Counting my Coops before they “hatch”…

The Coop rescue that “headlined” last Sunday’s update was one of those rare instances where a raptor versus vehicle encounter ended well for the raptor, and I was delighted to detail her rescue and treatment—and very optimistic about her chances for release. However…in one of those heartbreaking turns of events all too common in wildlife rehab, the Coop died during the week. Accipiters are notoriously stressy birds, so the general tendency is to get ‘em in and get ‘em out as quickly as possible. Given her sutured elbow, though, she needed extra time and medication before release…time enough, apparently, to stress out and keel over.

She was fine at lights-out and dead the next morning, and immediately the rehabber litany of self-blame began. What did I miss? What didn’t I do that I should have done? What did I do that I shouldn’t have done? Every rehabber who loses an animal is familiar with the drill, as we go through it Every. Single. Time. one of our rehabs dies in our care…

Here’s my checklist for this deceased Coop:

·        Eating well? Check

·        Poop normal? Check

·        Casting pellets? Check

·        Pellets normal? Check

·        Alert and active? Check and check

·        Sutures in place? Check

·        Still on meds? Check

·        No signs of infection? Nope

·        No signs of frounce or capillaria? Nope

Add to this that a vet exam showed no injuries aside from the elbow gash that we sutured, and you come up with a big fat “WHY?”  I have no clue, aside from the fact that Coops are accipiters, and as such, psychotic. It’s like they sit there and decide, “I’ll show you. If you won’t release me to rip my wing open and die from infection, I’ll just drop dead in my crate overnight, anyway—that’ll teach ya.”

In less depressing news, despite the threat (and in most of the state, the reality) of bad weather last week, we only got rain, so as soon as it stopped I was able to release both the pigeon and the killdeer by just leaving the flight pen door open for them to leave when they chose to. As you may recall, I refused to put them in the pen together, so the day the pigeon left, the killdeer went in. The pigeon hung around for a few post-release photos; the killdeer did not. Before moving him into the flight pen, though, I did snap updated photos of his injured eye versus his uninjured eye. He wasn’t totally blind in the injured eye, which was excellent news.

The flyers are growing apace and now eating the solid foods I’ve been offering them for two weeks. About the middle of last week it suddenly dawned on them that the solid foods they’d been previously peeing all over at night, giving me a lovely, soggy mess to clean up every morning, weren’t actually toilets. Now they’re happily nibbling away on their goodies—as long as I’m not watching. Within another week or so, they’ll need a larger cage, too.

And while the weather in my neck of the woods was tolerable last week, north of us was hit pretty hard by more snow and ice, meaning that the downy GHO didn’t make it to Bubba & Friends, after all. We’re aiming at a transfer this week, as no snow or ice is predicted. Meanwhile, the little rascal has noticeably grown in just a week, and I swear, if you stand next to his “nest” box very quietly, you can hear him growing! He no longer inhales small mice; now it’s most of a whole rat at every feeding!