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.