but seen that I didn't. - the snakes and turtles and otters and weasel! heart melting beauties:)
I really appreciate you sharing how amazingly wonderful and characterful all these special little beings are that you work with Jill! Thank you!
Your days must be filled with so much joy

I really love the first 2 pics of the very photogenic Bubbles and Bean!
they have such huge black shiny bright eyes and I love their patterns

and then the last couple pics of Kudzu - cannot say how much personality she has! She literally glows! plus she has the most gorgeous appearance, with such big big shiny eyes
I also love the photo of her peering out by her blue station. Sooo cute!

It's a real pleasure to read these fascinating and incredibly informative posts about such special little characters that you work with Jill. The photos are superb and with the background info on their stories and how so loved and very well they are looked after - I feel like I am there too, meeting them and getting to know them:D

Do their homes have their names and their histories/stories displayed there for all to see ?

Thank you so much! I think they are amazing little critters as well! We do not share specific information at their habitat, because you never know when a new animal will come in or an old animal will be gone, and it would involve a lot of sign updates. However, we do have a lot of "Meet the Animal" stuff on our Facebook page (we are WNC Nature Center if anyone is curious to follow ) so many guests do know the animals personally!

Our "flagship" animal in the herp building is also a salamander - North America's largest salamander, and third largest in the world. Who doesn't love a hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis)?

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We feature an Eastern Hellbender, native to this region, rather than the critically endangered Ozark Hellbender. However, both populations are in steep decline and the Eastern is probably just as threatened as the Ozark, but population studies are difficult. I was on a survey once, and after many hours out in the river all day, we found a total of two. So it is very hard to know how many there are and where they are!

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Our hellbender is Meatloaf. Unknown sex, but we call him a male. He was brought to us by some local fishermen who caught him when he was a subadult, so he is estimated to be around 16 years old. Hellbenders can live a very long time. 30 years is generally thought to be a high end, but given the really long lives of the other giant salamander species, it might be much longer.

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Hellbenders are also known as snot otters, mud puppies, water dogs, hell cat, grampus, and Alleghany alligator - and so many more colloquial names. The origin of the name "hellbender" is up for debate, but generally said to be from the saying "a creature so ugly, it must be from Hell and bent on returning." This is his adorable face as well as a piece of trout, part of his diet. Hellbender eyes are tiny and mostly useless, but they have photosensitive cells in their skin that allow them to tell light from dark, and they are extremely sensitive to chemical signals in the water. They'll eat just about anything, including snakes and other hellbenders, but prefer crayfish and other small aquatic creatures. They live under large rocks as adults and wait in ambush for prey to come along. Hellbenders will stay in the same 'home' for many years, which allows surveys to be done by installing manmade dens that the hellbenders will inhabit.

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Meatloaf is about as large as any Eastern hellbender is going to get, unlike the Japanese and Chinese giant salamanders that can read 6+ feet. He's about 2500 grams (4.5 pounds) and maybe two foot long (hard to get a length measurement on him). This is him in his weighing tub. You can see how he got the name Meatloaf.

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Aww- Meatloaf is awesome!

An overdue update! Some things have changed since I posted last, new animals in and a few have passed, unfortunately. To finish off our salamanders, though, here are our current Eastern Red Spotted Newts (Notophthalmus viridescens)

This is Alex, a female who was surrendered to us by someone keeping her as a pet. She is 16 years old.
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Newts are a type of salamander which has four different life stages instead of three: egg, larvae, eft, and adult. The eft stage is terrestrial and lasts anywhere from a couple years to many. We do not have any efts in our collection, only adults, but one of our previous newts was an adult that never fully transitioned to aquatic but lived somewhere between the two.

This is Olivia, another female. She was collected from our exhibit pond outside. She is estimated to be around 4 years old.
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Wayne is our male. He is much smaller than the females, despite being probably about the same age of Olivia, which is standard sexual dimorphism. Males also have flatter and wider (vertically) tails than females.
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You have an awesome job Jill

Very wonderful

Thank you, I think it is a pretty cool job as well! :)

Before moving out into the rest of the park where the mammals and birds are, I wanted to update with the animals that have been added to the groups already posted since then. Our education department merged with our regular collection, which meant several animals came to live in my area.

Ginger and Caramel are corn snakes. Ginger was a surrendered pet and Caramel is Kettle's brother from the same clutch. Ginger is a much bolder coloration than the males, closer to an "okeetee" morph.
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Aglet and Zipper are rough green snakes. Spazz and Stubs unfortunately passed, and these two are the new residents. We do not know sexes or ages on them, but we do not think they are very old. They are wilder than Spazz and Stubs and will not eat from the tongs.
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Slug is an American Toad who moved in with Neville. He is a male that was rescued as a toadlet from the gray wolf water dish.
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Natalie and Nora are Carolina Green Anoles. Nancy passed, and another facility had females they were trying to find placement for, so we took two. They mother and daughter, and Nora (the mother) is seven years old.
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Lichen is a gray tree frog female. She is our largest tree frog and has a damaged eye, which is why she is with us. Raised as an educational animal, she is also the most personable. She is so food motivated that she lunges at us whenever we open the door because she can't see very well and hopes all movement is food.
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Two animals that were not educational animals are our newest box turtles. They were found still in egg on a construction site when their nest was disturbed. Only two were recovered, and one shell had been damaged. That turtle hatched earlier than it ought to have, and the other hatched a week later. The person who found them brought them to us, and we are "head starting" them for release when they are two years old. They are known only as Yellow Dot and Green Dot (identified by a dot of color on their shell). We do not know sexes and probably won't before they are released. They were hatched in September 2022.
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Okay, now we move into the rest of the park where I do not work daily. There are four areas of the park: small mammal/aviary, hoofstock/farmyard, predator, and my area. I have worked all these areas at one point, but when the full time herp position came open, I jumped on that.

Also, these are not my photos from here on out! I haven't worked directly in these areas in several years, so my photos are outdated. I have pulled these from our social media and other keepers.

First off, we'll visit the small mammals and aviary, since we have already covered otters. The otters are tangentially part of this string, cared for by both myself and the small mammal keeper on different days.

We also have one of our most popular animals, the red pandas (Ailurus fulgens). You might ask, didn't you say this was a North Carolina native zoo? And you are correct. The way we skirted this was because fossils of the ancient relative of the red panda, the Bristol's panda, were found in the Appalachian mountains. So we have an umbrella category of "ancient Appalachia" in order to have a few exotics. It's cheating a little, haha.

Leafa is our female. She is 13 years old and moved here from Chicago and was born and raised under human care. She has lived in many different facilities all over the US and had four litters as a member of the Species Survival Plan breeding program. She is retired here with us.
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Phoenix came with Leafa, and they have been a breeding pair several times in the past. He is fourteen years old and has lived with Leafa most of his life.
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These are the first red pandas we've ever had. We built them an exhibit in 2018. We have found red pandas to be charming animals to work wit, but also very finicky creatures. Because their native climate does not match ours, they have an air conditioned interior space they have access to in warm weather. They sleep most of the day and their favorite snack is grapes. We feed them primarily bamboo we grow on the grounds as well as a specially formulated leaf eater biscuit diet.
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Most of our animals are trained to participate willingly in their own welfare, including veterinary exams, as much as possible. This means training for voluntary scale behavior (as you see Phoenix doing here) as well as injections, open mouth, touch, and other behavior that allows us to get a look at them without use of anesthesia unless necessary. The keeper pictured here is not me but one of our primary trainers. Since I work with herps, I do much less training than the mammal keepers. She is training for the target behavior here.
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so adorable Leafa and Phoenix!

Oh, aren't red pandas just so fun to work with! I've worked with them a little bit in the past and they've always been one of my favorites to interact with

endogenylove wrote:

Oh, aren't red pandas just so fun to work with! I've worked with them a little bit in the past and they've always been one of my favorites to interact with

That's very cool! They are very neat animals. I'm not up there with them very often, but I do enjoy them when I'm there.

Our next small mammal is another red one, the Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes). We have two red foxes, a male and a female. Both live with us because they had legs amputated when they were very young. They are not related, but are close to the same age and were rescued from the wild with their injuries. Because they were born in the wild, they keep their distance from us and it takes a while to gain their trust. Since I never work up there hardly, they do not know or trust me, ha! I only have a few pictures that I stole off social media. They are hard to get photos of because they are shy.

Red Foxes are not considered true natives to western North Carolina, but naturalized. It is theorized that they moved across the land bridge into North America, but also that they may have been brought over by European settlers.

Bonita is the female. She is missing one of her hind legs. She is also the bravest of the two.
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Samson is missing one of his front legs and is much shyer, preferring to stay in his den box much of the day and nap.
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This is Samson when he was a baby, when he was rescued. You can see his injured front leg. One of them lost their leg to a dog attack and the other to a trap, but I am not sure which one was which.
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I did used to work with the red foxes, but the red foxes I worked with have since passed on. Here are some photos of my favorite old man, Toby, when he was quite old and his ear tips had started to fold due to cartilage degeneration.
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We also have Gray Foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). They are our only true native fox, and excellent climbers, with rotating wrists that allow them to scale trees like a cat. Our two foxes are brothers Hunter and Remi, and I used to work with them, too. They were born in a zoo, so they are very comfortable with people.
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Hunter (top) has darker legs than Remi (bottom two), but you can also tell them apart by Remi's attitude--he's the boss!
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Remi doing a climb
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Hunter in the snow
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I wish I had photos of the gray foxes here before these two on this computer, because Fred the male had the cutest pink nose!! [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Wonderful photos of the foxes!!I used to work with Red foxes many years ago when I worked in a large veterinary/wildlife charity here in the UK.It was in London but foxes are very common urban animals in the UK.We use to assess them and decide if the were suitable for re-release or needed to go to rehabilitation,or sadly if they were severely injured then we had to euthanase them.
The Grey foxes are stunning.I have a wonderful painting of a Grey fox by an American artist-sadly would have to check who the artist is-I got it many years ago when visiting friends in West Virginia.

Taos wrote:

Wonderful photos of the foxes!!I used to work with Red foxes many years ago when I worked in a large veterinary/wildlife charity here in the UK.It was in London but foxes are very common urban animals in the UK.We use to assess them and decide if the were suitable for re-release or needed to go to rehabilitation,or sadly if they were severely injured then we had to euthanase them.

What good work and a neat experience that must have been. Wildlife rehabilitation is something I have only done just a very, very little bit. It's hard work!! I'll never forget sitting and picking maggots out of a (living) fawn's wound. (He was so precious, though. Partially piebald--he had one white foot with a pink hoof. I hope he is doing well now! He would be about 12 years old!)

aw my comment got eaten by the internet gods...

I "rescued" a tiger salamanded as a teen. It fell in a window well during a terrible drought. It was a juvenile, couldn't ID what species it was. None of my local rescue centers would take him. It was almost winter, so I set up a small terrarium in our basement, let him hibernate, and once water levels got better in the spring I released him in a nearby creek rather than return him to the nearby canal he likely came from. I hope he did alright.

The Pandas are awesome! I remember learning a bit about them in college. We once had a bamboo forest that stretched all the way from Asia, across the land bridge, and down to Florida! Now we find fossil teeth now and then.

The foxes of course are gorgeous. I know that medically speaking, its harder for a quadruped to lose a front limb rather than a hind, because of how weight distributes. I wonder if (besides his natural personality) that may be why Samson is more skittish than Bonita. He has a harder time maneuvering than she does...

Beautiful foxes, survivors and natives alike

When I look at your photos and read your comments, I think that my wife has missed her professional life. What you are doing would have been perfect for her

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

aw my comment got eaten by the internet gods...

Oh no, glad you checked!

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I "rescued" a tiger salamanded as a teen. It fell in a window well during a terrible drought. It was a juvenile, couldn't ID what species it was. None of my local rescue centers would take him. It was almost winter, so I set up a small terrarium in our basement, let him hibernate, and once water levels got better in the spring I released him in a nearby creek rather than return him to the nearby canal he likely came from. I hope he did alright.

I'm sure he did great, thanks to your attention. What a lucky guy that you found him and knew what to do with him! Not many people in the world, however well meaning they were, would probably know the best thing for him would be to leave him alone all winter, haha.

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The Pandas are awesome! I remember learning a bit about them in college. We once had a bamboo forest that stretched all the way from Asia, across the land bridge, and down to Florida! Now we find fossil teeth now and then.

That's how we snuck these guys in our collection. "Native" . . . at one point . . .

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The foxes of course are gorgeous. I know that medically speaking, its harder for a quadruped to lose a front limb rather than a hind, because of how weight distributes. I wonder if (besides his natural personality) that may be why Samson is more skittish than Bonita. He has a harder time maneuvering than she does...

It could be! I don't know them well enough but seeing them move, Bonita's gait looks weirder but is less "hoppy" than Samson's, possibly a little easier for her to manage. Both of them are likely to develop joint issues as they age, unfortunately, just due to the stress placed on their skeletons in weird ways.

Kikimalou wrote:

Beautiful foxes, survivors and natives alike

When I look at your photos and read your comments, I think that my wife has missed her professional life.  What you are doing would have been perfect for her

Aw, you know, I ALMOST missed it as my calling, to be honest. I kind of stumbled into it accidentally. As a kid, the idea of being a zookeeper was always appealing but never even occurred to me as something you could study and learn to do. I don't know where I thought zookeepers came from, but I certainly never thought I could just . . .learn to be one. It was only because I volunteered for a spell while unemployed in my late 20's that I was like--oh! Hopefully animals have still been a part of her life, even if not professionally.

I figure I should make the next animal update about our wolves, considering our exciting news of nine puppies!

We currently have eleven American red wolves (Canis rufus). Nine of those were born on April 28 and you can read more about that [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]! Our adults are Gloria and Oak, first time parents, who have only lived with us since last year.
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We are one of 49 facilities in the US with red wolves, which means we are a part of the AZA and US Fish and Wildlife SAFE program. Every year, the SAFE coordinators decide if the wolves under human care need to be moved or not--basically the wolves are always being rotated to facilitate breeding or other needs. We don't own our wolves, they are on loan from the US Fish and Wildlife. We've had many different pairs and family units through the years, and total of 22 pups born in 1996, including Mayo, the pup here, born on Cinco de Mayo in 2009! She was the only puppy in that litter, and she went on to have a litter here as well.
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Red wolves are one of the world's most endangered canids. Their range was historically the south and south east United States, basically where the gray wolves left off, and is now restricted (in the wild) to only 17 individuals on the coast of North Carolina. This is Phoenix, a wolf no longer with us but who fathered the last pups in 2014. He was one of the most handsome red wolves I've ever seen!
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We also have gray wolves (Canis lupus). They are considered historically native to the mountains of North Carolina, but were extirpated in the 1800s. Our gray wolves are a male and female, but are siblings and are not a breeding pair (both are neutered). Nova (right) is the female and is the classic "grizzled" color and Wayah is the male, born black and graying out to silver like many black wolves do. They are now nine years old.
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Wayah and Nova came as pups from a gray wolf breeding facility in Washington (I think). You can see how dark Wayah was when he was a pup and a younger adult!

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Compared to Wayah now:
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They are very acclimated to people and have never lived in the wild, so we can work in with them, but we still are very careful around them. Only one or two of our keepers have a relationship that allows them to do any hands on now that they are adults, and we always have spotters if we are working in the habitat. I used to work with them as a swing keeper, so just on the weekends, and I never quite established the relationship that their primary keepers had. I could work in with them and they didn't mind, and I was even able to do some training with them, but I found them to be some of the most difficult animals to work with because they are so shy, so smart, and so suspicious. Getting them to shift through the correct doors when you need to is almost impossible some days, and you have to have a lot of patience.
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Also, addendum to the fox post, great news I found a picture of Fred's pink nose. Fred and Grace were the old gray foxes I started working with. Fred's nose was black when he was born, but gradually lost pigment until it was almost entirely pink. This is called a "dudley nose" on dogs or nasal depigmentation and might be a form of vitiligo.

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Wonderful,wonderful wolves!!!!!!

Nice, very nice

Wonderful job and beautiful pictures of your canines