the last bit of tufts wildlife center:(

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Here is me in the ocean in Massachusetts:) yay!

So updates on some of the animals in my last blog: the painted turtle with the hook through it’s head and the broadwing hawk with the broken wing were released! Woo hoo!!

I just realized I didn’t talk about the broad-wing hawk. Well, here he is.

He came in as a juvenile with a broken humerus. We placed an intramedullary pin and external fixature which was taken off two weeks later. We needed him to heal fast and perfectly because he needs to migrate to south America (right about now!). He healed great , was reconditioned and released! Yay!!

Here are some more animals…

This snapping turtle (40+lb male!) came in with lower jaw fractures and a shell fracture. A couple days before I left I got to help wire his jaw back together and clean/wire the shell fracture. He was doing well when I left.

This great-black backed gull had swallowed a fishing hook—it was a really really big one! I assisted the wildlife medicine intern during surgery. We had to go into the bird’s stomach to get the hook out. It’s a lot harder than in a cat or dog. Birds don’t have an abdomen and thorax (chest cavity) like mammals do. They have one cavity called their coelom. This is because they don’t have a diaphragm—they

have thin airsacs that pump air in and out of their lungs. These air sacs are thinner than cellophane wrap

and all over their coelom. So when we were cutting into the coelom, we had to cut through some of the air sacs---you could smell the gas anesthetic in the room—it’s a crazy surgery—very cool! He made

it through surgery and was doing great when I left!

Not sure how well this picture will come out but it’s a newly hatched snapping turtle!! He’s so cute!

This bird is an osprey. Osprey eat fish. And that’s it. They are also….umm…let’s say not the brightest. Sorry, that’s mean. They aren’t dumb—they are very set in their ways of eating fish in the wild. So in captivity—many simply don’t eat. When you get an osprey that doesn’t eat, you have to tube feed it which is stressful on all involved. I took on the osprey after it had been at the center for a week. He wouldn’t eat and was being tube fed. Then I took the case and he decided to start eating;) I think he just got sick of me grabbing him three times a day to feed—hee hee. They are really beautiful birds though.

And I have to end on the cutest picture ever…check out this squirrel with a splint on his broken leg!!! Awww!