the sadness of rehab

 I was at the wildlife place today and it turned out to be kind of a bummer.  When I arrived we had a whole ward of animals that had come in over the prior 24 hours.  The very first thing you have to do is make food for everyone. Each kind of animal has its own special dietary need so you sometimes end up with 12 different batches of food needing to be made.  A lot of the animals especially the birds need to be tube fed so they also may need various kinds of slurry made in addition. After preparing all the food you deliver it to the prospective places. They have a ward where most of the birds are, a nursery which tends to be mostly small mammals, and then the basement is where all the babies will end up when spring hits and the craziness starts, but right now the basement is home to the feeder rat cages.   They also have the area called the hill where there are many different cages and animals that hang out sometimes for 10 days and sometimes for years depending on their needs.

After you have your dishes made with each patients food. You next need to get weights on them all and then transfer everyone into clean cages to perform all treatments required. Today we had a bunch of birds in the ward that needed care. One was a juvenile gull with a broken wing. He had to be tube fed and wasn’t all that nice about it. We also had a crow that wasn’t doing so great. He had a head tilt and also wasn’t eating well on his own so we were tube feeding him and he also needed antibiotics and subcutaneous fluids. It was my first time giving SQ fluids to a bird and I have to admit not nearly the same as a cat or dog. There were some baby pigeons that were all in various stages of growing so all four also needed to be tube fed. And then a bunch of random other birds to be weighed and cleaned. It took about an hour and a half to get all the ward animals taken care off.

Next we (I and Maureen my fellow volunteer) moved to the nursery. All that was in the nursery was an adult squirrel that was attacked by a dog and not using its hand legs. Something I have learned since starting there is that adult squirrels are mean little buggers, and when they are injured and unable to move their hind end, it seems to bring out that meanness in spades.   Anyways despite him hissing and slapping at me I was able to get him wrapped up in a towel and weighed and the medications given. . After doing the basement feeder rats, oh and the feeder rats are the only animal you can talk to or cuddle but they are also wild and so they will bite ya if you try.  Next I headed outside and do all the hill animals. At this time of year we don’t have any animals out on the hill. There is one aviary with four pigeons hanging out trying to get a little more fattened up till they get released, there is another aviary with five song birds that are all also working to get more body weight on em till they also can be released, there are a few super cute squirrels that are in partial hibernation since its so cold that you just have to check on and make sure they haven’t died, and a  lone raccoon with an eye infection. Man raccoons are so cute… The nice thing about the hill animals is that they are healthy enough and all eating on their own so no one needs the daily weights or medications like the inside animals do. It makes it much easier.
 

this is not the injured one but a healthy on up on the hill

 Once you have everything all feed and cleaned you start doing all the boring cleaning tasks and at his time the vet and the rehabilitaters go around to every animal and they get an assessment plan made for the day.  See a lot of times this is the first time these animals get examined by a vet and also this is the time that many of them get the decision that there injuries are too extreme to be saved. Unfortunately this was the decision made for the adult squirrel this morning.  I know that I have mentioned the differences in wild life rehab verses clinic work in the past but today was another day when it really showed how extreme those differences really are.  See I was doing laundry and part of that is to restock the cabinets in the ward and nursery with clean laundry. I went back into the nursery where the squirrel was a few hours before and all of the sudden his cage was empty. There was no announcement of his death given. He just wasn’t there any longer and you know that is the only reason why he would be gone. Going into the ward restocking the laundry there was also how I  learned that the gull and the crow had the same unfortunate fate.

this is another one that is healthy and doing great.

This is the part that I find so sad. I mean I get it, I really do. But see in my clinic we sometimes go out the way to make sure everyone knows an animal got put down. The owners get to be around for as much or as little as they want. And everyone takes the time to just give a few little strokes to the animal both as its happening and even afterwords. We try to handle the deceased with extremely gentle care and placing them in the freezer in as nice a position as possible.  In animal rehab there is none of that. Its not that nobody cares, because we do, but it’s a much more emotionless process. I left this afternoon after my shift was over and as I got into my car I couldn’t help but bawl my eyes out for the poor crow and gull and squirrel. I felt bad that their last hours were spent being tube fed, manhandled and poked… I was sad that I never got to say goodbye, or wish them well, or heck even say a little player into the world for em.  It makes me sad that none of them had an owner who would now be missing them. And it makes me sadder that they had to die alone.  I hope that none of them had little animal families waiting for them to come  back home to them.  I know you are not supposed to think of it that way but it’s hard not too.

This is not a picture of the crow today just a cool picture I found online that I thought fit.

I know that what we do is good and I understand that this is a huge part of the process. I can accept and appreciate this.  But some days its harder then others especially when your as sensitive as I am. I hate this part, the part where you have to deem an animal unsavable.  I get it I really do, but I still cry for them all. I just hope that that the crow understands how much I appreciated being able to learn how to give SQ fluids on him today. If nothing else I hope he is proud that his life allowed me to learn a new skill and for that I am forever grateful.  If I would have known that they were going to die a few hours after we had handled them maybe I could have done something to make its last few hours better, like a gentle pet, a calming touch,  or a kind word,. All things that you cannot do in rehab but you do all the time in veterinary medicine and it kind of sucks. Today I wish I could have been more of a vet tech instead of just a wildlife caretaker.