Fancy Pants Lucia: Oh Nature Center

This Past weekend I had to spend a little time in our Nature Center helping kids hold snakes, birds, guinea pigs, bunnies etc... Not really my favorite job at camp, but it's always an adventure.

There was 10 minutes until the Nature Center would be open for business. We generally keep it locked so people cant just go in there on their own. Unfortunately one of our staff neglected to lock the door this particular day. I walked by and a crew of screaming kids ran up to tell me that there were dead baby guinea pigs all over the floor. I quickly got everyone out of the Nature Center to assess the situation, hoping it was not as bad as it sounded.

I walked in looked around and sure enough there are 6 new born babies crawling around on the floor. I picked them up and put them in a container, I looked around and tried to figure out where they came from. One of the guinea pig cages was empty so I thought perhaps the mom got out and might be around somewhere. Jenn and I searched and searched and found nothing. Jenn and I are from larger cities and we don't have a ton of experience with new born animals, it didn't occur to us that guinea pigs rarely have litters larger than 3. One of our other staff members came in and informed us they were actually baby bunnies, that was the point where everything made sense. First time bunny moms aren't always the best parents, she just threw them out of her nest right on the floor. We put them back in the cage with her and put some of her hair around them to make them smell a little more rabbit like, and she eventually decided to take care and feed them.

Here is a picture from their first photo shoot. They are 2 days old here and they do look more like bunnies.

I thought I would share some of my other nature center friends with you. All of these pics are taken with my phone so forgive the blurriness. This is Gizmo the sweetest little bird in the world who only likes you if no one else is around.