Glue Traps

Sadly, many of the animals we treat in the clinic are there because human-induced injuries. One of the most frustrating are glue traps. Glue traps are pieces of cardboard with a sticky gel on top that is marketed as a rodent trap. What happens is the rodent runs across it and becomes stuck to the gel. The rodents are then stuck there to die of starvation and many have been known to chew their legs off in desperation to get away.

The whole concept of the glue trap in regards to rodents is inhumane; it is even more frustrating when other species become stuck to these traps. Songbirds often come in stuck to these traps. If they are alive when they get to us, they require several baths in alternating baths of vegetable oil (to release them from the glue and wash off feather contamination) and dawn dishsoap (to wash the oil off) . This process is very stressful for the bird.

The other day 3 bats, a big brown and two nothern (keen's) myotis, were brought in having been stuck to a glue trap. As we examined the bats, we were very saddened to see the destruction glue traps can do. All three bats had fractured bones and wing-webbing ripped off. The bones were amputated (not attached to the bats) and once wing webbing is torn, it cannot be repaired. These injuries necessitated humane euthanasia.

We can only hope that those who read this post will pass on the knowledge of dangers of glue traps, in hopes that people will stop using them.

I'm going to refrain from posting pictures as some may find them graphic.

babies!

Baby season is still in full force so I thought I'd share some pictures.

These are cedar waxwings who will be fledging soon. All songbirds go through a stage call the fledgling stage where they jump out of the next and spend up to a week on the ground learning how to feed themselves and fly. Their parents are still around, feeding them on the ground, but less often (tough love;) and won't come around if you are outside watching the babies. This is why we get so many fledglings into the center--people think they are abandoned when mom and dad are simply waiting for the predators (aka humans) to go away so they can feed their babies again.

We know these are cedar waxwings b/c the mouth color is a hot pink with iridescent strips on the sides (much more striking in person!)

Compare that to these nestling house sparrows. Not all baby birds look this different though. The younger they are, the harder they are to tell apart and sometimes we simply have to wait until they grow up until we can ID their species.

Since fledglings are like "teenagers", they aren't the smartest lot.

This fledgling/juvenile piliated woodpecker came in with hindlimb weakness/tail paralysis (likely from spinal trauma) and a foreign body in his stomach (see xray below--the white sharp edged trapezoid towards the right/bottom is a piece of glass/plastic). I had to go in surgically and remove it from his stomach. He recovered from his surgery well, and is VERY slowly regaining movement in his legs. I'm hoping he'll fully recover so we can release him, but his tail needs to follow suit...

This is a young common nighthawk (VERY cool species--sort of like a large chimney swift- they eat only when flying through the air catching bugs and their legs are positioned to cling to walls-->so they can't stand when on the ground...weird). He was doing well in the nursery until he became very bloated one evening. Xray revealed he had 10-11 stones in his stomach that were obstructing him. He needed emergency surgery. Unfortunately, he died during surgery:( he was very sick, so it wasn't surprising he didn't make it.

Below are some baby opossums inside their mother's pouch! They are about the size of a dime when they are born; they climb into her pouch and latch on to a teat. Opossums have 13 nipples so can accomodate many young.

The picture below is a grey squirrel a few days old. He weighed in at ~13 grams!

Whew! that's enough for now! I'll post more pics next week:)

updates and a new toad

the snapper has recovered from her surgery and is doing ok right now. I'm hoping we can ward off infection with antibiotics and in a few months she'll be ready for release.

the toad unfortunately didn't have as good of an outcome.

she recovered well from that surgery (the stomach healed very nicely and she felt well enough to eat a grub on her own!) but she remained lethargic and didn’t pass any stool. To determine why she wasn’t fully recovered yet, we performed a barium study. A barium study is where you feed an animal a liquid that shows up bright white on xrays. Serial xrays are taken and you can see the barium as it passes through various parts of the gastrointestinal tract. Here is one taken ~ 1 hour after we fed her the barium. The blob on the right is barium in her stomach and you can see it snaking through the intestines to the left.we continued to take xrays but after 24 hours the barium became stuck at the junction of the small intestine and colon.She needed surgery again or she would die. So we went to surgery but unfortunately, the part of the intestine that had all the barium in it was extremely fragile and burst. She would have needed the fragile part of her intestine cut out and the two ends sewn together–but we couldn’t find why she became obstructed in the first place. It was decided to humanely euthanize her as the surgery she needed was very risky (high rate of failure) and we couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t become obstructed again. it seemed unfair to put her through more pain when we couldn’t give her a good prognosis.

However, admist the poor outcomes are always several more happy and healthy ones!