Welcome back to Animal Wonders, I’m Jessi and this is Lollipop the Striped Skunk. We’re in the middle of a pandemic right now, and things are a little bit heavy. So, let’s hang out with Lollipop and have some fun.

[Intro]

So, the pandemic has changed the everyday lives of pretty much everyone in the world and Animal Wonders is having to do some things a bit differently now as well. And that’s especially true for animals like Lollipop.

See, Lollipop normally travels to public presentations once or twice a week. And it’s great for her to get out and explore new places. It’s very enriching and it’s great for her well-being. But she hasn’t left Animal Wonders at all since the start of the pandemic.

The reason she’s staying at home is because animals in the weasel family, like ferrets, are very susceptible to certain viral respiratory infections from humans, like the flu or cold. Since Covid-19, which is a completely new strain of coronavirus, is going around and it hasn’t been studied well enough to know everything about it yet.

We’re taking precautions for any of our animals that are closely related to weasels. Now, skunks aren’t weasels, but they’re close enough to cause concern. And we’re taking her health seriously.

Since we don’t know how skunks could react to covid-19, we don’t want to end up having to try and treat her for a viral infection with completely unknown affects. So, Lollipop is staying home and staying safe, but that means I’m missing sharing her awesomeness with audiences. Which is why I want to give her a feature for this week.

Now, even though we humans are well aware of what’s going on and how much our lives have been impacted by the pandemic, we don’t want that to affect the animals. So, despite all of the things going on, our focus is to make sure that the animals are disturbed by the changes as little as possible.

Which means replacing the time they would normally be out and about travelling to public presentation with other activities to keep them from getting board and two of the things Lollipop loves to do are sleep and forage for food.

Now exploring goes hand in hand with foraging for food, because skunks love their food and will spend all day sniffing out something good to eat. I’ve hidden some food around here, so I’m going to just let her explore a bit while I set up our next activity.

So, something that a lot of people are doing with their extra time at home is getting creative. Now, if you’ve followed Lollipop’s adventures in the past you know that she does this really fun artwork project where she creates original paintings.

It’s a great enrichment activity for her and since everything she makes is unique it’s really fun to sell them as merch so people can have original skunk art on their wall. I’ve also been really busy lately and we have a bunch of orders backed up.

So, this is me multitasking to give Lollipop some fun time while also fulfilling our merch orders and also letting you see what we’re up to. Alright, the canvasses are all set up and ready for Lollipop to get creative.

That’s slippery. These ones haven’t been done very well. Get more footprints on those. Oh, she got dirt on them. Texture.

Lollipop is an incredibly easygoing skunk and I love sharing her with others because many people have this idea that skunks are really dangerous animals. But Lollipop is a great ambassador for her species because she shows that’s just not true.

Just look at her, don’t you just want to hug her. I mean don’t do that, that is a pretty bad idea. If you see a skunk in the wild don’t hug them, they wouldn’t like it.

But by showing you how gentle she actually is, my intention is to take you from potentially a place of fear about an animal to a place of respect, wonder, and maybe verge into cute-zone when it comes to an animal with a strong reputation like a skunk.

Look at these masterpieces. If you want to help Lollipop and her fellow animal ambassadors, check our page on dftba.com to buy a Lollipop painting of your own. Thank you so much for letting me share Lollipop with you. If you want to go on more animal adventures every week be sure to subscribe and I will see you very soon. Bye.