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Winter is coming to a close and you wait in anticipation as spring draws nearer, because with the advent of spring summer's not that far away. It's a mixed blessing however, since during the long winter months your work at the animal shelter can only be considered as slightly insane. With summer on the way though, you and your coworkers will have your work cut out for you. That's the time when your 'only slightly insane' workload turns into the full fledged pull-out-your-hair kind of insanity.

You like your job at the animal shelter, there's no two words about that, but at times it can get overwhelmingly hectic. And most of the time that's an understatement, 'Hectic' is too calm a word to describe life at the animal shelter, especially when the heyday of summer sets in. During the winter months at least all you really need to do is look after the many inhabitants of the animal shelter and try to make them as comfortable as you possibly can.

If there are any sick or injured birds or animals you'll need to look after them, and if you get a call from a hysterical person who's sure there's a family of bears hibernating in their barn, then you'll need to go check that out. But really that's about it. A few calls to take out some small, or big, animal that's managed to get themselves trapped inside somewhere within your house or garden, perhaps a minor disaster or two to cope with, but overall only slight insanity will reign within the walls of the animal shelter.

That all changes however the minute springs blows in. From almost that point onward the animal shelter will gear up towards full blown insanity status in preparation for all the emergencies and disasters that all seem to befall the animal and bird population during these few months.

That's when the calls starting rolling in and all our units at the animal shelter are kept constantly busy going back and forth between emergencies. They're almost all the same type of calls year in and year out like, 'Help, there's a large bird stuck in my flue', or perhaps 'I'm sure there's a family of beavers trying to nest in the crawlspace above me.'

One of the best calls that the animal shelter has gotten however was when one man called us frantically to say that a family of squirrels had taken over his wife's underwear drawer and stolen each and every pair of expensive lingerie to line their nest. She was coming back home tomorrow and could we please get all the underwear back from the squirrels!