【推荐2】Top Ways to Spend the Holiday Season with Pets

Taking a nap is a great way to refresh during the holidays, and a nap with your dog or cat (or both) is an excellent bonding opportunity.

Holiday time is here. The decorating, the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, the wrapping...    1    

In the season’s craziness, our furry family members tend to get ignored or over-stimulated (过度刺激的).     2     But they don’t have to: be sure to pay attention and give them a break from the activity when they need it and add them to the fun when they don’t.

● Rest time.

If your pet seems stressed, have a safe place for him away from activity. Cats should have a quiet, cozy spot to sleep with food, water, and their litter box.     3     Be sure to have a soft area for sleep, a toy or two, water, and some food. But you might need a nap, too, to refresh for holiday festivities. So use this time to take one together.

●     4    

Many Christmas tree farms welcome pets on a leash (皮带). Your pet will just love being with you outdoors while you share one of the season’s most honored traditions—picking out the perfect tree. Just be sure to call the farm first to confirm that pets are welcome ... and you have a new annual tradition.

● Go have a catch.

Give your pup a good run and wear him out ahead of when company visits.     5     This way, he’ll be happy and relaxed when greeting guests. Dog parks are ideal as pups can run, chase tennis balls, and socialize with others. Always remember to walk to and from the park with your pup on a leash and poop bags in hand.

【推荐3】A team of biologists (生物学家) recently studied wildlife in the forests of northern Ecuador. While doing so, they made a surprising discovery: a Mindo harlequin toad (明多斑足蟾). The creature hadn’t been seen alive in 30 years. The scientists couldn’t believe their eyes. “It took our brains a while to believe it was a Mindo harlequin toad,” says Melissa Costales, a conservation biologist from University of New Brunswick.

The Mindo harlequin is the latest harlequin toad species “to come back from the dead,” says Costales. Since 2003, eight others have been found, three of them in Ecuador.

Until recently, 13 of the 25 species of harlequin toads in Ecuador had gone unseen since the 1980s or early 1990s. Scientists thought most of them had been killed by a disease called chytrid (壶菌). This illness is especially harmful to the harlequin toad.

Costales says the Mindo harlequin toad may have developed a resistance (抵抗力) to the disease. That would explain the toad’s reappearance. And it could spell good news for other harlequins. Since discovering the first one, Costales’s team has found five more. They were all tested for chytrid. None had the disease. But that doesn’t mean the survival of the species is guaranteed (保证), Costales says. The harlequin toad is still endangered.

Costales is developing a conservation plan with a zoology museum in Ecuador. She wants to make sure the Mindo harlequin toad doesn’t fall back into extinction. “Each rediscovery gives us a second chance to develop better conservation plans,” she says. “Not every day do we have the chance to rediscover a species that we believed to be extinct.”

【推荐1】At first glance the sea turtles look as if they were dead because they hardly move. But if you look closely enough, they show a slow glimpse of life. These turtles are all washed up in Massachusetts every December, on the windy beaches of Cape Cod Bay.

Shaver, chief of the Division of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery at Padre Island National Seashore in Texas, said, “If we don’t help save this species, we will lose a piece that enriches us. There’s a whole variety of things that can harm them: oil spills, boat strikes, red tides, and so on.” That is why all the urgent care they’re getting back up North is more important than ever.

Saving could never happen unless hundreds of pilots were willing to volunteer their time, their planes, and their fuel to rush the rescued turtles to willing rehab facilities (康复中心) all around the country.

On this particular mission, Andrews, vice president of a unique nonprofit called Turtles Fly Too, with his dad as a co-pilot, will fly more than 2,000 miles, from Boston, to Atlanta, then on to Gulfport and finally Dallas, dropping off 44 sick sea turtles along the way, in hopes that one day they’ll be well enough to be released. It is worth mentioning that the pilots that are flying these missions are pulling $1 million out of their pocket to fly these missions every year.

With good care and the help of volunteers, these turtles were finally ready to go home again. According to Andrews, “90% of the turtles that we’ve moved to the rehab facilities have ended up back in the ocean.”

“We humans have not always been kind to the sea and those that live in it. But on this day, it was humans—not me, but the hundreds of veterinarians, biologists, volunteers, and pilots—who all came together to give these critically-endangered sea turtles a second chance that they rarely got,” Andrews added.

【推荐3】When Ariel Cordova reached Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens, New York, last November, she planned to go hiking and bird-watching. A mile into her walk, she noticed a beautiful female mute swan (疣鼻天鹅) near the water’s edge. Cordova, who had worked at the Wild Bird Fund recovery center in Manhattan, knew that swans can attack people. But strangely, as she got close to this one, it didn’t move. So she was certain that the bird was ill and needed medical attention. Cordova put her jacket over the bird’s head to keep it calm, carefully picked it up, and held it in her arms. And then a thought came to her: What do I do now?

Her best choice was the Wild Bird Fund recovery center, but that was on the other side of town. How was she going to transport a 17-pound swan on foot all that way? Luckily, a stranger offered her a bike and then she took the swan to a nearby subway station by bike.

On the subway, no one seemed to be astounded by the feathered passenger. “Even one guy, who was sitting right in front of me, just gave the swan a calm glance,” says Cordova.

Cordova called the recovery center, and Tristan, an animal-care manger, picked her up at the subway station and drove the bird to the recovery center. There, staff members decided that the swan might have been hurt by a fish hook.

The staff looked after the swan carefully and got it back up on its webbed feet. The swan even made a boyfriend in the center. Sadly, it had a bacterial infection. Two months after Cordova came to its rescue, it passed away.

It’s a disappointing ending, but the real story is just how far some people are willing to go to save a swan in the big city literally (确实地). In all, Cordova traveled two hours by bike by subway, and by car to save it with endless efforts. Tristan says, “We are angels of love. That’s the perfect summary of who we are. I firmly believe that we will continue to save wildlife.”

【推荐1】Every autumn and winter, a large number of migratory birds look for shelter in the area around Fan Yunting’s home village of Daxinzhuang in Kaifeng, Henan province. It is always the busiest time of the year for the 66-year-old farmer.

Braving bitterly cold winds and occasional heavy snow, he often patrols(巡逻)more than 10 kilometers a day by bike along the banks of the Yellow River. Fan has been doing this unpaid work for more than 20 years. To date, he has helped over 500 wild birds that have been trapped, injured or even poisoned, and prevented illegal(非法的) hunting more than 200 times. His devotion has seen him wear out five bikes.

His love for birds dates back to his childhood. As a small boy, he often fed wild birds with whatever food he could get. In early adulthood, he not only kept the habit, but also sold crops for money to treat any injured or sick birds he came across. He even sometimes bought meat to feed wild eagles.

At then, when few people were aware of the need to protect birds, his actions won him the nickname “Idiot”. However, he just smiled when he was called the name and continued his protection work without complaint.

Later, the officials invited him to work as a volunteer for wildlife protection. He accepted it with pleasure. Since then, from October to March, when many migratory birds arrive to overwinter, Fan usually gets up at about 5 am to patrol the shores of the Yellow River near his village.

The freezing temperatures are not the only challenge he has had to face. In 2001, he even argued with hunters. “I tried to persuade a group to stop hunting. But they refused and together they started to beat me,” he recalled.

Fan’s strong will has brought him many honorary titles. He became a model worker of China in 2020. In 2021, he was selected as one of the country’s top 100 model volunteers in the field of environmental protection.