Not a great week

Actually, “not a great week” is a bit of an understatement, to be honest. It was a pretty horrific week.
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The week got off to a bad start when, on Sunday night, an adult male red shoulder came in with an open wing fracture and a shattered leg. This wasn’t an injury that required x-rays, as the bone was clearly exposed and there was no nerve response in the leg, so I ended his suffering that night.

​The kestrel did at least receive good news; his wing has callused nicely and he has “flight clearance” as soon as the weather cooperates. I don’t put kestrels outside in extreme temps and we’re in for another of those weeks, so he’s inside for the next week.

​It was mixed news on the crow. The corneal ulcer has finally healed but the wing fracture, after six weeks, shows no signs of even beginning to callus. Not good. Vet Richie Hatcher at Smalley’s Animal Hospital says they generally give mammals three months before saying it’s a non-union (i.e., non-healing) fracture, so we’re giving the crow the same length of time. But we both know it’s probably not going to heal, not if it’s showing no signs at this point. Still, as Richie likes to say, “You can always euthanize later but once it’s done you can’t take it back.”

​An adult great blue heron came in late in the week, found by the roadside. His right leg felt broken in or near the joint, and x-rays the next day confirmed that the fracture, an old one, had begun to heal, despite the bird’s inability to stand. Given the odd angle of his hock (ankle), which wasn’t broken, vet Jim Hobby and I guessed that he’d been able to stand by putting most of his weight on the good leg for a while and that initial cold snap we had was the final nail in his coffin, poor bird. There was no nerve response in his leg and given the severity of the break and the fact that it had started healing badly, we had no humane option outside euthanasia.

​And, as if all this wasn’t bad enough, the young barnie, who’d been in the flight pen since before Christmas, managed to break his wing right at the shoulder. I’d just been in the raptor flight to put out his food for the night, and he flew to the opposite end while I was doing so. I walked out, latched the door, and was freshening up bird feeders and baths when I heard him scream, not more than five minutes after I’d walked out. He didn’t stop screaming, and it didn’t sound like the normal barnie scream, so I ran back over, and when I opened the flight door, he was thrashing on the ground about midway the pen, screaming nonstop and unable to get up. It was immediately obvious his right wing was broken. I brought him back inside to wait till morning to get x-rays to confirm what I already knew, and during the night, after the pain meds wore off, he began gnawing at his elbow because of the pain. X-rays the next morning confirmed that the break was unfixable; he required euthanasia. The video below was taken when I started to box him up to bring in overnight; you can see the odd angle of the right wing and hear his pain.

My best guess is that he might have had some sort of epileptic-style seizure while flying toward his food, causing him to crash and pin that wing in such a way that it snapped. Given the way he was thrashing about helplessly when I opened the flight door, it seems a logical assumption. And it sucks. There’s just nothing else to be said. It sucks.
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The red-tail, barred owl and red shoulder recovering from wing fractures are all—what is it the hospitals say?—stable, that’s it. They’re eating well and alert.

​And the flyers, of course, are as busy as they can be when the lights go off.