Hi guys.  Welcome back to Animal Wonders.  Every day, we work to make sure the lives of the animals that we rescue are as good as they can possibly be and today is just another one of those days caring for our amazing animal ambassadors.  

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The animals need their daily care like feeding and cleaning, but they also need more than that.  Sometimes, it can be a challenge to fit everything that needs to be done into one day, but I think it's important to make time to just hang out with the animals, like Freckles the leopard gecko.  Hi, you.  She's so small that she might be easily overlooked, but I don't think the size of the animal should matter at all.  Every animal has fascinating natural instincts and a unique personality and it's my pleasure to get to know them.

Yesterday, I learned that our delivery of crickets was going to be late, so I'm supplementing Freckles' diet with stick insects instead of crickets.  It's proving difficult because the stick insects are masters of disguise.  Not only do they look like a stick, when they fall to the ground, they completely freeze.  Freckles is a great hunter, but she relies on movement to focus in on her prey.  If she doesn't see the stick insect move, she won't go after it, so I'm going to create some movement with this little stick to see if I can get her to eat it.  There we go!  Freckles is happy, she's eating, and she can wait until the crickets come in tomorrow, and we reduced the size of our stick insect colony, which has exploded beyond the capacity of their enclosure.  How's that for a stable ecosystem?

Sydney the brush tailed batong is also another little gal that could often be overlooked.  She's small and she looks a bit like a rat.  She lives behind this door.  She's actually more closely related to the popular kangaroo.  She's a marsupial.  She just comes in a little package.  I think Sydney is fun to hang out with because she's flighty but she's curious.  She's a bit aggressive, but she can be sweet.  She's hands off, but also cuddly.  In other words, she's complicated.  She always comes out in the morning when I first offer her her food.  She goes through and picks out her favorite little bits and then she goes back into her little home and goes to sleep until dark.  

Sometimes she comes out during the day.  She usually doesn't stay out for long, but it's always fun to see her out and about, curious and exploring.  Sydney's actually pretty incredible for a brush tailed batong.  These guys can be pretty skittish and quite aggressive, but she's pretty tame, even lets me give her little belly rubs.  I also like to hang out with the animals after dark as well as during the day because we do have a lot of nocturnal animals as well as diurnal animals.  Sydney's being pretty active right now, but she is a nocturnal animal, so we're gonna go ahead and let her go back to sleep.

Since we've been meeting some small animals today, I thought I'd share another one with you.  Let me go get him.  Come here.  Come here.  Hi.  This is Sprinkles the Pacific parrotlet. Sprinkles got his name from the little white spots that he has on the back of his head there, which is pretty unusual for a Pacific parrotlet.  He has a bit of a malformed beak and it looks like maybe a larger bird bit a piece of it off.  I've been working to get his beak straight for several years now and it's gotten much better, but it still needs attention every couple months.

So today, he gets some time out, but he also gets a beak manicure, or a beakicure or a mandiblecure.  So, I'm going to use a (?~3:23) to help smooth it out, but I have to make sure that he's safe and secured and doesn't end up hurting himself, so I'm going to use a little towel to help restrain him.  Alright, he's nice and secure now.  Hi, buddy.  And I'm gonna try and take off just a little bit on the tip there and a little bit on this side, because it's tending to move that direction.  

Alright, that's all I'm gonna do today.  I don't wanna move too much of it around.  Here you go, bud.  There you go.  I know, we'll get rid of that, that terrible towel, huh?  And then we'll revisit in a couple months.  Sprinkles has a big personality just in a small little package.  He can get quite territorial over his space, but once he comes, he loves just being out, hanging out, and seeing what's around him.

Thanks for joining me hanging out with some of the small animals today.  I just love being able to rescue them and give them a good home.  All animals deserve respect and even the smallest ones hold endless fascination.  

If you would like to go on an adventure with us every week, subscribe to our YouTube channel AnimalWondersMontana.  You can also check out our website for more photos of the animals and information on our organization, and if you'd like to support our mission of animal rescue and education, you can go to patreon.com/animalwonders and make a monthly donation or you can check out our growing options of Animal Wonders merchandise, including t-shirts, posters, and animal paintings.  Thanks, guys.

(Endscreen/Credits)

Is it good?  Num num.  I wonder how many you're going to eat.  You're going kinda slow.