Sunday, August 17, 2008

The caretaker in me

As I was stuffing vitamins down the gills of a dead, slimy herring today, I realized how surprised some of you would be to see me getting down and dirty with piles of smelly fish. Well I do and I am actually pretty good at it.   Around here, I am known as someone who can handle the gross stuff.  (I drew the line yesterday at pulling the heads off of living mealworms for the bat. Our head vet had to do it, but the bat didn't make it anyway.)   

So far today, I worked with the seals from 7:30 this morning until 5:30PM.  As everyone else was then on a formal shift, I was recruited to jump in the rescue vehicle with one of our fellows to go searching for a fawn who had just been hit by a car.  We scrabbled through the blackberries receiving many an odd look from locals as we trespassed their overgrown properties and searched.  I found nothing, but Heather managed to find not one, but two fawns and three does!  One was dragging a back left leg while leading the whole deer troupe up the path and away seemingly unperturbed by his new three legged status.  As fawns do not traditionally do well under the abrupt care of humans and we can't restrain his leg long enough to heal, we left him in the care of his presumed mom and hope for the best.  Oh, and my adventures for the day are not done.  I am on shift for the late night feed so I get more seal time yet.  

For everyone who is reading this; please send your thoughts, energy, and prayers to Kelowna, a beautiful female seal pup who is fighting pneumonia and a lethal strain of herpes.  She has been struggling for almost 48 hours now and we are doing everything we can to hold on to her.  She is full of IV lines, gets her temp checked on the hour and is under 24 hour supervision.  Herpes is common for newborn seals and most of the pups that we have here were prematurely birthed so they are predisposed to it.  We have already lost a few to Herpes, but with every day Kelowna has more chance of pulling through.  Typically, it either kills or antibodies are successfully produced within 6 days.  I stand by her and breathe with her as often as I can.  

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