Days 5 and 6: small animals

We took off our 3rd day and went sightseeing: hiking around a volcano and lounging by a warm beautiful lake.  Then we got to work for our last two days in the clinic.

The last two days at the clinic were full.  It started off slow, with only 6 or so animals around, so 3 of the vets and 2 students went off to the horses.  It was nice having a slower morning because I got to learn and try out some new skills. I started placing IV catheters in the dogs (to help fix the earlier problems of starting to wake up during surgery) and I got in my first 3 on the first try! I also helped hand instruments to the drs, and worked the pre-surgery table, to keep the animals coming.

                                            Animals recovering from their surgeries

But by noon we somehow had 20 animals left for surgeries, so things picked up. In the afternoon everyone came back from the horses (they saw 80!) and we sped up and got through everyone, though it was a long day

Other than spay/neuters, they also performed one more leg amputation and removed some tumors in a dog. We got in a little, tiny, skin and bones dog from a village a few hours away. The dog couldn't keep any food down and basically hadn't eaten in a week - he was very sad looking. The Drs. figured he must have a foreign body in him, but doing a surgery was risky, due to his state of health. They decided to re-discuss the case the next day.

                                           Trachea dog a few days later, looking good!


Day 5: Our last day in the clinic was a short half day, we did about 10 surgeries. I got to be Claudio's helper, and placed many of the catheters - it was exciting to get better at it and feel useful. We had 4 or 5 cats to neuter, and we each got to help out with another one or two. I enjoyed seeing each dr's different approach to tying the knot.

After the spays/neuters they decided to try an abdominal exploration on the skinny dog - he'd spent the whole morning on fluids. They found his organs full of air, but no blockages and looking for the most part healthy. His airways where also clear (they stuck a tube down to check). So they sealed him up and put him on a plethora of anti-parasitic drugs.  I heard in the evening he looked a tiny bit healthier, and actually stood up and walked around a little.  We heard a report a week later that he was doing much better.

Amputee dog from the first day, looking good!

That wrapped up the vet work for our trip. Overall I really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. Everyone (vets, students, volunteers) were very helpful and willing to share tips or teach and I think we all worked well together and got a lot accomplished. Personally it was also exciting to gain some skills (like placing ivs, more practice with Ims and Subqs) and actually feel what it was like to neuter a cat or tie a suture. I hope to help out on another world vets trip in the future - hopefully as a vet student or vet!

Day 3: equine

I spent today at the equine coop.  In Granada there are many work horses - they pull carriages around town for tourists, they transport materials (they wait in lines outside "home depot") and they help out on farms.  The Coop is a building the owners can bring their horses to for work for example shoeing, or vet work.

                        On a previous trip one of the vets had given a halter to this horses owner.He was very proud of it, though didn't quite know how to put it on.

Almost all the horses that came through got vaccinated (west nile, tetanus etc), dewormed, and vitamins-  I got lots of practice giving IM injections to horses.  Communicating with the owners was our biggest difficulty, as none of us spoke fluent spanish and the people who usually helped communicate where busy in the morning, but we did our best.


Many of the came in with bad tack wounds, and we tried to tell them how to keep the horses healthier - changing the padding more often, or using padding (some didn't). 
It was sad seeing the condition of some of the horses that we could do nothing about. We saw a few very bad cases of laminitis - the owners think it is from a spider bite.

.

We had a very good turnout, by the end of the day we'd vaccinated 95 horses! The vets performed two castrations. Many of the locals and owners gathered around to watch the castrations. They were all male, and it was amusing to me to watch them flinch and look uncomforatble throughout the operation:

We had one horse came in with a sarcoid tumor on its leg.  Apparently it had been cut off before but grows back, our vets think it may be virus related. We cut it off again and in January when the next vet trip comes they will bring some cancer drugs to try and treat it. The vets kept warning that cutting it off would be a "blood bath" but it wasn't too terrible, just a little bloody.

When world vets first started treating horses in the area, there was a lot of mistrust of the vets and they have been working hard over the years to overcome this.  Today there was a lineup of horses, some of which traveled in quite a distance to see a vet.  It was great to see how they have gained the trust from the community and are able to help out the local horses.

Day 2: small animals

We worked a full day in the clinic today.

We took in 41 dogs and cats, most of them for spaying. The vets also performed one leg amputation and fixed up trachea dog (mentioned in previous post).  I worked at the anaesthesia area, and shaved and prepped the animals for surgery. I got to do a few of the pre-anaestethic im injections, however the one IV I tried I couldn't hit the vein. Hopefully later on the trip I'll get proficient at that.  I also did my first surgery! Just a neuter on a little kitten, very closely supervised, but it was fun to actually hold a scalpel and get involved.

                                           Cleaning the tools

 Our biggest problem today was keeping the animals asleep, even with extra doses of the anesthetic they kept wanting to wake up, which is not a good surgery trick!

We ended the day with the trach dog. They prepped him and cleanned him up, and intubated him (which was crazy, cause you could see the tube through the hole in his neck). It worked out better than we all expected I think. They where able to close the trachea w/o having to cut into any of the rings, and then stitch up the skin over it. We wrapped his neck up in cotton to prevent him from moving his head back and opening it up too far. As he started waking up from surgery he barked! Before this due to the hole he'd been hoarse and could barely make a noise, so this was promising. Apparently the next day he barked alot, so hopefully its healing well.

                                                  Getting ready for surgery.
                           
                               

                                                                     All stitched up

Nicaragua

I am now spending a week in Granada, Nicaragua on a World-vets trip. We arrived last night around 8pm - our team is comprsied of 4 vets and 4 pre-vet students. Today was a mostly relaxing first day, we had a tasty brunch (donated by a hotel) and then went to the clinic to drop off supplies we brought and set up shop. Upon entering the gates we were immediatly greeted by 5 or so excited dogs, wagging and jumping up on us. I started petting one of them on the head, which he seemed to like, then I ran my hand down his back feeling how skinny he was (very skinny) when suddenly he bit me! While he didn't really puncture my skin, he left quite a few teeth marks and chomped down hard. Interesting start to the day :) This dog it turns out, has a hole in his neck. As a puppy his owners had put a collar on him, and then he grew, and the collar didn't, cutting his trachea open. The hole is about a quarters width, right into his trachea.. He is one of the patients we will be trying to help this week.


While we weren't supposed to do any vet work today, we got in call about a horse with a broken leg someone had noticed in a field. We all piled into a pickup truck and drove out to find him, hoping that things were exagerrated, and he would just have a cut. But when we found him his front right leg was very broken, and the whole leg was swollen, and useless. He was well mannered and nice and probably only a yearling, but we had to put him down. It was a sad start to the trip. After putting him to sleep one of the vets shot him in the head - if you use euthanasia solution like in the states, it will kill any animals that may feast on the meat (ex: raptors).

We ended the day in a tour of the city by horse drawn carriage - we will be working on the carriage horses two of the days this week. Then we took a boat to some of the little islands created by a now dormant volcano.
It was a pretty full day for a day off, but I'm excited to get started tomorrow in the clinic.

The seal goes home!

First off, sorry I've been mia from this blog for the end of summer. I've been spending less time at Paws, and more time working with domestic animals of various sizes and filling out applications for vet schools. But there will be more updates.

BUT - the harbor seal that we've had for a long time, has finally been released back to the wild! You can read it about it in the Seattle times or on Kiro


Here is the fatty seal still in his pool at Paws, getting ready to go home :).

Squirrel season!

Squirrel season is officially in full swing. Last night we had no volunteers show up, so we got to work, moving efficiently and speedily, to accomplish the nights chores. 6pm - feed all the nocturnal animals - I made a delicious meal for all our raccoons, that included dog food, sun flower seeds, apples, and some fish.
Then we tubed a few of the animals not eating on their own, did a few cleaning chores, and got started on the evening med list early. Luckily the med list was shorter than in past weeks, and we got through it in record time, finishing by 8:30.
So I felt like we were doing ok to get out of paws on time at 10pm... Then I remembered the squirrels.
A week ago we had about 5 squirrels, we now have over 20. All getting fed formula/milk out of little syringes, which is not a fast process. Its lucky baby squirrels are so cute!


(Someone on youtube feeding a baby squirrel).

Some of the volunteers from the bird nursery came up and helped, since they are running low on baby birds (their season ends as our second squirrel season begins). But feeding them just takes a long time, no matter how cute they are. Especially when one of them says he's not hungry, and squirms and screams at me instead. I finally discovered he prefers being wrapped in a towel like a burrito, and then he was willing to drink his 8ml of formula.
It was around 9:30 by the time we finished with the squirrels (overall it took maybe 2 hours, since other people started at 7:30). Then we rushed through the evenings chores, and head home after 10:30. It was a full, squirrel filled day. And it may only get worse in the next few weeks :).

Releasing animals

Probably one of the best parts of working at Paws Wildlife is getting to release animals back to the wild. Last week I released 2 crows and 6 ducks. Our naturalist considers a plethora of factors and chooses them a perfect release site, then we take them out and set them free. The crows had been antsy the whole drive down to their park, and as usual with birds when I opened the box they immediately flew out and were gone.
Then I drove the 6 ducks down to their park, which had a nice big pond in it. I set the crate about 10 feet from the pond and opened up the door... And noone left. So I rattled the crate a little, tilted it up, still no movement. I then just stepped back and waite, and first one guy walked out tentatively, then the other 5 all followed a little more bravely. The 6 made of a bee-line to the pond, and jumped right in.

Here is a picture I snapped of them just after they got into the water in their new home:

Raptor week.

Its only the 2nd day of the work week for me and already so much has happened. Wednesday evening we had to give meds to one of our Red Tailed Hawks - it seemed intimidating, because usually the raptors are not on the med list (or we can just shove them into their food) and as you can guess, raptors are a little scarier than say.. a crow or pigeon. But in the end it was just like giving a shot to any animal - you just had to wear gloves and hold his feet still also :).
Thursday I started off watching our vet put a little foot wrap on another red tailed hawk - he had punctured his foot with his own talon.
Then we got in a young coopers hawk - who was so cute and small! Well, small for a hawk (still bigger than most birds we deal with), which probably means he is a boy.

(a young coopers hawk from wikipedia).
He had some dirty scrapped up wings - our hypothesis is that his legs are not working well, so he's dragging himself around by his wings. He had scraped one of the wings so much that some bone was exposed, so his prognosis is not promising, but I hope he makes it. He was a fiesty little guy :).
And then that evening I got to assist feed another red tailed hawk! Which means I shoved a dead mouse down his throat while someone else held him. I really had to push to get it down, and you end up with your finger all the way down his throat, it was cool! Then I massaged his chin/chest a little, to get him to finish swallowing (ie until there was no longer a mouse tail sticking out the corner of his mouth).

I also helped weigh our barn owl in the evening, and I was happy that my raptor handling skills have definitely improved.

In other non raptor news - we gave some meds to a little chickadee who was so fierce and tough for his size. He kept biting my hand while someone was giving him fluids, it was cute. It did actually hurt a tiny bit...

And the best part of my day - Someone brought in a young pigeon, and she was convinced it was a bald eagle! For the record it looked just like a pigeon, though he was a little balding. She said she had called fish and wildlife and described the bird and was sure it was an eagle. Then when we told her it was a pigeon, she said "Are you sure??" and seemed skeptical. I personally am pretty bad at recognizing birds, but pigeons are one of the few I know :).

Seals are still cute and bald eagles are scary.

It was a pretty full week at Paws. Wednesday started off pretty quiet - full of volunteers and not that much to do. Then we got the notice that two more seals where showing up at 4pm, AND our big donors would be going on a tour of the hospital at 7pm - so we had to clean up a lot. We worked on making the place more presentable, then at 6pm both seals showed up, and we split into two teams for their exams.
These guys had been born on a barge, then the barge moved too far for the mom to find them - which means they came to use healthier than some of the others, because they had not been abandoned for long.
The one we examined was nice and chubby and active - making him harder to check out. He was only a little dehydrated, and a little underweight and otherwise seemed fine. Since they came in together the two seals got to remain together, which is nice for them.
Then the next day on Thursday we got in ANOTHER young seal. This one a little less healthy - he was skinny enough you could see his hips. So now we're up to 5 seals - one chunky fat guy whose doing well (he was the one learning to eat fish). One younger one who has been clinging to life for a week, but still making it, and the 3 who came in this week...
We have some very tiny opposums who get tube fed still, and they are still very cute. Plus we got in our first set of young squirrels for the season - they are so tiny they don't really even have hair on them - you can't recognize them as squirrels! They are slightly lower than the weight we usually set to try to rehabilitate them, but we're trying anyways (And we're not sure yet what kind of squirrel they are).
Here is a video from youtube of a 3 week old fox squirrel getting syringe fed - this is what our little guys look like!


On Saturday I went with another volunteer to feed and clean our "young" bald eagle. He is giant even though he's still not bald. While we started cleaning he was perched on his box watching us. Then he decided to fly over us to let us know its his palace, and that was scary! He probably has a 5' wing span already, and we're in a enclosure that's maybe 7 feet wide (maybe 20 feet long), and he flies over us and we have to duck, then he lands right by the door and stares at us. We were slightly startled as you might imagine. Then he lifts up and flies back to his perch (we had to duck again). Eagles are sooo giant up close - especially his legs and talons. He didn't seem aggressive, just wanted to let us know what he could do. Thanks eagle.


(a picture of a juvenile eagle flying, from wikipedia.com).

We have so many raptors that they have to co-habilitate right now. In our largest enclosure (the flight pen) we have two coopers hawks and a great horned owl all hanging out together. They're pretty cute.

Feeding baby birds

Sunday the bird nursery was short volunteers, so I stepped up and spent the morning feeding baby birds. The baby birds that are not self feeding yet need to be fed every hour, and it took me almost 45 minutes to get to all of them, so as soon as I finished a round it was time to get more food and start again. They are pretty darn cute though.
I did the first round of the day at 8am, and the little guys are sooo hungry since they went all night with out eating (maybe they should learn to feed themselves!). So you walk in and 5 little birds are lined up with their mouths open, following you around. And the guys in the next room over were trying to get food through the mesh wall they were so hungry. This is what they are like at 9am:

The ones on the hill I was feeding were old enough to be out of nests and hopping around though. You wave a little syringe with bird food over their mouths and they open up, and you keep feeding them as long as they keep gaping. Once they get full they stop opening up their mouths. The self feeding ones just fly away from you if you get close. So I'd just walk around the enclosure waving my syringe and feeding anyone who asked. Then I gave them some meal worms, which they thought were delicious. But it was cute - the younger ones couldn't rotate the worms around in their mouths to go down easily like the older guys, so I had to get them in the right way. We have one room of crows, and they where soo hungry. They're the biggest of the birds I had to feed and ate like 10 times the amount.
One of the enclosures had 3 little tiny bushtits, who are adorable birds, and they hung out with a flycatcher, because they'd be in the same cage earlier. So all three crowded together on a rope pressed up next to each other looking cute.
After I finished my first round someone asked if I'd given the cedar waxwings their blueberries, which I hadn't (I don't know my birds and what they like!). So my next round I came in with the blue berries and they where SO excited. One snatched it out of my hand as it came out of the container cause it wanted it so much, while he was flying! then they perched and ate a bunch of them (though some other birds stole a few).

(house finch)
And in the same enclosure as the waxwings was a very annoying house finch. He came to us because he had been landing on people at parks! He is habituated. He kept trying to land on me, and I'd shoe him off, then find out he was riding on my back but was so small I didn't notice. So each round I had to aggresively shoe him off and swat at him, and then he finally gave in a little and just followed around on the ground. He even at some food from me, even though he's old enough to self feed.

Feeding the baby birds was fun, for a little while, but I was excited to get back to the rest of the animals in the afternoon. Baby birds are so time consuming!

a few more tidbits

I know I just posted a lot - but I have some cool stuff to share from the Paws Blog. First of all the bears have been so madly cute all week! They have a few big branches hanging from the ropes from the ceiling and they love them! They climb up onto the branch (or leap from boxes etc) and then swing and swing, till another bear kicks them off. Here is some cute footage of them:

I don't have any footage of them swinging on the ropes, hopefully they'll post some of that! (again, the blog is blog.paws.org ).

And we got some really exciting news - someone got a picture of a deer we had rehabbed and released back in 2007, with her baby! So that's proof that not only has she survived in the wild, but she even reproduced! We must be doing something right:

(We know who it is based on the paws ear tag she is still wearing).

Necropsys

My first day back at Paws after the horse vet proved very exciting. While with the horse vet I had realized just how little animal anatomy I knew, and decided I definitly needed to do some studying up on that so I could follow their conversations/diagnosis better before I go back. then I show up at Paws and the vet is doing a necropsy on a seal! We have gotten in 5 orphans this year, and 4 of them have died! Its very sad as you can imagine - seals are hard to rehab, but we don't usually have that low of a success rate. But getting to see the insides was cool - after cutting it open they found that the stomach had somehow twisted around (similar to colic in horses) and thus it couldn't keep food down and had died. Horses however show the pain right away - and we can treat it, sometimes with surgery, but the seal looked fine the night before, then was dead in the morning.
I was reminded again how little anatomy I knew, as the vet asked us what different organs and parts where. They send off a little bit of each organ to a pathologist who will analyze them and see if anything was abnormal about the seal. Its pretty cool that we just send a little tiny bit of unlabelled organs and they can tell them all apart. The vet even took out the brain and part of the tongue. It was also interesting to hear more about our wildlife vets background and how he got into wildlife - there where not a whole lot of wildlife vets back when he was finishing vet school.
(Long tailed weasel, picture from wikipedia)

In other Paws news - we got in a hybrid duck we call "mega duck" - we think she's a cross between a domestic duck and a wild one. And she is giant.
We have so many raptors that some of them have to share cages - two hawks are in a enclosure together. The barn owl is still not eating on its own - but may have passed a live prey test. Before releasing something like an owl we let them catch a mouse to make sure they have hunting skills. BUT. we left the mouse in the enclosure in a tub obernight, and now its gone. but so is all the mouse food. And there are lots of rats who live up there, so we are giving the owl the benefit of the doubt.
Mr. Bitey gull is still with us, and not eating on his own. And he got me real good this week - I'm very careful about holding his head as I get ready to tube, and then tube him, but as I was finishing he snacked down on my hand. Big jerk!
We have a douglas squirrel that was being hazed cause he's too friendly - and everyone had been impressed his food bowl is licked clean each day. Well. someone went in to clean his cage, and found his little hideaway box full of food! He was sooo stocked up for the winter :).

We also got in a Coyote this week - she was very out of it and lethargic - probably hit by a car. she looks like a small dog and is very cute. As of sunday she was improving, but her prognosis is still guarded. As the vet did his initial exam he'd hold her head up to check out damage (a broken tooth and some cuts on her face and one side of her body), when he let go she'd just lay her head right back down and sleep. any time she wasn't being bothered she'd sleep, and barely had the energy to hold her head up. It made me wonder how someone even found her, I bet by the side of the road she looked close to dead... Poor girl.

And we have a long tailed weasel.
The bald eagle is still big as ever and honking at anyone who walks by.
I've been so busy that its taken me a little while to keep caught up on the blogs - so I may be forgetting cool animals. Hopefully I'll remember and add them as I go.

A change of pace...

I spent the last three days shadowing an equine lameness vet down in Oregon, about an hour south of Portland. It was a very big change of pace from the wildlife business. I hadn't been around horses in over a year, and just getting out into horse country made me feel happy. Walking into the barn and smelling the horses made me feel like I was home again, as cheesy as it sounds.
At Paws we are assessing animals for their ability to be returned to the wild and live. We get in lots of orphans, and birds with broken wings and legs, and other very obvious injuries - if they will recover and live, we treat and care for them.
At the vet in Oregon - he treated mainly top level competitive horses for often very minor injuries. The riders/owners where very in-tune with the horses, and might come in with a complaint like - my horse is consistently a few seconds slower on the barrel course than he should be, I think something is wrong. Then we'd go through a routine that was at least 30 minutes just to figure out what part of the animal was bothering it (If they could talk, the vet said it would cut out about 3/4 of their work). Then they'd get treatments to help return them to their tip top shape. So the two clinics are about as opposite as they can be - not even mentioning the size of the animsl they treated (small baby squirrels and raccoons vs domestic horses).
I enjoyed being there a lot - one of the best parts was that everyone there seemed so happy, and helpful and wanted to be there. I don't think there are many businesses out there that are completely like that. It was a bit of a relieve working with domestic well trained animals - and being allowed to pet them and talk to them, and tell them how handsome they are. (As I mentioned, talking to the wildlife is not allowed, even if they're cute). The only frustrating part was how subtle the work is - because I was not skilled enough to see what they all could see.
for part of the diagnosis during the exam - the vet would flex different parts of each leg, then trot the horse down and back, and rate the amount of lameness out of 5 caused by the flexion. The first day they all looked pretty much the same to me. We didn't get in any horses who where obviously lame - it was always subtle. By the third day I was getting better, and learning some tricks, but I think it will take a lot of work and practice to really feel confident.
I think once I get confident - I would really enjoy the work - because its basically just a big problem solving game. First figuring out what area is bothering the horse (we trot them in soft ground, and hard ground, after flexing before flexing, circles and straight lines etc). Then they figure out whether is bone, or soft tissue etc that is causing the pain in that area. Then how to treat it. And all the while balancing cost of diagnosis/treatment etc. The clinic had some very high end technology - a digital xray machine, a bone scan, ultra sound, shock wave etc. And they're getting a MRI this summer!
This horse clinic is definitly not the usual for an equine vet - but it was a very interesting experience. I will probably be going back later in the summer to follow people around again. I could write a ton more about what I saw - but sport horse lameness just does not lend itself to as many cute stories as Wildlife :). Though they did have two ponies and a little goat named pancake who followed them around. and a cat named frank who loved being held - I spent a lot of time letting him perch on my shoulder. Domestic animals sure are nice :).

Stupid Chipmunk

Today started off normal enough - I fed all the baby birds on the hill, then all our ducklings, then tube fed the few remaining young raccoons (only 5 left). 2 of which are quite bitey and growly. Then... I went to weigh and move the chipmunk to a clean cage. It took a few minutes to catch him, as he darted around his cage, but he finally hit under a towel and I scooped him up and put him in a box on the scale. AS I'm closing the lid on the box, he literally FLIES out of it, like 3 feet in the air, but the scale is on a counter, so he's like 6 feet in the air. He lands on the ground, looks around for a sec, and then takes off.
I then proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes trying to catch him. I had a net, but he had lots of hiding spots and was tiny and speedy. After about 10 minutes, I finally got him cornered into a little box (a trap I set for him) and netted him. I am super careful, briging him, in the net, over to the scale, I put him in, keeping the net over the box, lower the lid, and SPRING. He somehow flies from the box again! I wish I had a picture of him 6 feet in the air. So I then caught him twice more. On the third catch I decided to skip weighing him, so as to not loose him again. I put him in his living quarters, which as about 2 feet tall sides, lower the lid, and again, he FLIES out. WTF, I mean, this little guy is like an inch tall. And he can jump with a foot clearance over a 2 ft wall??
I then recruited help to catch him for the fourth time, we weighed him, then locked him in safe and secure. The rehabber who helped me catch him said he was going to go to a giant room on the hill today, where he would not have to be caught daily, BUT he had lost 2 grams since yesterday, so he must remain one more day at least in the building... After that I weighed and moved the squirrel and held him soooo securely, even though I doubt squirrels can fly like that little guy...

Our seal is doing well, and growing big. He finally is learning how to feed himself. Seals need to eat their fish head first, and parallel to their body. Our little guy picks up the fish perpendicular, than can't figure out how to get it rotated around, so while swimming in the water he tries to smack it w/ his flippers, and gets frustrated. Eating is hard!
Before he fed himself, the rehabbers had to shove fish down his throat. I found a video on youtube of a seal in England going through the same "treatment" here is what it looks like:


That is it for now. If I have free time in the next day or two I'll post a recap of the week.

Week recap

Its been a very busy week - I worked 6 days as I covered someones shift, and in the middle also celebrated the 4th of July and a baby shower - thus the lack of posts. Here are some highlights.

We had a turtle come in who had swallowed a fish hook. The end of the fishing line was tied to a dock, and she was stuck for 2 days before someone rescued her and brought her in. The vet took an xray to see where it was, and saw that she was chock full of eggs! The vet performed surgery, but she started hemoraging. He left friday night saying he wasn't sure if she was alive or not, he'd come back in the morning to check! Apparently with turtles its hard to tell. Well, Saturday morning she was walking around looking fine, so we are going to release her with the fish hook still inside her, so she can lay her eggs.

The nudist owl should be released this week, he passed his live prey test. All of the canadian gosslings now look like geese! We have over 50 waterfowl right now - something like 40 ducklings! They are quite adorable as usual. We also have a few wood ducks.
This is what a wood duck looks like grown up, ours are still quite young (Click here for pictures of ducklings).


We got down to only 6 raccoons being tube fed, with the rest up on the hill, learning how to be adults. Usually we have a cap at 40 raccoons, but we just extended the limit, as we've been having a few orphaned babies trickling in that we don't have room for, and right now some of our runs, usually reserved for animals like Bears and Coyotes have room. So we are now accepting up to 58 or so. When I tube fed this weekend, I saw two little raccoons in a cage that was totally clean, spic and span - no spilled food or water or smeared feces, and they were just sleeping in the back of the corner. I knew they must be new to us - since the rest are such messy little guys.

For some reason we have been getting in a ton of Northern Flickers. A bird I didn't know before Paws.

They are all cute - perching on their logs and pecking up their food... BUT they are total escape artists! Even just trying to put new food into their cage, one has gotten out on me. Catching them is not fun... And it seems like we just keep getting them. A lot of them we think are window strikes - so some of them are healthy once they get over the shock. Then they get to move up to the hill - to a big room, and they fly madly back and forth overhead when you go in there.

We also have a few tiny birds, like wrens and chickadees. That I think I've finally figured out how to catch and hold them for meds. And in the ward (where the sicker animals start) we have another young hawk. He's super cute and hungry. When you put his mice in he eats them right away. You'll throw one in while he's swallowing another, and he immediatly stomps on it with one tallon, and holds it ready, until he's done w/ his first one (these are already dead mice).

Up in the raptor mews (bigger rooms outside they can fly in) the Barn own we assist fed is doing better and flying now, but still not eating, so we still shove mice down his throat. We have a young bald eagle - so young his head is black. And he lies down a lot, cause he's so heavy and his legs don't support him well yet. When you go in to feed or clean he honks at you! ("Hey, get out of my palace!"). We also have a falcon and a hawk up there, and two great horned owls (the nudist one and a fluffy younger one).
Oh! we also have a mountain beaver. Its like a giant plump rodent! so funny looking (from wikipedia):



And finally - the bears are still super cute and active. This week their enrichment involved ropes tied to the ceiling and they loved them! swinging and biting and chewing on them. So adorable. Here is a video of the actual cubs at Paws, borrowed from the paws blog (http://blog.paws.org/). Watch the little guy get down from the carrier:

They grow up so quickly...

Two weeks ago when I started we had a flock of 8 baby geese, following around an adult geese (not their mother, but they assumed she was... It was cute). Saturday morning I did the usual rounds of feeding all the birds on the hill - and the geese have grown so much! Just last week they all still had fuzzy yellowish heads, and now 5 of them have the standard canadian geese markings showing up. And they are as tall almost as their "mom". They do still follow her around in a tight pack, trying to avoid me.
Here are some pictures I've borrowed from another blog (http://neighborhoodnature.wordpress.com) Showing some baby geese at 4, 5, and 7 weeks of age. You can see the head markings starting to appear, and by week 7 they look just like smaller adults.




We also have a plethora of baby mallards. When they see you reach in to exchange their food/water, they all huddle together as close as possible, almost standing on each other. Its pretty adorable...
Here's a video stolen off youtube of some ducklings:

We also have a few wood ducks, and a lot of big raptors and crows. A lot of the older crows have graduated to the hill, where they are in large enclosures. And I am getting better, but I still keep having flashbacks to hitchcocks "the birds" when I walk into a room with 5 crows, and they start flying overhead.
I've gotten to do some medications for some of our baby birds - and it is so nice! they all gape - which means you wave a syringe in front of them, and they open up their mouths looking for food. You can just squirt it in. I wish we could teach the raccoons to gape!
Up on the hill we have a room with 4 or 5 young jays in it. The rehabbers have confirmed they all have learned how to feed themselves - yet when you walk in one chases me around, and keeps landing in front of me and opening his mouth. Lazy little guy, says he's prefer having the food squirted into his mouth, so he doesn't have to bend down. Its pretty cute.

One more bird story - in the ward we have a crow we've nicknamed "creepy crow". In general we don't name the animals... This guy has bilateral paresis, so hes partially paralyzed. In the ward they are in little cages with a sheet over the door so they don't get stressed out by seeing us. However Creepy crow always finds his way to a corner of the door that is somehow not covered, and spends his time watching us. Sometimes snacking on mealworms (like popcorn) just watching! I've never seen another animal in the ward do that...

On a less "cute" note - I had my first experience at Paws that made me want to cry. I've seen plenty of animals put to sleep, or come in dead, w/ broken bones exposed and sticking out wings or legs. Somehow that I can tolerate, and blame on life... But we had a squirrel get brought in who was hit by a car - and he was a little bloody, and just lying in the box gasping clinging to life. His chest was filling up with fluids making it hard for him to breath. Needless to say he didn't make it - but seeing him lying there fighting death was so sad. And it reminded me of all the animals daily who get hit by cars and just left on the side of the road assumed dead - who languish there stunned and in pain as life slowly leaves them. Its hard knowing how much pain we cause animals with our highly advanced lifestyles. But at least I'm helping a few of the animals get back on their feet.

Raccoons

Before I get to the raccoons... Today we got in a young great horned owl. He came in because someone found him tangled in a volley ball net. At a nudest colony...
We're thinking he must have been awfully distracted by all the naked people and then flew into the net... (he was looking for other hooooters. Ha!).

Anyways... I spent most of Friday helping out raccoons. First we started getting one of the silos ready for some of the raccoons to move up to the hill. At paws the young guys get to stay inside in little cages, and once they weigh over 1200 g and are self feeding, they move to a large outside enclosure. This year we hung tarps below the ceiling - because they like to climb and this way it would catch them if they fell. But it turns out they really love sleeping up in the tarps. The nice thing about it is the cages are easier to clean, because they spend so much time up there. Bad thing - it must be super gross and full of poop!
We have 4 silos that can each hold 10 raccoons - I was getting ready the 3rd one. Once that was ready I went down and tubed some of the remaining raccoons - we have about 20 left, only 12 or so getting tubed. Raccoons are so cute.
Once we replenish their water dishes they get so excited and run to dunk their little paws in it, and knead the water. They often stand in the water, just moving their feet. Here is a video if a raccoon in water from youtube to give you an idea of them:


Right now they are pretty young still - and they are curious but timid. So you open the door and they try to dash out, then you reach in and they shrink back, not sure what to think. Up in the silos I found two of them curled up in a big dog food bowl (which had food in it that morning). So cute! They just glanced up at me and went back to sleep. They also like to sleep in their "hammock" which is a black piece of canvas hanging from its four corners, folded in half, and they all pile up in it on top of each other. To get in they have to climb the fence, and they do so slowly, while eyeing me, not sure if I'm interesting or terrifying. At this age cleaning their cages is sorta fun!

I ended the evening helping out with meds and tubings again. I tube fed a gull - who is very bitey. And did manage to bite my finger once (bad gull).

Owls and herons

Today started off pretty slow at work. I spent a while on the cleaning pad scrubbing astroturf, and folded like 8 loads of laundry... (once again - animals sure are messy).

Then I got to hold the barn owl as he was "assist fed." Like the young hawk a few days ago - this involves shoving mice down his throat. I'd never held a raptor before, so it was quite exciting for me. You enter his box (which is like a little room) and he starts schreeeching loudly and spreads his wings to scare you. I'm told that he can't hurt me really... (sure) but his scaring tactics are pretty good. This video I found on youtube gives you an idea of his tactics:


Only in my case he's in a much larger enclosure - and hops around trying to escape me. The general tactic is to throw a sheet over him - once their heads are covered they usually hold still. Then secure his talons - his weapon of defence, and then pick him up, while keeping his talons and wings restrained. I finally got him after a little chasing - feeling bad for stressing him out. I sure was happy to have gloves on - his talons grip hard! Once I had him, he was well behaved, and ate his mice. This owl seems to be healthy other than not eating - so we're hoping he'll start eating soon so he can go free!

THEN I got to hold a great blue heron! He was much easier to catch - again we just threw a sheet over first. With the heron his weapon is his beak - so we made sure to always keep control of his head. And we always wear glasses - as apparently they like to poke out eyes :).

I finished off the evening helping with tube feedings and meds - a few birds still have to get tubed (including a gull who loves to bite) and a crow who clamps his beak shut sooo tight. We also have a cedar wax wing, who is super tiny and cute.


I'm slowly starting to learn my birds...
And I finished off the night giving subQ fluids to a little baby squirrel. It was easier than the raccoons and possum, maybe just cause I'm getting better at it.

But no, today, I didn't get to wear the bear suit.

Second week - big birds

My second week at paws was short again - only two days, as I then took the weekend off to go do my first half iron-man triathlon! (But that story belongs to another blog...)

This week the laundry and cleaning situation was way more under control, and we finally caught up from last weeks mountains of dirty items. I learned that Wednesdays are nice - because we have a ton of staff - it is the day of the week a lot of us overlap. Even so, my days are so busy that I come home and I can barely remember what I did and saw - all I know is that a lot of it was exciting!

We have a juvenile Hawk - and I watched him get fed his dinner of mice, since he doesn't want to eat on his own yet. He is super cute - he's got the the big sharp looking talons of a mature bird, but his head and fluffiness gives away his young age. He looks a little like this young hawk:



Up close his mouth doesn't look that big (though sharp!) and the rehabbers simply open it up, and shove a whole half mouse down his throat! He then closes his mouth, does a little swallow, and *poof* its gone. Though once or twice there was a tail sticking out of his mouth, and he had to be prompted (rub his neck) to remember to swallow the rest. Young Hawks are pretty cute - not quite as intimidating as the mature ones.
The next day I once again tube fed a bunch of Raccoons - though now we're down to only 24 as the bigger ones are weaned and eating on their own (yay!). One of the seasonals showed me how she holds the raccoon still and the tube in place, and it seemed to work well for me. I think I finally got the hang of it! Also once again, baby raccoons sure are cute! (I'm pretty sure the theme of this blog is that baby animals are cute...).
In the evening I got to feed a great horned owl. It mainly just means I threw some (dead) mice into his cage, but I got to see him - and he was so fluffy. He seemed less excited to see me - and clicked his beak at me.
I also got to do subQ on an oppossum - which is different than an raccoon as they are smaller and the skin is less thick. But at least it didn't scream at me!

I think those are the highlights of the week. I'm leaving a lot off, but its hard when we fit so much into the day...

The first week

I'm going to try and summarize my first week (only 3 days) as an intern at Paws in just one blog.

A week before I started I had "advanced volunteer training" where we learned/practiced on dead animals how to tube feed, and give subQ and IM injections. I've never done anything with needles before - and this was oddly exciting to me. Something about giving an injection, and breaking through the skin of an animal with a needle makes me feel closer to becoming a vet. Anyways, training went well, and I was ready to start the next week.

On the first day I helped with a lot of cleaning and preparing diets (and I presume I will spend a lot of the summer doing that), and at 8pm it was time to tube feed 44 raccoons. Since it was my first day, and I'd never done that, I drew up the syringes and helped clean, and then R my rehabber helped me tube held the last raccoon and let me do it. I was nervous and excited, but it went well! Then I got to help give subQs of fluids to 10 of the raccoons - This made me even more nervous. It also doesn't help that while you're poking them with the needle and pushing the fluids in, the raccoons enjoy screaming. And it is a high pitched loud scream, that sounds like they are in so much pain! BUT - I had to keep reminding myself, they also scream even when they're just alone in their cage, or just being held - so it probably was not my fault! I got a little more comfortable as I went, but I think it will take me a few more times to feel totally confident doing it.
The second day I tube fed two raccoons all by myself, and continued to help cleaning putting stuff away, etc. It really is amazing how much laundry and dirty dishes are generated by running a wildlife hospital.. Its never ending!
At the end of the day we watched the two baby harbor seals get tube fed, and OMG are they adorable. First things I've ever seen that are cuter than puppies! Those big seal eyes! Here is a picture of one I found off the internet (not ours) so you can see, our are cuter of course.


Sunday morning I started off preparing food for and feeding a bunch of our birds (and baby birds). We have 9 little gosslings who are in a big area with a Geese who came in w/ a hurt wing, and now gets to play mother. Its funny watching them all follow her around in a pack. And the baby mallards are just so adorable. Fuzzy and yellow. I'll be honest that the crows sometimes scare me - when you come in and five of them are on a perch staring and cawing at you, its hard not to think of some scenes from Hitchcocks - "the birds."
I then tube fed all 44 raccoons myself! Yes, I went from help doing one, to doing two alone, to doing 44. I'll say that by the end I was definitely getting more confident and comfortable with them, though I'm still not quite up to snuff. I'm sure by next week I will be! I keep watching other peoples techniques as I'm trying to find the best way to hold the tube in their mouth while pushing down on the syringe. I'll get it soon!