Maya killed another raven in the exhibit the other day. Of all the wolves, she is most likely to stalk and successfully kill birds or rodents. After the raven was killed, a group of ravens stayed in the trees and displayed intense calls towards the wolves. Maya continues to look up in trees and watch the sky whenever ravens appear.
Maya is doing very well, if you read Malik's log, you see that she's worked out a system for getting her share of food (and more)… During the last few weeks, wolf care staff have been using 4 10-week old dog puppies from Wintergreen Dogsled Adventures to enhance the Canine Cousins program. These puppies have really stimulated Maya to show maternal instincts. She whines to the puppies whenever she sees them enter the lab or come in for programs. When she get the oppotunity to raise puppies, we know she will be a great surrogate parent.
Today Maya is 58 days old. Maya slept throughout the programs today. She was also active early in the morning, but is sleeping more often in the afternoon. The weather in Ely is starting to warm up. Maya prefer to sleep on the cold cement during the warm part of the day. Maya showed no signs of stress while the pool was being cleaned. She was very interested in the hose and the hose nozzle, trying to pull it away from staff.
Today Maya is 60 days old. During the early morning hours, Maya attempted to cache some ground beef on Nyssa. She placed it on her stomach and then tried to push it into Nyssa's belly with her nose Today staff started introducing a dog brush to comb their fur. We also started putting a mock "ear ointment" (Vaseline) on their ears. Since daily wolf care during the year will require being brushed and placing fly ointment on their ears, we are working gradually to get the pups acclimated to this kind of care and the various objects (brush, ointment containers, etc.)in our hands. These things are being done both when they are sleeping and awake, in order to get them used to being touched in specific areas. Maya has been very active in the enclosure, playing with Nyssa & Grizz and initiating dominance attempts. Today she grabbed a toy ball and ran to the trees to play with it. Maya has been much more affectionate and submissive towards staff. She exhibited submissive roll-overs in front of staff several times this morning. During the morning program, Maya chewed on a deer hide and became very vocal when Grizz or Nyssa tried to take it away from her. During the afternoon program, she was kept occupied with a rubber Kong stuffed with ground hamburger. She also likes venison "popsicles", which are pieces of frozen deer hide/ears frozen in ice. These appear to cool her off in hot weather.
Maya is 65 days old today. Maya was dominating Grizzer during the 5:00 program today. She was standing then sitting on top of him while biting his ear. Maya seems to be very responsive to the arctics, constantly coming to the fence when they whine. Maya has started to show more aggression toward Grizzer, but tends to submit and back down to Nyssa.
Maya is 70 days old today. A session with Lori Schmidt's dog, Jake, was scheduled to condition the pups to the dominance of a larger canid, prior to their introduction to Shadow and Malik. It also gets them more exposed to the presence of the dogs on site, which are common for other programs such as dogsledding. Maya was timid with Jake and showed a tucked tail response. She would approach, but would run with a tucked tail if he dominated her. After Jake left, she confidently explored the lab and interacted with her packmates. Grizzer and Nyssa willingly greet Jake and actively submit without fear.
Today Maya is 61 days old. She was calm while the crew was filming today. She kept herself occupided by chewing on a deer hide the whole time. Our nannies were able to capture pictures of Maya and Grizzer cuddling with each other.
Now that the pups are outdoors, the nanny staff are outdoors as well. The Nanny coats are designed to be waterproof and more importantly mosquito proof. The nannies may spend hours in the pen encouraging the pups to eat, gathering photos, cleaning the pen and socializing the pups.
During the 10 pm program, Maya initially ate her food very quickly, then started caching her food in different places throughout the enclosure. She grabbed the food from the nanny's hand and went to cache it and seemed to be annoyed by the nanny hand-feeding.
Today Maya is 74 days old. Maya has been showing numerous attempts at caching food. She taked hunks of meat from her bowl and buries it in various places about the pup pen. We then observe her digging it up a few hours later and consuming it. This morning Maya greeted staff very well. She licked and whined, and also submissively rolled over. When the Arctics began to howl, Maya ran to the fence, whined at licked at the fence before joining in with her own howling attempt.
The International Wolf Center advances the survival of wolf populations by teaching about wolves, their relationship to wildlands and the human role in their future.