Someone said they hadn't seen enough Kemosabe lately, well let's fix that.

(Intro)

I'm Jessi and we're here at animal wonders, home of Kemosabe the prehensile tailed porcupine, and about 80 other amazing animal ambassadors.
Before we visit Kemosabe I'd like to check in on 2 other animals first.

We recently rescued this little fluff ball, she's doing really well. She's settled in and she's even started doing public presentations. The shows ended up being a little bit awkward. I mean she did great, it was just, we didn't have a name for her yet so I had to make up names on the fly, and it was like trying on clothes and none of them seemed to fit.
So I decided to leave it up to our wonderful supporters on Patreon. Our Patreon patrons make it possible to make these videos, but more importantly, their donations go to improving the lives of the animals. 
In return for donating, they get rewards in this case, they got a vote on her name. So no longer are we calling her Little Lady Chinchilla, Chichi, or Poof. Her official name is Cheerio.
I love it, and I think it fits her perfectly. So way to go Patreon Patrons.

Next check in with another fluff ball, that's a little bit bigger than Cheerio.

Cass the arctic fox. I'm continually fascinated with his beautiful fur coat, it changes all the time and sometimes it catches me off guard, how truly incredible this change is. It's like he becomes a completely different fox with each season. Right now his undercoat is thickening and his guard hairs are growing longer. He's doubled in width in the last month and he'll double again in he coming months.
His behavior also changes during this time. Because his body needs more energy to grow the fur, he's super hungry so we double his diet.
Even with a diet increase he's still looking for any extra treats he can find which has made it really fun to create new behavioral enrichment for him. 
I'm excited to see his full fluffiness potential this winter and maybe we'll check back in with him in a couple of months.

So as promised, let's check in with the porcupine of the hour.
Kemosabe, the prehensile tailed porcupine.
"oh get it"

Kemo has had the quite the last 3 months which is why he's not super happy with me right now. For those of you that don't know Kemo only has one top incisor and since he's a rodent and he has ever growing teeth, every three months we have to trim those teeth down to remove the excess growth that he would naturally do by chiselling his teeth together.
His top incisor was removed shortly after we rescued him in 2011. And he's been having regular vet visits every 3 months since.
In the last few months, his teeth started growing in this unusual pattern and he was unable to eat with the overgrowth, so we actually had to trim his teeth every three weeks. During this time I also started noticing a squeaking rubbing noise coming from his teeth, and since he was leaving so much of his food, especially his crunchy food, I needed to call the vet for a checkup.

Instead of having him going to the veterinary clinic we have our vet come out her and we care for all of his needs at animal wonders, this is way less stressful for him.
Kemo was sedated and she inspected his molars this time, instead of just his incisors. She discovered that his top left molars were rotten to the point where she could easily just pull them right out.
Prehensile tailed porcupines have 4 molars on each side top and bottom. Now he has healthy molars everywhere else just he's missing all 4 on that top left side.

We don't know what made them go rotten since there isn't any obvious cause or, known event that's the culprit.

One of the difficulties in caring for animals in captivity is that we can't know exactly what they're thinking or feeling, so it's challenging trying to figure out when they're sick. Especially when they hide it so well.
Now after the vet removed his molars we were expecting some swelling and maybe overall discomfort, but instead of being sensitive about his foods, the first thing he did when he came out of sedation was he ran up, he grabbed the crunchiest piece of food and nommed it down.

I'm happy that we're able to provide the veterinary care Kemosabe needs to stay happy and healthy. And I'm happy to be able to continue to learn new things about all the animals that we care for. It's truly never a dull day at Animal Wonders.

Thanks for letting me share a little bit about what's been going on around here, if you would like to go on an adventure with us every week you can subscribe to our YouTube channel Animal Wonders Montana.
If you have any questions for me or Kemosabe, you can find us on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook.

Thanks guys.

"Here's the truth, our relationship isn't always rainbows and lollipops because he's not a one dimensional character. What needs to be kept in mind is that not only is he an individual"