Free The Puffin of Death by Betty Webb Page B

dot—zoo animals are keenly aware of time—filled their bowls with a commercial dog food mixture. The only difference was that we added bits of chopped poultry, eggs, and a couple of frozen mice, which more accurately copied their diet in the wild.
    Ten-month-olds Loki and Ilsa would accompany me back to the Gunn Zoo. Already separated from the rest of the zoo’s foxes for standard quarantine protocol, they were housed in a large pen near Regina, the reindeer. Ilsa, the steel-gray female, sat near a rock and watched curiously as I helped Bryndis clean the area, but Loki, the slightly paler male, ran back and forth along the fence line as if panicked by our intrusion.
    â€œHe is more angry than scared,” Bryndis explained. “Monday, they received their shots for travel, and Ilsa didn’t seem to mind. I distracted her with a piece of chicken. But Loki hates the vet and any disruption in his routine, no matter how minor, so when we get to California, I will instruct your canidae keeper to be careful around him. Loki may be small, but his teeth are sharp.”
    Looking at the two foxes, it was hard to believe they would turn white in the winter, which in the northern wild, served as protective coloration against the deep snow. Although the commercial freezing units Aster Edwina had spent a fortune on would keep the temperature in our Northern Climes exhibit low, I wondered if they would fool Mother Nature. We’d find out in October, when the foxes were due to start morphing.
    Once the foxes were taken care of, we moved into the small quarantine shack where the two-year-old puffins were housed. At first I couldn’t see the injuries that Sigurd and Jodisi had received that insured an early death in the wild, but as Jodisi hopped toward me, hoping for a fishy treat, I saw that her injured wing drooped lower than the other.
    â€œShe can hardly flap it, let alone fly,” Bryndis said. “Same with Sigurd. They are lucky that the parents of the little girl who found them at Vik brought them to us or they would have wound up as dinner.”
    The most dangerous time in a puffin’s life, Bryndis explained, came during their maiden flight to sea, which took place at night, when the former nestling, called a lundepisur, was around six weeks old. “They can get confused, and turn back toward their burrows. Sometimes they injure themselves trying to land, and that’s when birds of prey, or even foxes, get them. That’s what happened to Sigurd and Jodisi. The injuries, I mean. But like I said, they were rescued before they became meals. They’ve acclimated well to captivity, and have already raised one chick. Since we already had enough puffins, I drove it down to Vik and released it in the middle of the night, as the other lundepisur were flying away. And off she flew, a big, strong girl!”
    Neither puffin showed any fear as Bryndis leaned over and dropped several small fish into their enclosure. As Jodisi nudged Sigurd aside to get at the fish, I noticed something about her that startled me. Her head had the same white stripe as the puffin at Vik. I pointed it out to Bryndis.
    â€œGenetic mutation breeding true, would be my guess,” she said. “Her daughter, the one I released at Vik, had the same unusual marking. A rare coloration, because except for their white chests and cheeks, the top of a puffin’s body is usually solid black. I would appreciate it if over the years you let us know if the trait reappears on their other chicks so we can compare our records to yours.”
    As birds go, puffins are relatively long-lived, sometimes more than twenty years, so as I watched Jodisi gobble up the lion’s share of fish, I wondered if she was the daughter of the puffin who had pecked Simon Parr’s face as he lay across her burrow. Aggression, as well as unusual markings, can be a genetic trait, and that puffin was no wuss.
    I shook away the memory of