Now that the paths are clear and the weather is mostly sunny, it's time to get out there and start watching wildlife. Just tread very, very carefully, or you might frighten some poor small rodent to death! Meadow voles are out - as they surely are during winter, running under the snow - and this blog post from a few years back found a recently-deceased specimen and showed it in good detail.
The Canadian Wildlife Federation has a Walk for Wildlife campaign - join it now, log your kilometers, and by the end of the summer you may have raised a lot of money and earned a lot of badges. We need to conserve habitat for all creatures - of which rodents are just a small, but significant, portion. Recently, The Nature of Things aired an episode on beavers, which left one cheering for them and the awesome work they do to restore habitat and water for everybody. Cheers also for the perception and innovation of one wildlife dude, Michel Leclair, (link to a radio interview) who found a way to redirect beavers and keep them doing good work, changing our ways to prevent them from flooding out our roads - without killing them, as most places still do (and hopefully will smarten up about).
More about a new/old pet adoption after the jump…
A site about rescuing pet rodents and appreciating rodents in general
