RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Employees of the Richmond Wildlife Center in Virginia are doing their best to act like mother foxes as they feed and care for an orphaned kit that found her way into their care.

In a video posted to the center’s Facebook page, Executive Director Melissa Stanley is shown wearing a red fox mask and rubber gloves while feeding the tiny kit from a syringe. The kit sits on top of a large stuffed animal fox that is supposed to look like her mother, Stanley said.

The same Facebook post explained why staff are wearing the mask to feed her, minimizing human sounds, creating visual barriers and taking other precautions. “It’s important to make sure that the orphans that are raised in captivity do not become imprinted upon or habituated to humans,” the post said.

All those measures make it more likely the kit could be reintroduced into the wild someday.

Stanley said in an interview that the kit was admitted to the center on Feb. 29 after a man walking his dog found her in an alley in Richmond. Thinking she was a kitten, he turned her over to the Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She was less than 24 hours old and her umbilical stump was still attached.

Wildlife center staff initially tried to locate the kit’s mother and her den site so they could reunite them. They found the den site, but were told by the grounds superintendent that the foxes had been trapped and removed. Stanley said she suspects the fox kit either fell out of a trap or off the back of the trapper’s truck.

Staff at the wildlife center have been taking turns feeding the kit every two to four hours, all while wearing the fox mask. In addition to the large stuffed animal meant to mimic the kit’s mother, staff also put a smaller stuffed red fox in her enclosure. She cuddles up to the smaller stuffed animal at the end of the video.

The goal is to release animals back into the wild, not only to give them a greater chance of survival, but to recognize their own species and to reproduce to carry on their wildlife population,” Stanley said.

To that end, the center immediately began looking for other red fox kits of the same age and weight within the rehabilitation community. Staff located three other kits in a rehabilitation setting in northern Virginia. The fox kit will be transferred to the Animal Education and Rescue Organization, which plans to eventually release the kits back into the wild together.

CHICAGO (AP) — An 8-week-old arrival from Alaska chirps loudly before devouring ice chips in the nursery at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.

He is Pup EL2306 — proper name to be determined — a northern sea otter who was found alone and malnourished in the remote town of Seldovia in October and taken to the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward.

Shedd, one of only a few facilities in the United States with the resources to care for rescued otters, was contacted by the SeaLife Center and the aquarium’s otter team made the cross-country journey with the fluffy brown marine mammal who arrived in Chicago at the end of November.

“Caring for a little otter pup is just like caring for an infant,” including round-the-clock feeding, said Lana Gonzalez, a manager of penguins and otter at Shedd. “He also needs to get groomed. Sea otters have a very dense coat — there’s anywhere from a 700,000 to a million hairs per square inch, and that’s what they use to keep themselves warm. They don’t have a thick layer of blubber or fat like other marine mammals do, so taking care of that coat is very important.”

An otter mother would typically teach her offspring to groom. The aquarium team acts in her place to encourage the pup’s healthy development.

On Wednesday, otter supervisor Tracy Deakins entered the pup’s enclosure with clean white towels and encouraged him to leave the water. Deakins pointed to different spots on his fur and the pup responded by licking or rubbing it with his paws.

The pup will remain in Shedd’s Regenstein Sea Otter Nursery for a few months, building bonds with the staff, and he will eventually be introduced to the otter habitat and the five other otters at the aquarium.

Part of the growth process is moving pups from formula and small bits of clam to other solid foods. Gonzalez mentions the clam is “restaurant quality” and sustainably sourced.

Rescued pups are usually designated by the federal government as non-releasable and the Shedd experts said pups need their mothers for the first year of life.

“Once we bring him into our care he won’t be released back out into the natural environment, they’re just too used to people. But the good news is that he’ll be able to be an ambassador for his species here at the aquarium, so we’re really happy about that,” said Gonzalez.

(CNN)- It’s not often that the words “TSA” and “adorable” come together in the same sentence. Long lines, discarded items, a sometimes-grumpy atmosphere – not much to love there.

But those two words are a natural pairing when it comes the Transportation Security Administration’s annual canine calendar. The agency announced its 2024 version on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday – and let’s just say these safety-minded, hard-working pooches are positively precious.

The calendar honors the more than 1,000 explosives-detection canines working across the United States. Adorning the cover is Dina, winner of the 2023 cutest canine contest.

This gal is a 3-year-old German Shorthaired Pointer who works at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. She was “one of several TSA canines who worked at Super Bowl LVII in Phoenix” back in February, according to a TSA news release.

But the doggie love doesn’t stop at the cover. Inside are a year’s worth of dogs starting with Gina-Gina, a regal looking Belgian Malinois that works at LaGuardia Airport in New York.

Actually, there’s more than year’s worth of dogs as the calendar offers up a few bonus canines at the end.

The calendar has plenty of dog factoids, too, such as this from May: “Canines possess a sense of smell more sensitive than even the most advanced man-made instrument. Their sniffers are powerful enough to detect substances at concentrations of one part per trillion—about the same as a single drop of liquid in 20 Olympic-size swimming pools.”

(LA Times)- For more than 80 years, two massive domed hangars loomed over Tustin’s southern edge, a relic of Orange County’s military history hemmed in by an expanding suburban landscape that replaced orange groves and lima bean fields with shopping centers and tract homes.

Reaching 17 stories high, more than 1,000 feet long and nearly 300 feet wide, the cavernous wooden structures at the now-defunct Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin once housed military helicopters and blimps armed with machine guns and bombs, so dwarfed by the buildings they looked like toys sitting inside.

The hangars took about six months to build on an accelerated schedule in 1942 as the U.S. ramped up its war effort after entering World War II. But on Tuesday, as smoke poured into the sky from a massive fire, the north hangar took just hours to burn before firefighters decided to let it go.

The north hangar, near Valencia Avenue and Armstrong Road, caught fire just before 1 a.m. Flames chewed through the historic building throughout the day, collapsing section after section. What remains of the structure will eventually be demolished, fire officials said.

Thick smoke billowing from the hangar, which is owned by the U.S. Navy, was visible across the region. The sounds of the wood lattice that held up the roof collapsing echoed throughout the surrounding neighborhoods like tidal waves crashing along the shore.

The hangars were built mostly from Oregon Douglas fir, 2 million board-feet of wood that was treated with metallic salts as a fire retardant. But the size and construction of the structure made fighting the blaze a challenge.

Seventy OCFA firefighters on 11 engines and five fire trucks responded to the fire, which was so large and complex that officials deployed helicopters, including a Chinook used in wildfires, to drop water on the huge structure.

But because of the “dynamic nature of the fire, and the imminent danger of collapse,” firefighters planned to allow the mostly wooden hangar to fall on its own before crews move in to extinguish the fire, Fennessy said.

Officials estimated the structure could burn for several hours, if not days.

Officials are investigating what caused the blaze.

CNN — It sounds like the plot of a Disney movie: a mountain lion prevented from finding a mate because he’s trapped by L.A. freeways becomes famous and inspires the construction of the world’s largest wildlife overpass.

But it really happened.

“He was surviving in a space much, much smaller than any male mountain lion ever had — eight square miles,” explained Beth Pratt, the California Director of the National Wildlife Federation. “The average male mountain lion territory is 150 miles.”

The cougar, named P-22, became a celebrity among Hollywood stars who would sometimes spot him as he roamed the neighborhoods near Los Angeles’ Griffith Park.

“A mountain lion lived in L.A. and people didn’t fear him,” said Pratt. “They saw him as a neighbor; they’d be eating dinner and he’d walk by their dining room at night and they’d share a photo and be like: ‘Hey, P-22 visited me.’ “

Because of P-22’s popularity, people wanted to help the mountain lion – and others like him – roam the areas beyond Los Angeles’ bustling six-lane 101 Freeway. The idea of a wildlife overpass was garnering interest, but funding it was another issue.

So Pratt, who is most comfortable outdoors in casual clothes and hiking boots, found herself in swanky Bel Air mansions, pleading for endowments.

Donations poured in from celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Rainn Wilson, Barbra Streisand and David Crosby, and support also came from Watts residents in South Los Angeles.

Residents of Watts see P-22 as “a social justice hero,” Pratt explained.

“He’s someone who was also impacted by the injustice of putting freeways through communities,” she said. “Whether you’re [living in] Beverly Hills, whether you’re [living in] Watts, we all come together over wildlife.”

Finding the right spot

Some 300,000 to 400,000 cars a day will pass underneath the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Overpass when it opens in two years.

The crossing includes specially designed sound walls, along with natural sound barriers of tall trees and lush plantings. Everything is designed to filter out the noise of the freeway, since most animals get frightened and turn around if it’s too noisy.

Engineers are also taking into account animals’ fear of bright lights.

“All the lights of those headlights are a deterrent to wildlife,” Pratt explained. “We’re actually designing light barriers — not just on the crossing but in the approach — so they won’t get scared and turn around, which is what happens.”

The wildlife crossing is a public-private project, spearheaded by the National Wildlife Federation along with California’s transportation department. About half of the $100 million cost was funded by private donations, including $26 million from philanthropist Wallis Annenberg, whose contribution was instrumental in propelling the project forward.

For 20 years, the National Park Service researched the exact spot where the freeway overpass should go.

Rewilding an L.A. freeway

Besides its massive scope, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is different from other wildlife overpass systems across the world in that it will host a whole ecosystem on top of it.

A nearby plant nursery is growing native, fire-resistant plants that will eventually cover the crossing.

“We’ve been collecting seeds for years now to match the surrounding ecosystem, and that’s important with climate — both wildlife and plants need options,” according to Pratt.

Invasive, fire-fueling plants — including the ubiquitous black mustard plant — will be removed from the area. The nearby utility poles had to be moved to accommodate the crossing, so those will now be placed underground, which will also help with fire resistance.

“Not only are you going to have wildlife like mountain lions and bobcats crossing it, you’re going to have monarch butterflies laying their eggs on milkweed on top of it, you’re going to have western fence lizards living on top of it,” Pratt said.

“Part of this project is we are going to be restoring the landscape, not just on the crossing, but around it, back to what it should be. So that’s going to help with a lot of things, as well as fire risk.”

P-22 won’t be around to use the wildlife crossing that he helped inspire. In December 2022, just a few months after the National Wildlife Federation and California’s transportation department broke ground on the bridge, the cougar died.

Although his death was heartbreaking, Pratt said he actually lived a long life for a mountain lion.

“But more than that, he used his celebrity for good. I call him the ‘ultimate cougar celebrity influencer.’”

His story, she said, ensured a future for other mountain lions in the region.

“And we owe him a debt of gratitude. He has inspired the building of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing. We would not have it without him.”