Y’all know how skilled my vets at Smalley’s are—or you should, anyway. Well, they’ve come through yet again. Remember the screech with the slit lower eyelid from last week’s update? I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, for the most part.
I took him in Monday afternoon, and Jim quickly discovered the damage was more severe than either of us initially thought. Essentially, the eyelid was slit from corner to corner and right up to the edge of the ear; Jim said the screech came close to losing the entire eyeball. But it looked clear and the third eyelid was functional, so...
I took him in Monday afternoon, and Jim quickly discovered the damage was more severe than either of us initially thought. Essentially, the eyelid was slit from corner to corner and right up to the edge of the ear; Jim said the screech came close to losing the entire eyeball. But it looked clear and the third eyelid was functional, so...
Going under...
Examining the eyelid...
Checking the sutures...
Checking the eyeball and third eyelid after surgery...
Look how close the damage was to the opening to his ear!
About 30 minutes post-surgery...
Two days post-surgery. Lookin' good!
Yep, the eyelid is functional, as is the third eyelid. The eyeball is clear (that film you see is the antibiotic ointment I was using on his eye, in addition to oral antibiotics); the pupil is responsive to light. He still squints it a lot, and there’s still some swelling, but overall it’s looking really promising at the moment. My vets are nothing short of miracle workers!
The antsy first-year red tail will be released this week, as rain chances are nil for most of the week.
The antsy first-year red tail will be released this week, as rain chances are nil for most of the week.
Sadly, a mature red tail wasn’t as lucky. He came in with limp and useless legs that failed the pinch test, severe beak-breathing, and what looked to be early-onset frounce. I’d planned to get him in for x-rays the following day to see if maybe we had a pelvic or hip fracture, but he didn’t make it through the night.
A hunter coming out of his stand near dark found this young yellow-bellied sapsucker and brought him to LWR the next day. He was lethargic, cool to the touch and his eyes were dull. I put him on low heat and offered some watered-down maple syrup—similar to tree sap—which he eagerly ate. I was hopeful he had a chance, but he died within four hours of intake, poor fellow. LWR doesn’t see many sapsuckers; I think the last one before this fellow was about two years ago, and it was releasable. It’s slightly easier to remember the outcomes for the birds you only see one or two of every few years.
And this afternoon, yet another red-phase screech came in. His finders thought his left eye was missing; it’s badly infected and the pupil looks to be misshapen through the goop in the eye, which may signify a luxated lens. It’s gonna take a couple of days of antibiotics before his eye is clear enough for the vets to see past the goop, though. But he—or she, slightly larger than "eyelid" screech—has other issues. The right eye is nonresponsive to light and the beak is off kilter, suggesting a broken jaw that healed in the wild.
It may be that there’s still just severe head trauma going on; we’ll have to wait and see on this fellow.
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