Lions and tigers and bears...oh, no - wolves and squirrels and bears

July 31 – Happy Birthday Shiloh!  I sent a fat card and her gifts through Amazon so hope she enjoys them tonight when she opens them!

Another great day!  First we did “house” stuff again after breakfast and Bill did his walk.  His allergy vial FINALLY came today.  He’s called about it and found they sent it to the Ocoee allergy office instead to here as he told them.  Geez!

I put a piece of trim wood back up in the bedroom that came off and I did the nasty job of cleaning the flush ball in the toilet and sprayed it with silicone in hopes it shuts properly for a while. I’m thinking it is going to need some parts and someone will have to install those parts, guess who? I worked on repairing my other frog, the small one, that took a leap off the window a few days ago in one of the dastardly rains with wind. This one lost an arm in a bend and it’s very difficult to get it to stay in place long enough for it to set. I looked all around and under the RV to locate the hydraulic pump and reservoir that we need to drain and fill with new fluid for the leveling legs. The joys of RV living!

One of the resident wolves

Another of the painted buffalo

After lunch we went to West Yellowstone again. We stopped at the hardware store for fill dirt for all the Vole holes (they're like rodents with no tail) that are all over our small yard. While there I found replacement grommets for my stove grates & Bill picked up some postcards. We stopped at the post office to mail a few cards & books to my sister, then at the General Store, it's like an old fashion TG&Y store. We only left with more postcards.

Bear

Then we headed to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center.  Timing was everything as we arrived 5 minutes before the scheduled feeding of the Wolves.  There are 3 sets of wolves in different pens and we saw them all.  They were only showing the feeding of one pair.  They lured them in their den and shut them in while they scattered bones, moose poop and red fox urine.  The theory is once they let them back out they will smell those things to make them think they are still in the wild, at least that’s what we thought it was about.

Chattering Squirrels

Then we visited the ground squirrels.  They are cute!  There was a pair laying there chattering to each other and all of a sudden they attacked and very like a ball rolling all over.  Of course I had just turned off the camera so didn’t a photo of the squirrel ball.

They have 8 grizzly bears and rotate them out every day.  Today we saw 3, not sure which 3 as they had photos and the names of the 8 along the fence.  I’m not very adept at matching a bear photo to the bear.  They were very active and were in their private pool and out walking around.  They didn’t pay a bit of attention to us.  They are mostly there because they became attracted to human food and were foraging in trash cans and rather than put them down they came to live at the Discovery Center.

Injured Bald Eagles

There’s also a bird section.  They have bald eagles, a falcon, peregrine, golden eagle, rough legged hawk, and a vulture.  I didn’t take photo of the vulture; they are so nasty and ugly.  All of the birds were there because of injuries and they can no longer survive in the wild.

All in all it was pretty nice.  They have a nice collection of stuffed animals in the main building and lots of information on poaching and bears in Yellowstone.

We checked out the gift shop and felt the love of a giant grizzly.

While Bill walked to the car, I went next door to the shop with the .50 ice cream cones and got 2 for us and he picked me up at the exit door.  I was much better at filling them fuller today!

Then it was drive back the 14 miles to home.  I worked on my frog again and then made tacos for dinner.  Wasn’t in the mood for any fancy cooking and didn’t think Bill wanted to grill.  It was good and we enjoyed the change of pace.

Bill found a shark movie on TV that was a stupid crappy movie!  River sharks, yeah, right!  They advertised the upcoming “Sharknado” movie which I’m sure he’s going to want to see!  Ugh!