A crow, an opossum and our first baby of the year!

Today was the first day in several months that I actually felt adequately busy. Don't get me wrong--I have a lot to do even when it's cold out and we're only admitting a few animals a day. I have ~50 in patients, some with more complicated diseases; research papers to write; continuing education lectures for our volunteers and rehabilitators to put together; we're in the midst of writing and installing a completely new computer system, so working out those bugs takes time; writing intern/extern manuals for the students that come with us during the busy season, etc etc etc.

But today--just felt different.

I started off the day by doing surgery on a crow. This crow had been shot (with a BB gun--ugh!); one pellet broken his wing, which was wrapped up and healing nicely. The other pellet was lodged in his leg. We see this very, very often--animals with various projectiles lodged in them. Usually, the don't do any harm so we leave them in (b/c surgery is invasive and risky--not worth it if the pellet can stay in without harming the animal). The pellet in the crows leg wasn't bothering him on admit--he was using the leg normally, there was no swelling around the pellet, etc.

However, 11 days after he was admitted, the area around the pellet became very swollen, he became lame on that leg, and couldn't fully extend the joint near the pellet.

SO here is an example of one of the few times I remove pellets. Good thing I did too-the pellet was lodged INSIDE a tendon sheath--it would have only continued to cause harm. I'm hoping this guy doesn't have any arthritis or other chronic problems--only time will tell. Here is his xray.

I think rechecked ALL of my inpatients, including this tiny ornate tree lizard that came in a few days ago.

he hitched a ride in a backpack with some people who were vacationing in Arizona. Silly lizard. We're trying to find him a ride home as soon as possible! He looks tired and dehydrated in this picture b/c he's used to 90deg weather, and what did we have today? a blizzard! hahaha

Then I amputated the tip of a opossum tail. Virginia Opossums live everywhere in the midwest, but they are originally from the South--so they aren't really evolved for this cold weather. While most do ok, usually the ones we get in have frostbitten tail tips and/or ears. The ears will heal on their own, but often the tail tips need to be amputated. That opossum did great during surgery and is on the road to recovery!

The blizzard today is kind of funny as normally we have admitted several baby animals by this time of the year--this year, however, it's March 23 and we haven't admitted one yet--this hasn't happened in the last 8 years!

But them--right before I was about to leave for the day--we got our first baby animal of the season in---A RED FOX KIT!!!! soooo cute!!! He's pretty out of it--and has a respiratory infection--might have other underlying diseases (there's a reason mom abandoned him...) but we'll see how he does. What a great day:)

unknown...

It's still slow, but that's ok--babies will be here in a few weeks!

Just wanted to post quickly. Often (well, most of the time) we don't know exactly why some animals are sick. To find out the exact reason an animal is sick (ie the exact bacterium, or virus or parasite or what exactly is going on inside) often requires expensive testing (cultures, virus isolation, cat scans, MRIs, etc) that we simply can't afford as a non profit. And honestly, if we did have a little extra money, we would probably put it into the care of the animals we're currently treating--as often finding out the exact cause won't change treatment. For instance, we have a squirrel with an abscess (a large infection under the skin causing a pocket of pus). We know it's a bacterial infection, we're just not sure which type of bacteria. So we pick a broad spectrum antibiotic and most of the time it heals. Is it ideal? no. Would we rather know the exact bacterium we're dealing with so we can start the animal on the exact antibiotic that will treat that exact infection from the start? yes. But is it worth the money to culture the hundreds-thousands of infections we see every year, when only a handful don't respond to the first drug we try?

It's a question we ask yourselves everyday and we have to pick the answer that is both good for the center and good for the animal.

So here we have a turkey who first presented knuckling over on one foot. The next day she couldn't stand at all (see pic) and had lost all feeling her legs. Ascending paralysis isn't very common in wildlife, but most of the differentials bear a poor prognosis. Would I like to be able to do a CT scan or MRI to look for spinal trauma? Would I like to do bloodwork and ultrasounds? I would love to do all those tests to try and find out what exactly is wrong with this bird. Unfortunately, even if we could afford them, we might be left without an answer, and her prognosis would likely be the same--grave.

Below is an opossum in treatment right now. He came in for emaciation (way too skinny!) he's gaining weight well but now one of his eyes looks cloudy. I'm treating him for several types of eye disease. Ideally, he would go see an ophthamologist--but again--expensive--so we're treating for the treatable (mainly infection) and we'll see how he does!

Now this doesn't mean we don't ever to advanced testing on our animals. When it's especially indicated (an infection that's not responding to broad spectrum antibiotics), when it effects humans (ie we send in bats that have bitten people so the bats can be tested for rabies), when it threatens the animal's life AND it's an endangered species or there is a good chance what it has could be easily treated--in these and many other situations, we do send out for advanced testing. But just like you weigh the costs vs benefits when you bring your pet to the vet, we have to do that, too. Just several thousand times each year:)

;(

I euthanized Molly on wednesday. She was slowly getting worse, despite aggressive treatment. None of her tests made sense--we still don't know what was wrong with her. I consulted and worked with over half a dozen different veterinarians--it wasn't enough:(

Rest in peace, Molly ;(

Molly is sick:(

My cat Molly is very sick. She has hepatic lipidosis (fatty liver disease) which takes a long time to recover from. She *might* have some underlying disease (like cancer) but we can't find it with non-invasive tests. If she has cancer, I'm only going to do palliative treatment (not invasive surgery or chemo or radiation) so we're doing the palliative treatment (steroids) and treating the fatty liver--hoping she'll feel better soon. It's frustrating, but I need to at least give her a chance (b/c she may not have cancer at all!!) So we'll see *sigh*


Molly is sick and I have 3 part time jobs (in addition to my wildlife job) so I've been incredibly busy. Those are my excuses for not posting lately. sorry:(

In brighter news, scientists are trying to understand why naked mole rats don't get cancer. I learned a lot about these creatures by reading this article--very interesting! here is the article

I promise to try and post some cases later this week or next week.

Even though it's winter, we have times when we are just as busy as summer!

Yesterday was one of those days. I was dealing with a very critical swan who was on oxygen, having a hard time breathing. My technician had anesthetized another swan (with gas anesthesia) to take xrays. While she was doing that, the doorbell rang-it was a tiny mouse that was dying--taking its last breaths. I didn't want it to suffer so put it in the same mask as the swan (we only have one anesthesia machine). The doorbell rang again! It was a squirrel who's finger was caught and bleeding in a birdfeeder. We needed to anesthetize him to get it out, so we took the swan off the mask to recover, I put the mouse on the table to dispose of later, anesthetized the squirrel, amputated the finger that was caught, quickly figured out the drug dosages I needed for him (so he could get those before he woke up from surgery) and put the swan in a closed room to recover. Whew! I then went to dispose of the mouse and was completely astonished to find it moving!! I gave it fluids, sugar, put it on a heating bad and 5 minutes later it was running around--a miracle mouse!

What an hour!

winter blues: opossum, baby turtle, and some cute babies:)

Winter is always tough but has been a little tougher this year. Jeremy is still far away and will be far away for the next 2 years:( I had to euthanize Brutus, one of my pet rats, last week:( and things at the wildlife center are---well--it's winter. Winter means things are slow and we're getting more than our fare share of death at the center. The national average release rate for wildlife rehabilitation is only about ~30%. That means, over the entire year, only 30% of the animals we get in will survive. The rest will either die or be humanely euthanized. However, this percentage is skewed depending on the season. During the spring and summer, we get a lot of healthy babies admitted into our nurseries. They have a higher release rate, because many of the nursery animals come in healthy. ALL of the adults we get in are sick or injured (if they were healthy, people would not have been able to catch them) so they will have a lower average release rate. During the fall/winter, we only get in adults--which means the release rate goes down--and the death rate goes up--which can get a bit depressing. Right about now, during the first month that the lakes and foliage freezes over, we get a lot of chonic injury patients in. Animals are tough and many can live with injuries, like geese with broken wings, as long as there is abundant food and there is open water for them to swim away from predators. But come winter and the rest of the flock has left, the food is under 2 feet of snow and the lake has frozen over--the goose gets weak and sick--people are able to catch it b/c it's so sick--they bring it to me--I examine it's wing--find an old, healed fracture--healed in such a way that the goose will never be able to fly/migrate--I can't fix it--I have to euthanize it.

This scenario happens more often than not unfortunately. At least I can give the animal a death w/o suffering.

Most of our patients this year have injuries that were caused by humans--sad:(

This little turtle was "rescued" by people in september. Turtles are on their own from day 1 so they are never 'orphaned'. If the people would have left him alone he would be hibernating by now; instead, he's staying with us for the winter. Most people don't know how to properly house turtles, so these guys we get in are often sick from poor husbandry. We do the best we can at the center to give them an optimal habitat, but nothing can replicate mother nature so hopefully he makes it through until spring when we can release him!

the xray below is of an opossum that came in not able to use his hind legs. You can see one bullet that's near his spinal cord--that one is the one causing the problems. The rest of the bullets are just under the skin and aren't a problem. I showed one of the bullets I removed to my brother (who hunts) and he said they are from a pellet gun. That coupled with the fact that opossums don't attack (when threatened by a human, their defense is to sit still--or play dead--and open their mouths wide to show their abundant teeth--they virtually NEVER jump, lunge or run)--> so this means that someone (likely a kid) stood over this poor opossum, shot directly at him 6 times--that's 6 individual trigger pulls--and then left him to die. I was soooooo angry when i put this all together. So far, he's regained some movement back but it will be a month or two until we know if he's doing well enough for release.

So as not to end on a negative note, here's a picture of some uber cute cygnets!! Also--tomorrow the days start getting longer!! YAY!!! EAT IT WINTER SOLSTICE!!

COOT! SWANS! and a merganser:)

Above is a red-breasted merganser that was admitted b/c he was stuck in a courtyard. Nothing wrong with him; likely just didn't have enough room to take off. Finders brought him in just in case he was hurt.
Above is an american coot! They are very cool birds--it's hard to see but instead of fully webbed feet, they have sort of scalloped webs on each toe. Since the most common reason for admittance is human-induced injury, this guy was no exception. Some kids had been beating on him when the finders found him. Luckily, some anti inflammatories and rest got this coot back to normal! He'll be released after this cold spell.
We get a lot of trumpeter swans in this time of year. Many of them have lead poisoning from eating tackle that's fallen to the bottom of lakes and ponds. By the time they are weak enough to be caught, they are often too sick to be saved. It happens to other animals as well. Most notably, bald eagles often eat dead deer (ie hunter shot but couldn't track) or deer guts from a kill that have lead shot in it, and end up with lead poisoning. Personally, and granted I'm biased, ALL tackle and shot should be made out of steel or other non-lead metals b/c of the risk to any animal that ingests it.