Well, a lot has been happening over the last 2 weeks. This post won't have any photo's with it. I'll be taking some more pictures tomorrow and include them on the next post.
We held our Fall yard sale this past weekend. We also included artwork donated by some well-known folks and some of my photo's. We made enough to cover the last order of mice, but I'm going to have another yard sale this Saturday only to hopefully make enough to cover an order of quail for the larger raptors. I have to place these orders every few weeks or so and I do get some meat donated by the local hunters, such as deer and elk, but this doesn't work well for all of the patients and the ones we do feed this meat to, occasionally need food with bones and fur or feathers to ingest for a proper diet. This is just one of our many expenses.
I've also had to travel to Salt Lake for some meetings with our wildlife agency for the state. That was very time consuming besides being expensive, but very necessary. Things are changing here in the state of Utah as far as wildlife rehabilitation and some of us are trying to ensure that those changes don't effect the wildlife in a negative capacity.
I have a group of Girl Scouts that come down to Price usually twice a year to volunteer to help with any projects that I need help with. They are wonderful. It's sad, however, that I don't receive this sort of help locally. These people travel about 100 miles each way to help, so this weekend they are going to help with the yard sale.
Last night I got a call around 9:30 pm from my local wildlife people telling me there was an injured hawk in Green River, Utah (120 miles round-trip) and they didn't have any one that could go and get it, so I called Connie (my right arm, and sometimes my left as well) and we both headed out. We brought back a juvenile female red-tail hawk. She had been down for several days and was thin, due to her inability to hunt as her right wing had a compound fracture in the humerus (the bone in your arm between your shoulder and elbow). It was infected and exposed. These type of injuries are very common unfortunately. This one was close to the elbow joint, meaning repair with good healing, that did not "freeze up" that joint, was not possible. She would not be releasable, so we made the painful decision to euthanize her. This is the worst part of what I do. The decision is NEVER easy, but it has to be made occasionally. My job, as a rehabilitator, is to put these creatures back into the wild where they belong. This is not always possible, so decisions have to be made as to how to handle each particular situation based on many factors. This bird was in excruciating pain................and now she no longer suffers.
We did release our red-tail hawk that has been with us for only a few weeks. We never named her, but she was an adult that was found on the side of a dirt road. The people were able to catch her (never a good sign) and called the wildlife department. She had no injuries, so we were not sure why she was down, most likely illness. She did have a large external parasite load which could be a clue to illness and the parasites took over since they are opportunistic in nature. We force fed her for a few days, giving her added nutrients with that food and then just gave her supportive care once she started eating on her own. We also treated her for the parasites. She made tremendous progress very quickly and ended up in our flight area exercising prior to release. Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's what it is all about and it's these times that make the difficult ones (like the last story) a little bit less heartbreaking (I said a LITTLE bit less).
Our little barn owl (Goshen) was transferred to the Willow Park Zoo last week with the help of DaLyn Erickson. She runs the rehabilitation program for the Ogden Nature Center. She was at one of the meetings in Salt Lake I attended, so I arranged it with her to get him to Willow Park Zoo which is up her end of the state. Rod, the wildlife rehabilitation director for Willow Park called to express how pleased he was with Goshen, so I hope Goshen will have a good life there in Logan, Utah.
Our eagle with all the medical problems will be seeing an eye specialist for his cataracts on the 30th of this month. We'll need to drive him into Salt Lake for this of course. He's getting stronger all the time, so I hope we can do something for his vision.
Well, time for sleep until tomorrow.
Debbie
We held our Fall yard sale this past weekend. We also included artwork donated by some well-known folks and some of my photo's. We made enough to cover the last order of mice, but I'm going to have another yard sale this Saturday only to hopefully make enough to cover an order of quail for the larger raptors. I have to place these orders every few weeks or so and I do get some meat donated by the local hunters, such as deer and elk, but this doesn't work well for all of the patients and the ones we do feed this meat to, occasionally need food with bones and fur or feathers to ingest for a proper diet. This is just one of our many expenses.
I've also had to travel to Salt Lake for some meetings with our wildlife agency for the state. That was very time consuming besides being expensive, but very necessary. Things are changing here in the state of Utah as far as wildlife rehabilitation and some of us are trying to ensure that those changes don't effect the wildlife in a negative capacity.
I have a group of Girl Scouts that come down to Price usually twice a year to volunteer to help with any projects that I need help with. They are wonderful. It's sad, however, that I don't receive this sort of help locally. These people travel about 100 miles each way to help, so this weekend they are going to help with the yard sale.
Last night I got a call around 9:30 pm from my local wildlife people telling me there was an injured hawk in Green River, Utah (120 miles round-trip) and they didn't have any one that could go and get it, so I called Connie (my right arm, and sometimes my left as well) and we both headed out. We brought back a juvenile female red-tail hawk. She had been down for several days and was thin, due to her inability to hunt as her right wing had a compound fracture in the humerus (the bone in your arm between your shoulder and elbow). It was infected and exposed. These type of injuries are very common unfortunately. This one was close to the elbow joint, meaning repair with good healing, that did not "freeze up" that joint, was not possible. She would not be releasable, so we made the painful decision to euthanize her. This is the worst part of what I do. The decision is NEVER easy, but it has to be made occasionally. My job, as a rehabilitator, is to put these creatures back into the wild where they belong. This is not always possible, so decisions have to be made as to how to handle each particular situation based on many factors. This bird was in excruciating pain................and now she no longer suffers.
We did release our red-tail hawk that has been with us for only a few weeks. We never named her, but she was an adult that was found on the side of a dirt road. The people were able to catch her (never a good sign) and called the wildlife department. She had no injuries, so we were not sure why she was down, most likely illness. She did have a large external parasite load which could be a clue to illness and the parasites took over since they are opportunistic in nature. We force fed her for a few days, giving her added nutrients with that food and then just gave her supportive care once she started eating on her own. We also treated her for the parasites. She made tremendous progress very quickly and ended up in our flight area exercising prior to release. Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's what it is all about and it's these times that make the difficult ones (like the last story) a little bit less heartbreaking (I said a LITTLE bit less).
Our little barn owl (Goshen) was transferred to the Willow Park Zoo last week with the help of DaLyn Erickson. She runs the rehabilitation program for the Ogden Nature Center. She was at one of the meetings in Salt Lake I attended, so I arranged it with her to get him to Willow Park Zoo which is up her end of the state. Rod, the wildlife rehabilitation director for Willow Park called to express how pleased he was with Goshen, so I hope Goshen will have a good life there in Logan, Utah.
Our eagle with all the medical problems will be seeing an eye specialist for his cataracts on the 30th of this month. We'll need to drive him into Salt Lake for this of course. He's getting stronger all the time, so I hope we can do something for his vision.
Well, time for sleep until tomorrow.
Debbie
