Paul Szmal: Good morning 817, the Friday Extravaganza, FLX Morning, and our wildlife rock stars are here from the Bridges for Brain Injury program, bridgesforbraininjury.org, and look for the wildlife rock stars link. James is here along with animal handler Casey. Good morning guys.
James, KC: Good morning. Always good to talk.
Paul Szmal: Let's start with what the wildlife rock stars are up to for the holidays. Any public performances in the next month or two?
James, KC: So we've kind of slowed down in heading into the winter months. We have a couple programs coming up in December. One that I'm kind of looking forward to I think will be cool is for a lion school art class. So we'll be bringing in a couple of our animals kind of as a muse and the students will be drawing or painting or coloring in the animals. So that's coming up. We just finished our wildlife auction, our wildlife week, which was wonderful. So thank everybody for your donations and support. We were able to raise almost $7,000 for our Bridges for Brain Injury program as well as some of the money going towards our animals. So thank you all for your support with that.
And then I guess coming up in the future, it's hard for me being a big football fan, but we're kind of halfway point in the season. But in the playoffs, when the playoffs start, we will be doing our Super Bowl squares again. So stay posted to our Facebook for some updates with that. That's another great way to win some money as well as donating to a great cause.
Paul Szmal: It's a good time to start booking your 2025 programs. And remind us, you've got all these different customizable themes that you can do from it flies, it creeps, it crawls, so you can match the theme to whatever the organization is for what they're looking for.
James, KC: Yeah, absolutely. So we are definitely booking shows for 2025. We have different shows kind of for different audiences. There are our superhero shows, which teach about the superpowers that animals have and how we're all unique in our own way and each of us have superpowers. So that's one of our most popular that is sometimes geared towards kids, or it can also be super seniors for either a retirement home or a senior community.
If you are a library, we do a reading rally where we will have a book that is focused on one of our animals telling a story and then we will bring that animal out and kind of talk more about them and some of our other critters as well. So if you are into reading or a library would like to host us, that is another great way as well as Scout Badge Workshops for Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts.
Paul Szmal: Now of course you'll accept cash donations to help defray the cost of taking care of these animals and then care items are always needed. Remind us what kind of items you can use.
James, KC: Yeah, so on our website we have a wish list that you could go to, so bridgesforbraininjury.org. We have different categories, whether it be blankets or towels, paper towels, newspapers, different toys, maybe straw bales or hay bales, wood shavings, different apples. If it's kind of getting to the point in the season where you're thinking about maybe tossing out your pumpkins, our animals are a great way to provide enrichment with pumpkins. As well as if you may not have bleached your pumpkin or added anything to it, just smashing it and throwing it into the woods for our native wildlife to have food is another great option.
Paul Szmal: All right, sounds good. I think we've seen this guy before. It's our tenrec. Casey tell us about it.
James, KC: It's our lesser hedgehog tenrec, which they are from Madagascar. So there's a handful of species of them at Madagascar and though they look like a hedgehog, they have more relation to elephants and aardvarks than they do that. They are in that shrew family. So Afrotheria, the elephant manatee, they are in that category. So they're very, very small as they only get up to a couple inches and only weigh about up to seven ounces. So they're a fairly small animal, but they are arboreal, which means that they are great climbers. So they will climb trees for insects because they usually just strictly eat insects. So they're insectivores. And so they'll climb up, get the grubs out of the trees and then make a little den inside that tree where they'll have babies every year. They can have up to 10 in one litter, which is really cool, but they do have predators in the wild. So the Fosso, which is a cat-like monkey thing, is one of their biggest predators. And then humans are another big predator for them.
Paul Szmal: What is his name?
James, KC: This is Johnny.
Paul Szmal: Johnny. This is little Johnny.
All right. So now is that fur or quills or kind of a half and half deal?
James, KC: Yeah, it is fur. It's just finely woven hair that's tightly woven, made of keratin as for protection. So unlike quills, quills are hollow and detached and stuff. These guys are attached to itself. So if a predator were to come up behind it, they would kind of just try to roll up and try to defend themselves as best as they can. And then that will deter predators because if you waste energy trying to eat something that hurts, you're just not going to do it. So you're going to give up.
Paul Szmal: So I'm looking at his very small eyes. I assume his sight is not great, but his nose is very active and he's got big ears.
James, KC: Yes. Very poor eyesight as he's climbing. Very poor eyesight, just like shrews and moles can't very see all that well, just some lights going in there. But their sense of smell is phenomenal. So that's what they'll use to kind of find their insects. They'll pick up predator scents. They'll get away. That's kind of their main defense to kind of eat and figure out what they're doing. But they're very good climbers. They have five toes with claws on them that can grab onto most surfaces like trees. So they will climb up trees and other things like that. As you can see, he's climbing up me right now.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. How are they doing in their native Madagascar?
James, KC: So they are on the, I believe they're not on the endangered species list because Madagascar is a very small island that has a lot of rare species and not a lot of human interaction. But unfortunately, humans are one of the bigger issues. They find deforestation, killing of their food source, and or predators, disrupting the ecosystem, stuff like that.
Paul Szmal: Where did Johnny come from? Do you guys?
James, KC: Yeah. So Johnny was a rescue alongside his sister, June. So they both came from—
Paul Szmal: Okay. Now I know where the name came from.
James, KC: Yes. Johnny and June Casher-Carter. Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Szmal: All right. So they came from another wildlife facility down in Florida. They weren't able to be released back into the wild. So they came to us. They are a very good educational animal. When you say to people that they're related to an elephant, everybody's pretty much confused. So they are good. They are, as Casey said, one of the other things about humans is they are often used in the exotic pet trade. So they are kind of trafficked or taken from Madagascar and moved around. I won't say that they're a great pet. They can be somewhat affectionate. Obviously, they're not the softest or most cuddly because they have their little spines, but they are great. And yeah, it's cool to compare them, I guess, to a hedgehog, which most people might see in a pet store.
Paul Szmal: So now, like you said, they don't look anything like an elephant. So what's the connection? How do they fit into that family?
James, KC: So just with DNA throughout history, kind of how they were connected, as Casey said, they're in the Afrotheria. The way everything works, evolution or divergent and convergent evolution, are all very weird.
Paul Szmal: Right, and it's not necessarily appearance, because like you say, you can be descended from one animal and not look anything like the other one.
So Johnny Cash and his sister June Carter Cash can be booked for you. So go to BridgesForBrainInjury.org, look for the Wildlife Defenders link, and get your 2025 programs. Do you know any residencies you're going to do next year, like at the museum and stuff, or any of those set up?
James, KC: We will be back at Eastview Mall every Wednesday pretty much throughout the summer for our Wildlife Wednesdays meet and greets, and I mean probably next summer again at the Ontario County Fair. But those are pretty much our annual things, but besides that, we're looking forward to more programs.
Paul Szmal: All right, well help out if you can. Wildlife Rockstars, BridgesForBrainInjury.org is the website, look for the link. You can watch the video and see about all these different kinds of programs. Always good to talk and good to see the animals. Thanks for coming in as always.
James, KC: Thank you, Ted. Appreciate your time.
Paul Szmal: It's 6 now. It's FLX Morning Friday. Finger Lakes Newsradio.
