Wolf web cam near Farmington ready for live litter
In this fast paced world of blue tooths and blackberries, we can get just about anything we want, at anytime. You can buy shoes, get directions, find phone numbers, update your Face book page, grab sport scores or witness live birth. Witness live birth?
“It’s been months of very impatiently waiting,” Terri Petter with Wolves-Woods and Wildlife said. Petter has set up a webcam in a spot where one of her wolves, Kootenai, will give birth near Farmington.
“She’s getting big. She’s starting to pull her hair out of her stomach to make her bed and we have a box all set up. It’s her den. It’s all clean and ready to go and the camera’s set up,” Petter explained.
Kootenai won’t enter the den until she’s ready to give birth. On Easter Sunday, the den looked more like an Easter basket. “We were hoping for Easter babies but we’re a couple of days late,” the wolf keeper said. Kootenai will rush into the web cam shot when she’s ready to deliver. “She will go in there and she will start labor and you can tell because she’ll start spinning circles.”
The wolf is expected to give birth to 4 to 6 pups in 3 or 4 days. The website constantly updates the feed on the wolf webcam every 20 seconds. “My phone’s dead probably after 3 hours because I’m on that cam all the time, just making sure, just checking it out,” Petter joked.
Wolves-Woods and Wildlife will keep the webcam up for 3 weeks after Kootenai gives birth before moving the family to the organization’s headquarters just east of Farmington. The group puts on education programs at fairs and shows throughout the year.
The wildlife webcam has been wildly popular in Minnesota in the past few years. Thousands from around the world tuned in to the Loon Cam in 2009 and 20,000 computer-users watched Lily the bear in Ely give birth this January.