Hope that you all had a good weekend in the snow! Some of you may have noticed the artisitc snowmen that appeared outside the visitor's centre yesterday - built by our very own warden team (though I wasn't working so missed out!). There were a few around the fen as well, built by visitors during yesterday which look great too!
Last night, one of the ponies on Verralls fell in Wicken Lode. He was probably trying to drink out of the lode and slipped in on the ice. One of the visitors saw the horse (Percy) in the lode and phoned the centre, who then passed on the information to Carol. We are so thankful to the people that phoned in, because if they hadn't then it's very possible that no-one would have noticed and I don't think Percy would have lasted the night in the lode. So me, Carol and Martin went down to Verralls in the RTV with all the equipment we might need and eventually managed to haul Percy out using the strops and RTV. He was so cold by the time he'd been brought out, and was obviously quite scared by being stuck, but it's just so good that we managed to get him out. First thing this morning I went down to Verralls to check on him, and apart from being a bit jumpier than normal, he seemed fine.
After checking Verralls, I (along with Ajay, one of the volunteers here and at Anglesey) went to complete all the other checks. It was lovely to see the animals with the snowy scene around them - though I think quite a few of them are a bit confused by all the ice! Everyone was fine - the collared animals are still completely not bothered by the addition of their collars. A couple of the bulls on Harrisons had a few new small scratches, but none of them are serious, they'll just need to be monitored for a while until they heal.
In the afternoon, I was in the office and stayed warm!
Thanks for reading - the picture below is of 2 of the boys over on Verralls (Fox and Snips) looking lovely in the snow!
