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Jenni, my most valuable employee and friend since childhood, raises her eyebrow. “Because rabbits and long, white weasels look so similar.”
I know. Their food isn’t even close together in the refrigerator. Ermine will definitely eat baby rabbits if they get the chance, so they’re not even remotely close to the same species.
“Sorry,” I say, turning back to get the right food. “I’m just a little out of it I guess.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” she snorts. “You’ve been a space case ever since that guy came in from the rival rehab center earlier today.”
“Jenni. There are no rivalries in wildlife care,” I scold her lightly.
Except that isn’t true.
I am still really grumpy about the encounter earlier today. For one thing, I keep pretty good tabs on how things happen in Oakwood. It’s not hard… I get coffee at the Mocha Moose, the only coffee shop in town, every day.
I come for the coffee, stay for the gossip.
There hasn’t’ been any talk about a different rescue coming to town. Someone bought a ton of land that used to belong to a mining company a while back, but there’s no way that a new wildlife rescue would have appeared out there.
Someone would have told me.
Sheesh, arrogant much, Iris?
I sigh and swap out the snowshoe hare’s food bowl for the ermine’s. I could absolutely be wrong. I like living here, and I was pretty sure that most of the citizens of Oakwood liked me, too.
I mean, until this morning, I had also been pretty sure that I knew everyone.
I guess not.
Not only is Oakwood a small town where you do start to know everyone, I’d definitely remember the man who came in this morning.
I’d nearly passed out at the sight of him.
“Got it,” I smile at Jenni, waving the ermine’s bowl of defrosted frozen mice.
She eyes me from where she’s bottle-feeding a fawn that someone found wandering the woods. “You know he’s probably not going to go for that.”
“Yeah. But we can at least try to get a meal in him before he goes back.”
“I think he’d probably be happier to just hunt the mice around the center.”
That’s also definitely true.
I cautiously open the ermine’s kennel. We had to put him in one of the ‘flight risk’ ones, since he’s not only small and fast, but extremely good at getting through small spaces.
As one would have to be, to hunt mice regularly.
“Here you go little guy,” I whisper, pressing the mice forward. I’m sure they smell like freezer and chemicals, even though I rinsed them in water ahead of time.
I see a small black nose poke out from the blanket that he’s tucked beneath, but then he pulls back, a shivering blob in the cheap fabric.
He definitely won’t eat in front of me.
Ermine are very secretive creatures. This one was brought to us by a construction crew, who found him pinned under some rocks that had fallen on the job site. A few weeks later, his cracked rib seems to be healed, but I still haven’t actually seen him eat.
I’d like to keep him a little longer, just to make sure everything is good, but I agree with Jenni.
Wild things just need to be wild sometimes.
I shut the kennel and walk away. If he hasn’t nibbled the mice later this evening, I’ll have Jenni let him out.
