Miss Sally visited the Kansas Wetlands Education Center this week for the first time since its opening in 2009.
“Wow,” she told Jessica Casey, graduate assistant at KWEC. “I never knew Barton County had all of these birds.”
“What an incredible place to visit,” Miss Sally said to her friend Chris. “There’s so much  history and so much interesting wildlife. I learned so much today.”
Miss Sally, elegantly clothed in a mink stole and formal dress which she’ll wear for the 120th anniversary party at the Wolf Hotel, strolled through KWEC exclaiming about the wild wetlands that is Cheyenne Bottoms, the largest inland marsh in the U.S.
Cheyenne Bottoms is on the flyway of the only natural flock of whooping cranes left in the world and two were spotted on Friday. The endangered and rare cranes, the tallest bird in North America at five feet, pass through Barton County, flying from Aransas, Texas to their summer home in Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada.
Only a few hundred of the birds are left, a number that has grown through extensive conservation efforts. Numbers dropped to 23 whooping cranes in 1941. They stop at Cheyenne Bottoms to rest and feast on the blood worm larva prevalent in the marsh.
Casey is working on her master’s degree in biology.
Miss Sally Wolf is the mannequin at the Historic Wolf Hotel in Ellinwood.