This is my “slow” season??

Well, granted, since it’s not baby season, I’m not taking in 30-35 critters a month, but I still have a full house at the moment, with three red tails, a screech owl, two flying squirrels and a robin. I think that’s everybody, anyway…

The older flyer is pretty fully recovered from his cat attack and will overwinter with me now. Below are a couple of obligatory cute shots of him.

This barred owl came in with a severely damaged eye and a cracked beak after being hit by a car. See the bruise on the inside of his beak?

The beak was actually healing nicely, but he lost sight in his “good” eye and the damaged one began to shrivel. At this point, our only option was to euthanize the poor fellow.

The mature female red tail from the last update has been cleared for transfer for flight conditioning. For those of you who wonder why I don’t do my own flight conditioning, at the moment I don’t have even one raptor flight pen. One flight pen is sufficient for all my songbirds, but the raptor world doesn’t work that way. The various species of raptors don’t play well together, necessitating multiple flight pens. Bubba & Friends raptor rehab has 14 flight pens, so my raptors are transferred there for flight conditioning.

The first year red tail from the Nov. update continues to progress nicely. She goes in next week for another x-ray. This shot was taken at Smalley’s a couple of weeks ago, on her last visit. Doesn’t she look festive, thanks to vet Shelley Baumann?

This brown thrasher, Georgia’s state bird, came in from a neighboring county. He had been snatched from a dog’s mouth, and I suspect he had crushed ribs—as a rule, dogs crush; cats tear/puncture—but he died 10 minutes after I picked him up, before I could get him to the vet for x-rays.

However, this cat-attacked robin was lucky in that he only lost his tail feathers. While birds without tail feathers can fly, they have no real control over direction; the tail acts as a sort of rudder. This perfectly healthy robin will be with me until his tail feathers begin growing back in.

Screech owls are amazingly vicious to be so small, so I’ve resigned myself to being a pincushion when working with them. This little red phase screech, probably HBC, has a trashed left eye and a broken left shoulder. The eye is irreparable; the wing is a “wait and see” issue—the break is close to the joint, so it may freeze the joint as it heals.

In news of the weird, this has to be one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen. Folks brought me this barred owl, found by the side of the road, last Friday night and when I picked him up to assess the damage, I felt matted feathers. Not good, I thought, probably an open fracture…and then as I tried in the dim light of the parking lot to find the wing to palpate it, I realized there was no wing. The owl’s wing had been ripped off!

I honestly didn’t expect him to make it through the night, but Saturday morning he was alert and aggressive. The ripped-off wing, however, was a death sentence for the poor owl. Vet Richie Hatcher saw this guy and was as amazed as I had been that he survived such a traumatic injury, but our only option was to euthanize.

The next day, Sunday, I got a call that I’m still fuming about. A person who brought me gray squirrels in late summer and KNEW it’s illegal to possess wildlife without a permit had found a young flying squirrel and had been “trying to rehab” him for a week. Okay, first off, only LICENSED rehabbers can rehab; anyone else is just screwing around with animals illegally.  Secondly, this person cut corners by using some off-brand formula and then called me when the poor little flyer began failing because of a week’s worth of improper diet.

I took the flyer and didn’t hold out much hope, frankly. He was dehydrated, underweight, had diarrhea, and began having seizures, as well. Monday morning we headed to Smalley’s, where vet Peggy Hobby and I discussed possible treatment options. We tried an injection of vitamins given to animals when they’re malnourished, and I called a squirrels-only rehabber, Sarah Rowe, of Columbus, GA, to see what else she recommended. Between the three of us, we came up with a treatment plan that we were honestly not sure would save his little life. In fact, that night, he began having grand mal seizures, one after another, which was a horrifying thing to watch.

By the next morning, however, he was showing some slight signs of improvement, and as of today, he’s still scruffy looking but is alert and eating well and hasn’t had a seizure in two days. We still don’t know the extent of the brain damage, if any, from the two days of seizures, though, and he may be unreleasable. Only time will tell.

Soapbox time here, people: I can grit my teeth and deal with folks who screw up wildlife out of ignorance, but KNOWING what you’re doing is illegal and KNOWING that there’s a licensed rehabber less than 20 miles away means there’s absolutely NO excuse for half-killing an animal with arrogant stupidity. You can’t cut corners on food or care, and there’s a hell of a lot more to rehab than just feeding an animal. You’ve got to know what to feed, how much, how often, what dietary supplements to provide, what potential parasites or other health problems to look for, etc., etc. There’s a REASON we have permits; they show we have the knowledge and training needed to give the wildlife in our care the best possible chance at survival and release. I don’t care how “cute” or “cuddly” the critter is, the bottom line is that if it’s in your possession for longer than it takes to get it to a licensed rehabber, you’re breaking the law—and what kind of example is that to set for your children?? Huh??? Did you ever think about that??

Okay, deep breath here, and on to a “kudos to you” tale. The huge (nearly 4 lbs!) adult female red tail pictured below was spotted by an individual who watched her for nearly an hour before deciding that she was in distress. This was a perfectly reasonable course of action, and I applaud this person for having the presence of mind to observe closely before taking action. When I got her, my initial exam indicated nothing was broken and she didn’t show signs of any of the common diseases red tails are prone to, so I decided to have my wonderful vets at Smalley’s take a look at her to see if I’d missed anything. In the time it took me to get her to the clinic, she started bleeding from the beak—NOT a good sign.

Vet Peggy Hobby and I discussed the possibilities: she could have a bit of bone lodged the wrong way in her crop; it could be trauma from a collision with a vehicle…or—my first thought and one Peggy & I hated to contemplate—she’d eaten a mouse or rat that had ingested rat poison. We opted to err on the side of caution and treat her for poisoning.

For those of you who don’t understand how rat poison works, when the rodent ingests the poison, it causes internal bleeding. The animal bleeds to death. While it’s dying, however, it’s slow and easy prey for a raptor, who then ingests the poison second-hand and, if not treated in time, will also bleed to death. This is why I’m adamantly against poisons, insecticides, pesticides, etc.—they kill innocent victims, and it’s an agonizing death.

This lady was lucky that an observant bystander noticed her odd behavior and got her to LWR early enough that minimal damage seems to have occurred. She threw up the morning after intake and, as we’d suspected, there was a nasty, congealed mass of dead mouse. But there was no more bleeding, which was a good sign. Today is her third day in rehab, and as of this morning she’s no longer throwing up, she’s perching most of the time, and we’re still not seeing any further bleeding. It’s obvious that she’s still not fully recovered, but she’s getting there. We’re cautiously optimistic at this point that she’s gonna make it.  Tomorrow I’ll offer her a mouse to eat on her own; I’ve been hand-feeding her, and now it’s time to see if she’s recovered to the point that she’ll eat without help.

What do I want for Christmas? For all the critters currently under my care to be releasable!