Only one intake this past week; unfortunately, it was a hit by car (HBC) barred owl—an adult female—whose wing was trashed. Based on the location and nature of the open fracture, I suspect she was hit by the side-view mirror. Her wing faced the complete opposite direction from normal; that, coupled with the fact that it was an open fracture, was a death sentence for the poor lady. If there is an “up” side to a euthanasia, in this case it would be that it’s about a month too early (most years, anyway) for her to’ve had eggs or babies in the nest. Small comfort, maybe, but we rehabbers take what we can get.

My vets and I try to make even euthanasias learning experiences, so I’m offering the same opportunity to you with the photos below—nothing gruesome, so don’t worry!

I’ve posted photos of owl ears before, but here’s another good shot. Owls’ ears are hidden in the “ruff” of feathers around their faces and they’re situated slightly unevenly relative to each other—and yes, they’re enormous in proportion to the size of their heads. This is why owls are such excellent hunters: even when they can’t see their prey in the underbrush, they can home in on the (to human ears) imperceptible noises it makes.

And how do they swoop down silently on their prey—or behind you, startling the living daylights out of you? Take a look at the edges of their feathers below. Those ragged, wispy edges “cut” the air, allowing the owl to glide silently through the night. Neat, huh?

There are just 2 weeks remaining in the LWR online raffle, and  so far only three people have their names in the pot for the drawing.  For those who may need a reminder, Macon, Georgia’s Grand Opera House has very generously donated 2 tickets to Bring It On: The Musical in January and through Dec. 6, donors will have their names entered into the drawing for the tickets, valued at $100. For every $5 donated, your name will go in the pot once, i.e., donate $25 and you’re entered 5 times. You can use the PayPal links located on each page of the website to donate, or mail your donations to Laurens Wildlife Rescue, 1101-L Hillcrest Pkwy, PMB #255, Dublin, GA 31021. The lucky winner will be announced in the Dec. 8 update!

Sales of the 2014 calendars, featuring 12 photos of LWR’s “guests” in 2013 and available from Lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/shop/laurens-wildlife-rescue-2014-calendar/calendar/product-21282459.html?showPreview=true , are also very sluggish. Remember that all proceeds above Lulu.com’s fees will be used to fund LWR’s operations next year, so buy lots of calendars—they’ll make great Christmas gifts or stocking stuffers! The button below will take you directly to the Lulu site and add a calendar to your shopping cart automatically.

Finally, the flyers are becoming less willing to be photographed or filmed as they mature. For them, this is a good thing, as it means they’re “wilding up” nicely and will be more than ready for release come spring; for you it means fewer opportunities to see the cute little rascals. These days even I rarely see more than a little brown head popping out to see if I’m done putting out their food for the night.

I did manage a short video in which you can hear one of the little darlings “chirping”. The image quality isn’t the best, but the sound is what I wanted to capture, so you know what flying squirrels sound like and can listen for it outside at night.

LWR received several calls this past week, but none that resulted in new intakes—which I will NOT complain about this time of year. The break is nice!

And you benefit from it in that you get a whole update with only cuteness: flyers, flyers and more flyers!

First, though, a reminder that LWR has the online raffle still ongoing… Macon, Georgia’s Grand Opera House has very generously donated 2 tickets to Bring It On: The Musical in January and we’re “raffling” them off in an online drawing. From now until Dec. 6, donors will have their names entered into the drawing for the tickets, valued at $100. For every $5 donated, your name will go in the pot once, i.e., donate $25 and you’re entered 5 times. You can use the PayPal links located on each page of the website to donate, or mail your donations to Laurens Wildlife Rescue, 1101-L Hillcrest Pkwy, PMB #255, Dublin, GA 31021. The lucky winner will be announced in the Dec. 8 update! So far we have just two people in the running for these tickets, so if you wanna take a stab at winning them, donate now—time’s a-wastin’!

 And we also have the 2014 calendars available from Lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/shop/laurens-wildlife-rescue-2014-calendar/calendar/product-21282459.html?showPreview=true . Every critter featured was one of LWR’s “guests” in 2013. Remember that all proceeds above Lulu.com’s fees will be used to fund LWR’s operations next year, so buy lots of calendars—they’ll make great Christmas gifts or stocking stuffers! The button below will take you directly to the Lulu site and add a calendar to your shopping cart automatically.

And on a very serious note, last week a LWR volunteer passed along an alert concerning an illegally held wild animal that resulted in having to get the game warden involved, and we still don’t have the situation resolved. Please remember that no matter HOW cute a wild animal or bird is, if you do not have proper state and/or federal permits, HAVING WILDLIFE IN YOUR POSSESSION IS ILLEGAL. The penalties can range from stiff fines to jail time, depending on the species and level of legal protection it enjoys. When I am made aware of these situations, believe me, I WILL contact the game warden and alert him, and he will investigate. I’m very fortunate to have a good working relationship with my game wardens, so my advice is not to make me go all legal on you—you find wildlife needing care; you call me or another rehabber. The wildlife gets the care it needs; everyone stays within the bounds of the law; nobody gets hit with fines; I don’t have to break out the voodoo dolls and hatpins.

Now, with all the serious stuff laid out for your edification, let’s move on to the overwintering flyers in all their adorable glory. No further comments even needed! (Except see above about the legal ramifications of possessing wildlife without a permit—THAT always needs to be reinforced.)

Let’s lead with a follow-up on last week’s barred owl—the one I was sure had a badly fractured or dislocated shoulder. The poor bird checked out overnight, but I took his carcass in for x-rays anyway, because I wanted to see just what was going on with that shoulder. As a reminder, I’ve re-posted a shot of the shoulder from last week.

I’m extremely fortunate that I have vets at Smalley’s Animal Hospital who share my intellectual curiosity. Turns out the shoulder was neither fractured nor dislocated. The poor bird had a massive growth, probably cancerous, on the bone, and it was breaking through the skin. This isn’t a common occurrence, so leave it to me to get the weird stuff, right?

The same Monday I took the barred owl carcass in for x-rays, I got in a first-year female red tailed hawk (RT).  Her entire left leg from the ankle down was necrotic, i.e., it was dead. 

The flesh was cold and black, it reeked, and the skin was peeling off in huge flakes.  There was absolutely nothing we could do for this gorgeous bird.  A best-guess scenario is that as an inexperienced huntress, she didn’t grab a squirrel correctly avoid his powerful jaws. He bit her; it got infected; what you see is the end result.

Even if federal law allowed amputation of a leg/foot in a raptor, I wouldn’t do it. Raptors need two healthy feet to properly hold and tear the flesh of their prey. Also, birds that large need both legs to stand on, so they can shift their weight from one to the other. Without the ability to shift weight in that manner, they’re highly prone to all sorts of stress-related issues on that one leg, not the least of which is bumblefoot, cracking and tearing of the flesh from the pressure of standing on the one good foot all the time—much like pressure sores (or bedsores) in human bedridden patients. I’d rather the bird die with dignity than be put through that sort of hell for the rest of her life.

In more pleasant news, the flyers are completely weaned from hand-feeding but as I’ve mentioned before, they’ve not been in the wild to stockpile mast for the winter and find a suitable cavity for shelter during the colder days ahead, so they’ll overwinter with me, to be released as soon as possible next spring. (They do have a nice little stockpile of goodies in their pen, however…in the nest box, in the corners of the pen, under the pads lining the pen…)

I managed to snag a better video of the little rascals bouncing off the walls of their pen.

And here they’re eating their pecan treats. Pecans are like candy bars for squirrels of any species: tasty but totally lacking in real nutritive value. For that reason, they get pecans only every other day, as a treat. 

Look at those gorgeous little feather-like tails and those huge, dark eyes! Hard to believe they’re the same tiny little eyes-closed dolls who came in late in September, huh?!

Please remember our two current fund-raising efforts: Macon, Georgia’s Grand Opera House has very generously donated 2 tickets to Bring It On: The Musical in January and we’ll be “raffling” them off in an online drawing. From now until Dec. 6, donors will have their names entered into the drawing for the tickets, valued at $100. For every $5 donated, your name will go in the pot once, i.e., donate $25 and you’re entered 5 times. You can use the PayPal links located on each page of the website to donate, or mail your donations to Laurens Wildlife Rescue, 1101-L Hillcrest Pkwy, PMB #255, Dublin, GA 31021. The lucky winner will be announced in the Dec. 8 update!

Also, the 2014 Laurens Wildlife Rescue calendar is available at http://www.lulu.com/shop/laurens-wildlife-rescue-2014-calendar/calendar/product-21282459.html?showPreview=true . All proceeds above Lulu.com’s fees will be used to fund LWR’s operations next year, so buy lots of calendars—they’ll make great Christmas gifts or stocking stuffers! The button below will take you directly to the Lulu site and add a calendar to your shopping cart automatically.

Finally, a “housekeeping” note: This Week in Wildlife will be updated on Monday, Nov. 18 next week, rather than on Sunday. Just FYI!

I have a love-hate relationship with this time of year. I love fall—always have. After I became a wildlife rehabber, my love for fall increased because it meant the end of hectic baby season. However…it also means the time of year I see the most unfixable injuries, especially in raptors. And that, my friends, sucks—big time.

Last week I had the vulture that I told you would require euthanasia, and he did. Early that Sunday evening, I received a juvenile American coot who was unable to use his legs. I was hopeful this was a fixable injury, and when Monday’s x-rays showed no hip or pelvic fractures, vet Richie Hatcher and I were pretty excited that we might be able to save this bird. Of course, we also knew that there was the very real possibility of spinal trauma that would preclude release…

And that is indeed what we had. The poor coot reached the point in three days that he was unable to even float levelly in water—and “begged” to get out of the water, in fact. So we called it on him.

The very afternoon after we euthanized the coot, I was called about a downed red tailed hawk (RT) in a neighboring county. The deputy who found him was willing to meet me halfway, so near dark on a rainy evening, I picked up an adult male RT who had no apparent fractures but was somewhat “out of it.” The deputy said he’d been feisty in the box, and indeed, he seemed active on the way home. My initial assumption, from the cursory parking lot exam under an umbrella, was a probable concussion.

When I got the RT home and performed a more thorough exam, he turned out to be rail thin, so I grabbed the treatment for capillaria, nasty little crop parasites RTs are prone to, and started to treat him. And he had a violent seizure in my arms.

**WARNING**  The video below shows the RT in the throes of a massive seizure. It’s not pretty, but it’s the harsh reality rehabbers face regularly. As I’ve reminded you often, it’s not all warm and cuddly. 

This was the beginning of a night of non-stop seizures. I’m not currently set up for home euthanasia, but that will change this week. Had I had the proper supplies on hand, the RT wouldn’t have suffered all night. Honestly, I didn’t expect him to survive the night, but he did. It was again Richie Hatcher of Smalley’s Animal Hospital who euthanized the RT Saturday morning.  Poor Richie performed all three euthanasias for me last week…

Today a barred owl came in with what appears to be either a severely displaced or broken shoulder. Only x-rays will confirm which, but it’s a nasty and probably life-ending injury…So yeah, I’ll be back at Smalley’s in the morning with this bird, as well…

The flyers, as they begin to eat more on their own, are becoming shyer and shyer—and more active nocturnally. I managed a couple of photos when I woke them earlier today, and the video was filmed in the near-dark, so it’s pretty awful, but you can get an idea of how insanely active the little rascals are at night.

Now for a bit of good news on the fundraising front: Macon, Georgia’s Grand Opera House has very generously donated 2 tickets to Bring It On: The Musical in January to LWR to use in an online raffle! Here’s the way this works: from now until Dec. 6, donors will have their names entered into the drawing for the tickets, which are a $100 value. For every $5 donated, your name will go in the pot once, i.e., donate $25 and you’re entered 5 times. You can use the PayPal links located on each page of the website to donate, or mail your donations to Laurens Wildlife Rescue, 1101-L Hillcrest Pkwy, PMB #255, Dublin, GA 31021. In the Dec. 8 update, I’ll announce the lucky winner!

 And finally, for those of you who’ve been so patiently awaiting this, the 2014 Laurens Wildlife Rescue calendar is available at http://www.lulu.com/shop/laurens-wildlife-rescue-2014-calendar/calendar/product-21282459.html?showPreview=true. Again, all proceeds above Lulu.com’s cut will be used to fund LWR’s operations next year, so buy lots of calendars—they’ll make great Christmas gifts or stocking stuffers!