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 :).
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.
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!
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).
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.
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 :).
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.
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:
