Warning: Cuteness overload below!

First, of course, let’s get the updates and sadnesses out of the way, then we’ll move to adorable.

The nighthawk has been using her wing fairly normally in a confined space, so this week will be the big test as I move her into the flight pen and keep my fingers crossed that she can fly normally. It’s not too late for her to make migration if she can just fly!

The egret I was pretty sure wasn’t gonna make it last Sunday did in fact die that night…or, more precisely, in the wee hours Monday morning. I have to admit, I was disappointed. By lights-out he was standing and alert; at 1AM he was still alive…but by 6:30 he had died. Since he was keeping his food down and even starting to resist being fed, I really feel like it was the hundreds of fire ant bites covering his thin little body that did him in.

When the call came in this week about a red tail with a “dangling” leg, I shuddered, figuring this was not going to end well. Upon seeing the bird, a first-year male, and examining his limp leg, I knew I was right. 

Vet Peggy Hobby of Smalley’s Animal Hospital, who has to be tired of seeing me walk in with yet another unfixable bird, agreed. The fracture—or fractures, as the bone was pretty much shattered—was just below the joint.

In case you’ve ever wondered what it looks like from my viewpoint when I’m holding a raptor, here’s a shot that pretty well shows it.

And, of course, we did have to euthanize this poor fellow. 

But not all was gloom and doom at LWR last week, thank goodness!

Early in the week, I received a call from a fellow rehabber in extreme South Georgia who’s not currently doing anything but deer. She’d gotten a call from a fellow whose dog had attacked a female flying squirrel who had babies. He’d taken the mama from his dog’s mouth and rescued the babies—apparently the entire nest cavity had fallen (flyers are cavity nesters).  After making sure I was taking flyers, she gave me his contact info, and I immediately called him. Turned out his license had been suspended and he had no way to get the flyers to me. After two hours of calls on his part and mine, I was able to locate a contact who had a volunteer (thanks, Barbara and Heidi!) who lived in the area and was willing to meet me halfway with the mama and babies.

So at 10:45 at night, she and I met for me to pick up the flyers. I knew immediately that Mama Flyer was done for. Dog jaws are designed to crush, and her entire back end was crushed and dangling limply. My best option was to remove the babies from her box as soon as I got them home, as I didn’t want them attempting to nurse a dead mother during the night. The guy had said he’d seen the babies trying to nurse but based on their behavior, I didn’t think they’d been getting much, and it had been over five hours since we started this mini-drama. They needed food.

But first, the fleas that Mama Flyer carried that she normally would have groomed off her babies were migrating from her dying body to those of her babies. Baby Flyers needed flea baths immediately—which was also a good time for exams to see if any of them were injured and to check genders. All four were male—what are the odds of that?—and only one had a small puncture wound in his inside right thigh. Once they were dried and the wounded fellow was medicated, we started formula.

Mama Flyer did indeed check out overnight, but all four babies are doing well. The last set of “big little” liquid brown eyes opened last night, so they’re about five weeks old—still at the “eat and pass out” age. That will be changing over the next few weeks, as they begin experimenting with solid foods and become more active at night.

Flying squirrels are nocturnal, meaning that they’re active at night. They don’t chatter like their diurnal cousins the gray squirrels do; their little voices sound like birds chirping at night. There hasn’t been nearly the research done on flyers that there has on grays, but the best estimates are that their populations are at least as numerous as, maybe more so than, than grays.

However, they’re not usually seen in large numbers in rehab settings, which is probably why rehabbers turn into squeeing mounds of mush when they have the opportunity to work with the sweet little rascals. The personality difference between flyers and grays is, no pun intended, night and day. Of course, the biggest physical differences, aside from size (flyers are quite small, with adults measuring 6-8 inches from nose to tail), are the skin flaps, the patagium, that stretch from each front leg to each back leg, giving flyers their unique gliding ability, and their flat, feathery tails that serve as rudders when they’re gliding.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll work diligently to provide a really good photo of the patagium on one of these little darlings; gliding vids, if they happen at all, are quite a way off just yet!