Through donations, dozens of people entered our drawings at the Open House.  The winners are:

Smokey Joe Gold:  Molly Maloney
Jane Jenni Gift Bag: Margaret Ritter
Wii Tech Console:  Jerry Fischer
and… the opportunity to release a rehabbed animal:  Karen Ritter

Congratulations, everyone!  We’ll be in touch in the next couple days with all the details.

Our vets are examining hundreds of animals today.  Stuffed animals that is.  Today’s our annual Open House and more than 500 people have visited with the vets, peered into microscopes at creepy crawlies, and even had a chance to visit with KARE11 Meteorologist and Simply Science Host Sven Sundgaard.

It’s so fun to watch people - adults and young kids alike - go through the building holding their bandaged stuffed animals. Our med staff has been amazing with everyone; answering questions, explaining why we bandage things the way we do, pointing out cool things to see under the microscope.  All in all, it’s been a fun (but tiring!) day.

Many thanks to everyone who took time to come by and visit today!  (and to all our volunteers who helped us prepare for, and worked during, the Open House)

Today a female mallard presented to the WRC after being found on the side of a road. It was suspected that she was hit by a car. She was very weak and wasn’t using either of her rear legs. She also had an open wound above her elbow on the outside of her left wing. The wound was cleaned, and a full physical exam performed. No limb fractures or dislocations were palpated. X-rays were taken and everything looked normal.

The reason she is unable to use either of her rear legs is likely due to spinal trauma. Oftentimes with severe trauma such as being hit by a car or grabbed by another animal, damage can be done to the nerves that pass out of the spinal cord. This causes weakness in the limbs, and can also lead to complete paralysis. It can take many weeks to months for animals to recover from spinal trauma.

This duck was placed on pain medications, antibiotics, and will receive subcutaneous fluids for the next few days for re-hydration. She will remain in our intensive care unit (ICU) to receive close monitoring. We hope to see her start to regain use of her legs within the next several days. It will be a long road to recovery for her, but we are hoping for the best!

 KARE11 did a nice program on our Open House during this morning’s Sunrise segment.  Report Jeff Olsen arranged the story and initially he was going to come to WRC to do a live interview.  Other assignments got in the way however, so instead I went to the KARE11 studio in Golden Valley for the interview with Sunrise co-anchor Kim Insley.  They did send a photographer over to shoot some footage for use in segment.  You can view the full WRC Sunrise segment here.

It was fun seeing behind the scenes of this news program. I was especially struck by the amount of automation and how few people were actually there.  Of course, it was 5:30am…

The experience brought me a new appreciation for the people who bring us our morning news!

1 virginia opossum, 1 northern flicker, 1 mourning dove, 1 eastern cottontail rabbit, 1 chukar, 2 rock pigeons.

 On January 20th, an adult male raccoon was admitted.  He was found in Minnetrista along the side of a road, walking very slowly and acting uncoordinated. It was suspected that he had been hit by a car.

When he arrived at WRC, he was very depressed and weak. He had some abrasions on his front paws, and a bloody nose, which supported our suspicion of head trauma, likely from a vehicle. Raccoons can show similar signs of weakness and uncoordination when they have a virus called Distemper, so that is always on our “rule-out” list as well.

The raccoon’s prognosis was poor at the time of admission, due to his mental state and weakness. The raccoon also had pulmonary contusions (bruising of the lungs) and fluid in his chest, and was wheezing and having difficulty breathing. Subcutaneous fluids were administered, as well as pain medications, antibiotics, and medications to assist with his breathing.  

After spending several days in our Intensive Care Unit (ICU), the raccoon surprised us all by showing signs of recovery! His wheezing stopped, he began eating and drinking on his own, and he was showing more signs of aggression toward the medical staff, a definite sign that he was feeling better!

After about 2 weeks of treatment, the raccoon was on the road to a full recovery! After the course of his medications were complete and he passed our pre-release exam, he was ready to go back into the wild. The release on February 13th was a success: he found a tree and climbed right up!

These are the cases that bring so much happiness and satisfaction to the staff and volunteers at WRC…the ones that present to you on death’s door, and end up making a full recovery!

 Today a baby pigeon was brought in to WRC.  Every winter we get a few young pigeons in to the Center, but it always seems odd to see such a young bird in the middle of winter.  Pigeons are the only birds that will breed all year round, even during our harsh Minnesota winters.  They do this by being well-adapted to living in cities and around humans, using them to find shelter and sources of food.  Because of this, pigeons are often seen as a nuisance to some people.

In attempts to control pigeon populations some people opt to use a substance called Avitrol.  Avitrol is a toxin that may be placed in seeds that pigeons and other birds eat.  It will normally cause one or two birds to start having seizures and showing other neurological signs.  Since pigeons often flock together, the other birds in the group will see the ones acting strange and fly away.  However, the birds that have already been affected continue to suffer from the poison and will oftentimes die.

When we see a bird that is acting as though it has ingested Avitrol, we immediately administer a medication to stop the seizures and give an oral medication called Activated Charcoal to “soak up” the toxin like a sponge so that it can pass through the bird without being absorbed into its system.  Sometimes birds will recover from this, sometimes they aren’t able to.  Over the last two weeks, several birds have come to WRC showing signs of having this poison in their systems.  Once they make it through the early stages of Avitrol poisoning, they begin to act like normal birds again and recovery is quick. 

Even though pigeons sometimes have a bad reputation as being pests, I thoroughly enjoy working with them.  They have their own personalities and are very pretty with iridescent feathers that shine with different colors in the light.  Also, there is no greater feeling than helping an animal, even a pigeon, that would not have survived without our care. 

Euthanasia (putting an animal to sleep) can be a difficult topic to discuss, and even more so to understand. I often get asked why I choose to euthanize one animal over another, or how I deal with it. It’s something I’m faced with every day here at WRC, and to be honest, it is the hardest part of my day! I try not to view it as ending a life, but rather as ending suffering and pain. I know I am doing what’s best for that animal.

On many occassions, we receive animals that are so severely injured that the likelihood of a full recovery is very slim. Sometimes I wish I had “magic hands” and could fix every injury that came through the door, but unfortunately, I don’t. :(   I always do a full physical exam and determine the extent of the animal’s injuries, and decide on their likely prognosis for survival and likelihood for release back to the wild. In the case that the injuries prove to be too severe and there is nothing I can do to effectively treat that animal, the animal is humanely euthanized. Sometimes this decision can be difficult to understand. Why can’t we fix the animal? Why can’t he/she be kept as someone’s pet or put in a zoo or sanctuary? These are all very reasonable questions.

First, the injuries some animals present to us with are just too severe to mend.  Especially in birds, their bones are very fragile, and they don’t tend to heal the greatest when there are multiple fractures present, or if the bone is broken into multiple pieces. Furthermore, when a fracture is open (breaks through the skin), the ends of the exposed bone become contaminated and begin to die, and once that happens it’s very unlikely it’s going to heal properly, and the chance for infection is very high.  A very important region in the bird’s wing is their joints (wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles). Birds depend on these joints to perform at 100% in order to fly, which is crucial to their survival. In the event of a fracture or dislocation in the joint, it can be very difficult for that area to heal properly in order for the animal to be able to regain full flight ability. They have the potential to develop chronic (long term) arthritis in the joint, which can lead to swelling, pain, and possibly make it difficult or impossible for that bird to use that joint anymore. This again does not lead to a good quality of life, and greatly decreases their chances of survival in the wild.

Some animals have severe soft tissue/organ trauma, head/spinal injuries, eye injuries, etc. Some of these injuries are so severe that they cannot be fixed surgically, or they have permanently handicapped the animal (i.e. an eye injury leading to blindness in that eye). We cannot (by law and for ethical reasons) release an animal that is missing or does not have full function of a limb, eye, ear, etc. It is not humane to the animal and is not conducive to survival in the wild.

Keeping a wild animal as a pet is not an option, in accordance with Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) laws. All wildlife species, with the exception of non-native species, are protected by state and federal law and may not be kept in a person’s possession as a pet or otherwise unless that person holds proper permits acquired from their state’s DNR and the USFWS. The only exception is in the case that a person is in the process of bringing the animal to a licensed rehabilitator. In that case, the animal must be transferred within 48 hours.  Please contact your state’s DNR office if you are interested in further details, or are interested in become a permitted wildlife rehabilitator.

Placing animals in zoos or sanctuaries can be a difficult decision. Some species are better at living in captive situations than others; some animals are just too high stress for that type of living environment and will not do well. We also need to make sure that the animal has a good quality of life, and will not be enduring any sort of chronic pain. One must understand that most of the wild animals that come through our doors are prey species, and we are predators to them. They get stressed very easily and do not “enjoy” our company That is why it is so important to ensure a speedy recovery and return to the wild (if possible) as soon as possible.

Euthanasia can be a very difficult concept to understand sometimes, and it definitely is a very hard decision to make on my part. However, I know that the animals that have to be euthanized are in a great deal of stress and pain, and I find peace knowing that I am able to alleviate that.

Deanna Sebion, CVT, and I just got done performing stomach gavage (flushing) on a mallard duck and a trumpeter swan with lead poisoning.

The procedure consists of anesthetizing the patient with a tube down its trachea (to administer gas anesthesia), then gently placing a hollow tube into its stomach. We then flush copious amounts of water into the stomach and allow gravity to work its magic and let all the water flush back out of the animal’s mouth (hopefully with pieces of lead in it!).

While somebody is flushing the water in via syringes, a second person is gently massaging the birds stomach and gently shaking them to encourage the water to pass back out of the animal’s mouth. We then take an xray to determine if all the lead was successfully removed or not (lead particles show up bright white on xrays).

Today, our flushings of both the mallard and swan were a success!! Now that the lead is out (which is the hard part), we will keep them on therapy with daily CaEDTA injections (a medication that binds to the lead in the bloodstream making it inactive). The recovery process can take many weeks, so only time will tell at this point. Hopefully they both make a full recovery!

Have to run now…a white breasted nuthatch just arrived!

Sorry about that folks: a minor technological blip in our Comments area.  You should be able to post things from this point forward.