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 :).

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.

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.

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!