Wildlife Clinic!

August 16, 2008

Wow---I can’t believe I’m almost done here at the wildlife clinic! The first week I didn’t feel so busy but after that I just haven’t had any time to write anything down. But it’s simply amazing and I’m having a great time out hereJ Here are a few of the cases I’ve had (just a few…there are too many…)

This adult female painted turtle came in with a hook going up into it’s upper jaw and through its eye socket. We thought the hook was going through the eyeball so we prepared to take out the eye—but when we got to the hook out, the eyeball seemed intact! We left the eye in and are treating it with antibiotics. The swelling has gone down and next week we’ll sedate her to get a better look at the eye to see if she can still see out of it.

This loon came in having been grounded (loons should pretty much always be on the water) and thin. Her leg band had slid over her foot, causing a wound, but no other trauma or reason for her to be so thin. After a week and a half, she hadn’t gained much weight and she was still anemic. Loons are especially susceptible to a fungus called aspergillosis and once they have it, they can’t get rid of it. Since we couldn’t find any other reason for her to be so thin, we went looking for aspergillosis. Asper likes to live in the lungs and air sac walls. We scoped the loon (put a camera into her body cavity) and found fungal plaques on her air sacs. Since she’ll never get rid of it, if released she would probably die of starvation and eventually respiratory distress. Sadly, she had to be euthanized.

This salamander is from a local zoo. It has a mass around it’s eye. We anesthetized her and took a biopsy. Hopefully we’ll know soon what this mass is.

I don’t have pictures, but we’ve also went to surgery to repair a broadwing hawk humerus and a red-tail hawk ulna, went to surgery to remove hooks from the stomachs of another painted turtle and a black-backed gull. I’ll try to get pictures up soon.

Take care back in the Midwest! I’ll post soon again!

Off to MA!

Sorry this entry is a little late--let's just pretend it's July 27th;)

Leaving The Wilds was sad, but getting back into wildlife rehab is going to be amazing!! I'm so excited!

I left Cumberland, OH at 7am saturday morning. I didn't stop to sight see, but i did stop often to walk around get a snack. Here are a couple of the more interesting signs i saw:



a) peace, love and bbq??? last time i checked, bbq contained slaughtered pig, which isn't exactly all about peace and love....ha
b) bbq is good....good thing they put it on the sign or i would have driven right by thinking bbq was bad.
c) there is a special place in my rage box just for cannibalistic marketing ploys. idiots.

so that was fun.

Later, i drove by one of those "road-side" zoos that are usually horrible, horrible places for animals to live. This one had a good outer appearance, but i was curious as to how horrible the living conditions were. I asked "Can i ask where you get your animals from?" She replies, "oh they've had a lot for a long time; i think they get a bunch from auctions and sales."
I can almost guarantee now that the enclosures are too small, the animals malnourished, and that there is no enrichment for the animals. But they wouldn't let me in with out paying $8, which is bs. So i grabbed a brochure with a revengeful look on my face. "Ha! That's $1.50 you'll never be seeing again!" take that stupid unregulated road-side zoo of misery.

As I drove through New York, I saw this sign and almost died:



Oh no, your glasses aren't dirty, you aren't having a dream and you are not intoxicated. New York has somehow known about me my whole life! A deli in my honor! The only problem is when i went inside, a beer-belly man with sweaty pits was manning the deli which was only a counter in a gas station and they didn't sell t-shirts. oh well; i guess everyday can't be "nay day".

And so, After 13 hours of driving I arrive in Grafton, MA. Not too exhausted, and very ready to get back into wildlife medicine!