Friday Chat w/ Vlad
Hey, it’s Vlad. Happy Friday my friends. Unfortunately I can not say it’s a happy day for me. I am still trying to recover from a positively mortifying experience yesterday.
It started when management came into our enclosure to engage in some enrichment. These are activities that are done in order to keep us both physically and mentally in top shape. Some nimrod decided that the enrichment activity would be playing with a flirt pole. For those of you who don’t know, a flirt pole is a long stick with a rope attached. At the end of the rope is a fuzzy blob that is supposed to simulate some kind of rodent. So they hang this blob in my face and it is immediately evident to me that this is not a rodent but in fact polypropylene synthetic fur stuffed with polyester fiber fill. Foxes have a great sense of smell and are wildly clever so I don’t know why they thought this would fool me. If these facts weren’t enough to identify this as a pseudo mouse, it also had a big label on its keister that said “made in China”. I thought, what sort of mook would be fooled by this? Well, it didn’t take long for my question to be answered…. Yuri comes running over, as fast as he can, screaming, at the top of his lungs “ mouse, mouse, mouse !!”. Close behind him were Lena, Sergei and Leika. This surprised me as I always found Lena to be fairly bright. I guess her instincts got the best of her. I did the best I could to get out of the way of this approaching freight train but despite my ninja skills, I got tail whipped in the face. While I was pulling the hair out of my eyes, Lena latched onto the fluff ball and ran my way. Sure enough I got cloth lined by the rope which caused me to face plant in the dirt. Now I had fur in my eyes, dirt up my nose and a rope burn on my neck. I got up and made my way to the safety of higher ground and surveyed the juvenile antics of the others from above.
I wish management would have thought this through better. Perhaps next time just a nice game of chess. Or better yet Stratego…a game about world domination, right up my alley.
#foxes #fridaychat #vlad
Vlad out.