|
From the
Director's Desk
August 2010
To those intrepid visitors that managed to make
it up the washed out drive on Saturday, August
7th, we salute your bravery and driving skills!
And your 4-wheel drive vehicles. Severe
thunderstorms over a few weeks managed to put
foot deep ruts in our gravel drive.
Finding someone to come smooth it out proved
fruitless, so we bit the bullet and hired a
grading contractor to re-do ditches and the
entire drive. We are crossing our fingers
that Mother Nature does not send another
downpour any time soon.Tourism has been slow again this summer.
On the up-side, the tours we have given were to
wolf-lovers. Even with a slower tourist
season, we have managed to keep quite busy as
usual.
October is Leaf Viewing time ...we will
continue our Saturday Open Houses through
October 30th.
BEER WITH A MISSION: please look at the
Wolf Beer insert at the bottom of the right hand
column. Wolf Beer is a grass roots
company, with limited distribution at the
moment...we hope to see it go nationwide!!
A dedicated wolf lover, the founder of the
company is on a mission to help wildlife and
wolves ...thumbs up for a company that is giving
to the environment and animals. So, beer
drinkers everywhere, ask for Wolf!
JuliaGriffin,
www.nexttopauthor.com/profile.cfm?aid=159
Update: 250
were chosen out of 2500 to go to the next level. Then
another voting round and Julia went on to the
next level. Julia, the wolves'
beloved Animal Communicator for the past twenty
years, is in the process of completing her book
"When Wolves Speak."
Go to the Special
Edition button to view Julia's promo for her
book. Khamazi, the house woofer, was well
behaved and well bribed during the shoot!
He is particularly fond of caramels. As a
gift to the fans of the Wolf Sanctum, Julia has
offered a free class on Animal
Communications...click on the links on the
Special Edition page.
I am extremely grateful
for the summer intern, Deborah Anderson.
Deborah attends Unity College in Maine, studying
to become a Wildlife Biologist. If Deborah
is an example of the student body, then I can
assure you they are doing a tremendous job
teaching, covering the entire spectrum of the
environmental challenges the world is now
facing. I have become the "student" here.
SATURDAY OPEN HOUSES...
No appointment is necessary, just
show up between noon and 6 p.m. and we will be
happy to give you a tour of the facility.
If it's pouring down rain, sorry...no tours are
given in inclement weather. Please e-mail
me if you'd like to arrange a tour for another
time/day of the week other than during our
Saturday Open House period.
Many thanks to the frat boys of Sigma Alpha
Epsilon (Appalachian State
University) who came up this past Saturday April
24th) to
help with projects...we should have up pictures soon.(see
our volunteer section for pictures). We had quite a good sized group with
the students from Appalachian State and several
from Lees McRae College. We finished
building a roof extension over the deck area.
Wolf house repairs are still on-going, with only
three left to do. This is the second time
we've had the pleasure of SAE coming up to help,
and hope it will continue.
On May 1st, the students from Mountain Alliance
in Boone came up for a volunteer weekend.
We'd like to extend our sincere appreciation for
all their hard work on multiple projects!
See our volunteer section for pictures of this
hard working group.
Khamazi, the house woofer, is taking all the
activity like a real trooper! While he
often retreats to the privacy of the bedroom, he
does venture out for treats every once in a
while. There is a strict rule however that
no one gets near his "stuffies", as he is very
possessive with these!
May 2nd, we lost Manitou.
He was 13 years old. On that Friday, he
didn't eat his chicken. On Saturday, he
laid down the entire day. I thought his
joints had given out. Since Manitou was
one of our unapproachable wolf-dogs, I was only
able to get near him on Sunday to try to examine
him. Unfortunately, it turned out he had a
bad wound, a bite from his pen-mate, Nala.
We called the vet out immediately, but
discovered more bites which were infected badly.
Due to his age and unsocial nature, the vet
recommended we euthanize Manitou.
Taking the advise of Julia Griffin, the wolves'
beloved Animal Communicator, we renamed Joker.
He will now be called Abatar. Obviously he
particularly liked the "Ab" sound, so it's a
variation of Avatar he can live with.
Abatar particularly favors the young ladies, so
he has been the recipient of quite a bit of
affection with their return after the long
winter made it virtually impossible to travel
down from the Boone and Banner Elk area (where
our interns attend either Appalachian State or
Lees McRae College).
We moved Little Brother in with Alpine. It
had been more than a month since loosing Shamen,
so we felt she may be ready to accept a
companion. The transfer amazingly went
smoothly. Other than a bit of arguing over
food, things are going well. Both are elderly.
With Little Brother's transfer, we are opening
up his enclosure to Abatar, Hobbit and Layla.
This will give them an additional 1300 square
feet in room. And a lock out area as well.
Look to the pictures on the right and you'll see
the completed "play station". It has
proved to be quite popular with the three-some.
We'd again like to express our sincere
appreciation to the Ware Foundation for their
grant, allowing us to make these improvements to
our enclosures.
WELCOME to Adam H. Milt on
our Advisory Board. Adam has a
Bachelor of Science Forest Resources from the
University of Georgia. His major was
Wildlife Management, and he is a State of
Georgia Wildlife Biologist. We know his
expertise will greatly aid us in the care and
happiness of our "wildlife" residents here at
The Wolf Sanctum.
He and Julia Griffin came
up to visit in March so Julia could "speak" to
the wolves in person, and take some video for
her website (please go to our Special Edition
section here). We should have some new
stories soon up on the Special Edition page, and
Julia is working on her book about The Wolf
Myths. The wolves are quite excited about
it all!
WOLF HAIR BRACELETS:
NEW: I've been making up Bella
Bracelets too!! E-mail me for details!!
(Go to our Gift Shop to see pictures of the
Wolf Hair Bracelets and the Wolf Hair Necklaces.
Also I've put pictures up of Prayers Feathers
for use in smudging. Please e-mail me if
you'd like to purchase any of these items.
director@wolfsanctum.org.
I spent months trying to figure
out a way to make jewelry from the wolf hair!
While I managed to make some necklaces that have
some wolf hair hanging, it was impossible to get
this same effect on a bracelet that you wear on
an ankle or a wrist. So I took the
wolf hair and rolled it into a polymer clay
'bead'....and whalaa...we hope you will find
them as attractive as we do. A trip to the
Gem and Mineral Festival resulted in making some
up with semi-precious gemstones. I sell my
artworks up here at wholesale prices, so the
price range on the bracelets will range from
$9.95 to $19.95. Shipping charges for a
bracelet are $4.50.
We hope
you can visit us....we have lovely things at our
Gift Shop . With the economy
so tight, we hope you will consider sponsoring
one of our resident animals this year, or
renewing your past sponsorship.
TEE SHIRTS with Cheyenne's print are now
available in children's sizes at our Gift Shop.
These are beautiful, and those children who have
had the opportunity to pet our wonderful
Cheyenne will be thrilled! Thanks to Sandi
Baker's artistic talents, we now have this
beautiful rendition. Go to Wolf Song
Studio at
www.wolfsongstudio.com to see more of the
Wolf Sanctum's wolves in art form!
A rooster wandered onto the compound and captured the
interest of many of the residents! He liked to
stay more down towards the lower pens, and the picture
shows Timbre keeping a close eye on a fresh dinner of
chicken! Miraculously, the rooster actually lasted
several weeks...but it was not Timbre who got the prize.
That went to Layla. While there were feathers all
over her enclosure, I think eventually she got
frustrated with all the work, as after all, they get
chicken from Wally World delivered every other day.
While her intentions may have been to save it for a
snack, the heat prompted me to remove it quickly!
NOTICE: the only valid e-mail address
of our organization at this time is
director@wolfsanctum.org
LOGO TEE SHIRTS have arrived!
More beautiful art prints, from Wolf Song
Studio, are also in and available at our Gift
Shop.
We've added numerous items at our Gift Shop this
year! Sandi and JW Baker are creating
lovely wolf art (go to their web site at
www.wolfsongstudio.com) featuring the wolves at
the Wolf Sanctum.
www.wolfsongstudio.com
Internationally known for his amazing airbrush art, J.W.
Baker put his talents to work to create the above
"painting" on my jacket! They have
donated this art for our new logo. Sponsorships
now include a decal (pictured below) for your car
window.
Please contact director@wolfsanctum.org
with any questions you may have.
|
|
HUGE THANKS!!
Thanks to an
extremely generous donation by the
Ware
Foundation of Coral Gables, Florida,
we will be
able to make some wonderful improvements
to our
facility... pictures of the
progress, expansions,
improvements
We
built a new deck off the Gift Shop...this seats
the students while they watch an
educational
video about wolves during the Wolf Trek
programs.
The space between the Clinic and the Gift Shop
was converted into a Gallery.
New
doors were installed.
We added on and enclosed the end of the food
prep area to house
an addition refrigeration
unit.
The Wolf Compound building was painted!!
and we just kept painting everything...the
isolation pen across..
Jamie Hawbaker, one of our student volunteers,
was DRAFTED
 
....as was Brooks Bowden, of Lees McCrae College
(internship program)
and we ended up drafting most of our Lees McCrae
interns too! Our interns
also learned construction skills in remodeling
Cheyenne's house as well as ex-
panding the tool room.
And we were able
to add on / expand two enclosures!!
Many thanks to Andrew Edwards and Dylan Lang
...their skills
were put to use in building a Play Station in
April 2010 for Abatar,
Hobbit and Layla. The play station is
located in the Lock out
portion of their enclosure, which is smaller
than their main area,
but these three have ended up spending
most of their time on top!
We've been replacing and
improving roofs and
decking areas on the "wolf houses" this past
year and it's an on-
going project right now.
SAE Frat guys building a roof over the deck off
the Gift Shop.
A company that is making a difference
....one beer at a time!
If your organization is hosting a fund raiser,
Wolf Beer will help if
they can. Please contact them for
details.
We would like to extend our sincere appreciate
to Peter Plantec for his permission to use his
artwork "Wolves" as our "background" on our
site. Copyright June 2004.
See Peter's art at:
www.ordinarymagic.com
Thanks to a generous donation from the Ware
Foundation of Coral Gables, Florida, we are
able to do some additions, expansions and other
improvements to our facility. |
