Red Letter Day

Last Friday, on the spur of the moment, I was flipping through a dog magazine and saw this fantastic idea for a bowl that would ensure that dogs would eat slower. I saw a few subtle design flaws,including the material used and submitted my idea,called the Slow-down bowl, to a company contest we had all week I submitted it at the very last minute.

Well,today was our annual company picnic, where the grand prize winner was announced and I couldn't believe it, but I won with my simple design idea. The funny thing is that there were far better ideas in my opinion,but I guess I won't complain as I cash my "big check" at the bank tomorrow!

As I am finishing this up,and for the first time in 3 summers, I have a deer grazing on my front lawn as I am watching her! Of course I haven't mowed in weeks so there are probably some delicacies out there for her to munch on. How exciting!

Wild Kingdom

Remember this? Marlin Perkins introduced the topic of the show - like alligators - and his assistant Jim Fowler. After the Mutual of Omaha commercial, Marlin comes back, and they are out in the Everglades at a campsite. He then says, "I'll just sit here in the tent with Larita, the foot masseuse,while Jim goes out to find the man-eating gator!" Then he says something (from the tent) like, "Watch out, Jim, for that flailing tail! One knock from that'll scar you for life!"

Head hanging
There was a whole misunderstanding about last week when I decided to take the weekend off because I was depressed that I turned 50 (like I could do anything about it!). The NWC didn't get my message and were apparently swamped, so I felt bad, but I went in anyway. And of course they love volunteers so much they welcomed me with open arms.

Fawn-Doe-Rosa
There is a game farm near the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota called Fawn-Doe-Rosa. It is a silly name, but it runs through my mind often when I am feeding the little fawns who are getting bigger and shyer (yey-they'll have a chance in the wild!) at the same time as they really really want their bottles of formula. We are getting more and more, although we have plenty more room. Of course the rehabilitator always wishes there would be fewer animals in need.

There otter be a law
The baby otter who was cuddling on my foot a couple of weeks ago is now in an aquatic cage of her own,alternately having a blast swimming and figuring out ways to get out of the enclosure into the "no-man's land" that buffers the cage from outdoors, when the interns or I come to slide more fish into her bowl. There are now thick leather gloves between the two doors in case she escapes, because apparently she would rather bite the hands that feed her than get caught I was over feeding the Merganser ducklings, I saw the assistant rehab director try to distract the otter by making "burr-burr" noises as the intern tried to slip in the fish unnoticed. She did get away with it, but barely.

Micey-micey, who cut up the miceys?
Although the barred owl chick that I tweeze-fed mouse parts to for the last two weeks is out with another barred owl and eating on his own, I still had to halve mice for the two wise ones, and this is my MOST unfavorite job. I'd like to report that I only gagged once, but didn't hurl.

He will never pass this way again
We had to put down another bald eagle today, because he came in with a dislocated shoulder. He was beautiful - even the rehab director said so. Someone who has lived here for a few decades told me a couple of weeks ago that the eagle population has just skyrocketed since she was a youngster, so I suppose with more life comes more death,too. It was still sad.

Gaping at me
I think baby birds have to be THE most helpless creatures (besides human babies). And we have a lot of them and are getting more everyday, from incubated spotted eggs (which we got to look at in a little dark room with a pen light to see how the embryos were progressing) to the robin who was released,but still hangs out at the aviary hoping that someone will take pity on him and hand feed him. Although he is fully capable of foraging on his own, his charm when he flies at your face or lands on your shoulder peering at you through still-baby-like pin feathers, tugs at your heart and you give in. Even the rough and tough experienced rehabbers do it!

Oh and one more thing. I always have been and continue to be amazed at the gentleness of the men who choose to care-take animals, whether wild or domesticated (the animals I mean, not the men). A very charming trait, indeed.

Sweet Hitchhiker

I noticed a big spider on my side window as I was pulling out of my driveway this morning. I thought it would be blown safely off as I wound slowly a mile and a half down my road to the highway, but to my surprise, it was still there as I pulled out onto Hwy 70. As I sped up, I noticed it shot a strand of its silk onto another area of the window as if to anchor itself. I slowed down in town and thought it would scramble away as I stopped for one light after another. It was still there, though, as I merged onto Hwy 51 and then down J to Hwy 47, where I had to travel 25 more miles.

Every few minutes I would glance at it, gritting my teeth for the expectation that it would be gone. But though its legs blew this way and that by the force of the wind, it still clung on to the same spot on the window. I reflected on what the spider must feel like - was it fun? A rush? A shit-what-did-I-get-myself-into moment? And what could I compare the experience to in human terms - being on one of those amusement park rides where the cetrifugal force sticks you to the side of the wall as the floor drops below you feet - or something the astronauts or deep sea divers are forced to go through before they take off on their adventures?

The spider clung on through the slowdown at Lake Tomahawk, when several giant semis passed in oncoming traffic, through my road-rage-ist passing a slow old person who had had his left blinker on for 5 miles, and even as I swerved to avoid a vole skittering across the highway. This spider was determined.

To keep myself from freaking out too much and just pulling to the side of the road and blowing it off into the woods, I made up a story about it needing a change of scenery. Maybe it got bored with life in Minocqua and needed to party with a hipper crowd of spiders in Rhinelander or Madison.

When I was almost at work, I stopped at the light right before I turn off the highway though, and the spider scrambled down the window and onto the side of the door. When I started up again, it blew off onto the road.

I can only hope that it found what it was looking for.

Bear with me

Someone sent me a photo of a tree with a bear at the top looking down at a tiny orange tabby. According to the story, this was the second time that day the cat, "Jack" had treed this bear! I had to spend some time telling people who were saying stuff like "Wow, a MAN EATING bear chased up a tree by a cat…" and other ridiculous things that, actually, the species of black bear that inhabits our part of the country (and New Jersey, where the cat/bear story took place) is known to be pretty docile. A decent, informational site can be found here.

Bear on Deck

I discovered this a couple of years ago when, one night, the dogs went nuts and the next day I saw some bear scat (poop) on the lawn about 6 feet from my deck. It was the first year I had bird feeders up in the summer and was religious about filling them. I didn't think much of the scat, except for I knew not to go out when it was dark. I think it was the third summer I was in the house I live in now.

Two nights later, I was up late, I think it was a weekend night, watching television from a chair right next to the open window in my living room. It had been hot that day, so I had all the windows wide open to let in the cool night air. I was relaxed, watching a movie with the lights off, when the dogs started growling really low and I thought I heard someone come up on the deck, because the boards started to creak a few feet away from where I was sitting. I muted the television and got up slowly. By this time the dogs were starting to go nuts again, so I put them at the back of the house. When I came back out to the living room, I all of a sudden wondered why the motion sensor light didn't go off, but then I heard a CRASH! I turned the outside light on and there, straddling the banister of my deck, was a yearling bear with his arms (I swear they looked like a gorilla's arms, they were that long!) stretched waaaaaaaaaay up on the tree next to the deck, looking back at me, very frightened. I had a round plastic temperature gauge, and it was swinging back and forth next to the bear's arm. He must have seen my face shining through the plate glass window because all of a sudden he rushed up the tree so fast that it shook the house. And he stayed up there.

I called the only place I could think of at midnight, which was the local police station. I told the woman who answered that I had a bear on my deck and I was too scared to go near the windows to close them. The woman kind of laughed and said to scare it away by making a lot of noise, like with a pot and spoon; that usually worked.

By the time I got the pot and spoon out the bear had ventured down the tree again and onto the deck and was eying the full feeder I had hanging right in front of the picture window. I banged with all my might and yelled and he did go away so I could close the windows.

I decided I had enough excitement for the night so I took the dogs, who were still pretty squirrelly, and I went to bed. For about 15 minutes. Then the dogs started barking like crazy again and I went out into the living room, assured that whatever was out on the deck could not waltz through the screens into my living room. I heard a banging and a wrenching and when I put the porch light on, I saw the yearling grab the feeder, rip it down from its hook, pull the top off of it to get to the seed and sit down munching away.

At that time I decided "what the hell"and sat down to watch this fascinating creature who was obviously starving. It looked at me once in a while, but it seemed to know, like I did, that the piece of glass separating us would serve as protection for both of us. It was then that I fully realized that I am indeedn privileged to be living in this creature's habitat and that I never have a right to think that these animals are encroaching on my territory!

I had a couple of minor bear encounters later that summer-it turned out that because of the weather-there was not enough natural food for them, so bears were seen more that year than usual.

Wild at Heart

I'm getting more used to being around wild things, I guess. Still a thrill to be doing something so different and to have the privilege to serve Mother Nature, though and there is always something different going on at the center.

Fawning behavior
Man, baby anythings are cute, but it just squeezes your heart to walk into a pen with 6 warm bottles of deer formula clutched to your chest and have 6 tiny fawns come rushing out of the tall grass to be fed. The littlest was under 12" at the shoulders, but just as eager as the rest of them lifting up its tiny head, grasping the bottle's nipple and happily feeding, its black nose gleaming in the sun.

As a relative newbie, it is sooooo hard for me not to want to coo and bill but it is important to keep them as wild as possible so when they are released they will be (as) naturally (as possible) afraid of humans.

Starling inspector! (from Fawlty Towers)
There are lots of baby birds and more coming in every day - there are starlings, grouse, grackles, I saw a hummer, wrens, and others. I just mixed formula and watched but learned a lot about baby birds today. First, if a bird, baby or otherwise, is not native to the area, the bird will be rehabilitated, but the rehabbers won't necessarily be as upset if the animals doesn't make it. This holds especially true for nuisance species, such as the European Starling, that kill other birds, peck their eggs open, and take over the original bird's nest.

I also listened in to the assistant rehab director instructing an intern on what to tell a caller who found an unhurt baby bird on the ground but could not find the nest. The mother bird was apparently flying around in a panic and the caller did not know what to do. The assistant director said to find a cool whip container and line it with paper towels or Kleenex and securely duct tape it as high as she could on a tree she could see from her window. She was to place the baby bird in the "nest" and walk inside her house immediately and observe if the mother bird came to care for the baby. Sometimes this works and the mother bird will use the fake nest as a real nest. But of course sometimes it doesn't.

Whooooo's sticking those tweezers in my throat?
The barred owl chick is getting bigger and bolder and irritated with people sticking bloody mouse legs down his gullet. Although I did not have to cut up a mouse today, I did have to feed him and he kept hopping to the back of the cage and I had to keep gently grabbing him and putting him in a position where I could easily feed him. Other than the constant hopping away, he was relatively easy to feed. Next week by the time I get there he will probably be eating on his own.

The littlest duckling
Seven tiny ducklings, a mix of hooded Maragansers and Mallards, were a new addition to the pond room this week. Six were happily swimming around diving for minnows, and when I went in to check their food, they hurried out of the water and looked at me suspiciously. The seventh, a Mallard, was by the heat lamp in the corner with the food and, sadly, did not look like he would make it. I'm hoping it was just because he was quite a bit younger than the "pack". Just as I was leaving someone brought in four Mallards about his size, so maybe he'll survive after all.

Ratmunk
I was learning what charts to pull each hour and one chart had "Ratmunk?" on it. It was a minute, hairless mammal of some kind and no one knew what it was, so we are just feeding it until it takes on attributes of what it will be. Maybe by next week?

Wildlife vocabulary word of the week:
Altricial: Born featherless/hairless; eyes closed or blind; unable to self-feed.

Sky

I awoke at 4 a.m., sleepy-eyed, looked up and saw the most fantastic red morning sailor-take-warning sky in the east through the dark pines. Tonight I see a huge silver moon slowly rising above the shadow pines on the other side of the house.

Roach in the drawers

I grew up in New York City where we had to deal with cockroaches all the time. In fact, I remember, as a teenager, that getting a drink of water at night was a complex procedure. It entailed leaning into the kitchen to turn on the light and waiting for the roaches to scatter (like a living black rug being sucked back under the counters) before I stepped in to fill my glass.

But roaches don't just exist in NYC, as I discovered when I began a new job cleaning the kennels at a Big-10 university's veterinary teaching hospital one summer. The kennels were set up like this: the 10 wards (each ward with 5 large "big dog" kennels and 20 smaller dog/cat cages in it) were set up back to back. There was a channel at the back of each cage so it could be easily sprayed out with a hose and disinfectant. Behind the channels between each pair of wards was a dank no man's land area where lived the most gigantic cockroaches that anyone there had ever seen-besides those people, of course, that had lived or traveled to countries where such things exist, like Madagascar. These were legend and it was speculated that they started out as normal-sized roaches, but the food and other unmentionables washed behind the kennels had allowed them to grow to enormous, Mothra-like proportions. (EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! GODZILLA IS APPROACHING!)


Okay, so we knew there were these tremendous cockroaches that roamed the behind-kennel area of the vet hospital. We heard that people – veterinarians even - were known to go the long way around to avoid it if they saw one down the hallway that had escaped its wet, slimy dungeon. It's not like you could step on one without having to do a major cleaning job on your shoes.

But we coexisted with them anyway-learned to turn the hose sprayer on "hard spray" to get them out of the way when we were cleaning behind the kennels. Avoid them, that is, when we could…

Well, one day I was in a rush, having traveled the 25 miles from vet tech school to get my four hours in cleaning the kennels. I went into my boss' office to change from my requisite tech school whites to my green cleaning scrubs. I put them on and went out into the hallway to start my job. All of a sudden I felt an itch on my inner thigh, so being alone in the hallway, I scratched it - and felt a lump. I SCREAMED as I shook my leg and out fell a cockroach as big as my palm, which righted itself and then went scuttling down the hall.

Of course I went back into my boss' office, took my scrubs off and turned them inside out, shook them about a thousand times, and then went to tell my colleagues. 10 years later, at a different job, in a different city, I still hear about "the day that roach was in your pants - ew"

And that's the truth.

Into the Wild

Please Release Me
I saw a bald eagle release today and it was spectacular and totally unexpected. I'm not sure why it had come in the center intially but it was healthy enough to be on its own so the interns drew lots to see who would release it. They do this every spring and summer and everyone has a turn if enough eagles are brought into the center.

The lucky intern handed me her camera and the rest of the interns, Mark, Sharon, and I followed her out to the eagle's flight area at the NWC. There was a definite air of excitement although noone was laughing or giggling. I snapped photos as Mark went into the enclosure with a canvas sack and three interns while the rest stood outside peering through the gate until Mark caught the eagle in the sack and came out. We all then tramped through the woods silently to the back gate of the center (gates that look like a big wooden old west fort's) to the release area.

We were all still in hush mode as Mark handed the intern the sack and she held the eagle's talons with her leather-gloved hands as Mark peeled the canvas back to free the raptor. The intern then lifted the eagle up in the air, let go and he flapped his huge wings and took off, never looking back. Everyone then started talking and it was palatable how everyone's emotions were released, then, just like the eagle. It is inexplicable how lucky I felt being able to see that up close, especially since last week another eagle had to be euthanized.

I didn't stay long enough today to see the door mouse release....

Love Those Meeces to Pieces
Mice this time, not moose, actually mouse, but in pieces.
Okay so I gagged today for the first time. I had to feed a baby Barred Owl (unbelIEVably cute) and his diet consists of chopped up mouse (not just in half!) mixed with ground meat. Very stinky. I thought I could do it with no problem like I cut the rat in half a couple of weeks ago, but I guess chopping up in pieces was what did it. After the third time I turned around to the sink with my hand (and mouse gutted-up knife -ew) to my mouth holding back a giant gag, Sadie the intern, laughing of course with the other interns!) iold me I didn't have to do it, but I made myself finish. And when we went over to the baby Barred Owl's cage and she showed me how to feed him- to tweeze just the right amount of the mixture, open the baby's beak, then poke it down into its gullet a couple of times, she let me do it. I almost lost it again when one of the chunks I picked up was a little pink leg, but the owl ate for me and it was a success.

I also got to feed baby birds and the baby otter oh and some little bitty fawns when I first got there. What a wonderful job that I look forward to each week.

Moose on the Loose

A colleague-friend of mine was just telling me that she saw two moose (s? meece?) this weekend in the woods behind her aunt's horse pasture. I was just riveted.

Monica's Story
Monica's aunt has several horses on several acres in north central Wisconsin. She was just coming back from a long ride and was tying up her horse in the barn to groom her, when all of a sudden she heard the thunder of hoofbeats out in the pasture. Her horse started to get nervous and buck and shy and was trying to get her horse untied so she could do what came natural to horses that hear their herd's in a panic - to join them. As she was untying her horse she called out to her aunt "Hey, what's going on out there?" and her aunt called back, "I think I see a bear out at the edge of the pasture!" Monica said to herself, "Cool!" and let her horse go. She then went to where her aunt was looking and climbed onto the fence to see what her aunt had seen. To her surprise, the "bear" lifted its head and the two saw it was not a bear, but a moose! In fact there were two moose and the smaller moose- Monica thought a yearling- was bigger than her biggest horse! She was just floored, as I was, that there were moose so far south in Wisconsin (south of Antigo) that had not escaped from a game farm. She, being the brave soul that she is, took her car and her camera and tried to take closeup pictures. Unfortunately once she got there, the moose backed off and she was only able to get minute shots of them.

That story reminded me of two of my own:

Bigpeck
I have many different birds flying through my wild yard all year long. Some of them are unusual. I have rose-breasted grosbeaks, bright yellow finches, and, last year I even saw an indigo bunting. But the most fascinating bird I see on my property is the piliated woodpecker. It is much bigger than a regular woodpecker - about 20" tall - and I have seen it flying, in the trees, and last year, sitting by a flower pot on my deck. I quickly took a digital picture for my city friends who were disbelieving about it. Unfortunately, the second I took the photo it flew away, so I was only able to get one. And of course it was through the window and next to two plants so all that could be seen was the bright red head, which honestly could have been anything. When I sent it around to my nay-saying friends, they made fun of it and called it "Bigpeck" (like the elusive Bigfoot). Good thing this year a friend was over and we BOTH saw Bigpeck fly through the yard. Of course I didn't have a camera. But I will.........

<<= The original Bigpeck
















My friend's story also reminded me of a piece I wrote last year. It's not really moose-related - but it has a moose in it!

Oh, and..... not for the faint of heart.

The D-Lab
You never forget the smell of death. The molecules stick to your nose hairs and you find yourself, in the most implausible moments, reliving the stench.

When I started my previous career (my third) as a veterinary technician at the age of 40, I was fortunate enough to work the evening shift of the University Veterinary Teaching Hospital. This was a huge place with 10 wards, an ICU, and room for hundreds of companion animals who needed the medical care we could give. We had a skeleton (no pun intended) staff of veterinarians and technicians to provide emergency care for incoming patients, care for the hospitalized animals, and, because people tend to make these difficult decisions after the sun sets, performing and overseeing euthanasias.

Veterinarians and veterinary technicians generally have a wicked, black sense of humor. Like any stressful job, humor is how the people involved get through it, how can you not use humor as a release. when all day all you see are sick creatures that can't tell you what's wrong?

Unfortunately, practical jokes are a huge part of working with vets and techs. Unfortunately, I should say, for the unsuspecting "newbie" who, the coworkers believe, has to prove him or herself. But, what goes around, comes around and pretty soon it was my turn to be the jokester-always a comfortable place for me.

Let me tell you about my first experience with the Diagnostic Laboratory, or D-Lab. This is where biopsies are sent to determine if a mass is malignant or not, where blood tests are done, and where necropsies are performed and bodies of euthanized animals are stored until they can be cremated or otherwise removed.

A necropsy is the same as an autopsy, only it's done on animals, not on humans. Technically an autopsy IS a necropsy (literally "seeing death").

One newbie job was to take euthanized animals or animals who the vets couldn't save down to the D-Lab, usually near the end of the shift, around midnight. To do this, the bodies need to be transported, and what we had to do the transporting was a big Radio Flyer wagon. So, you're dragging this wagon behind you, steering through dark hallways to a small elevator, where you have to maneuver this wagon to take downstairs to the D-Lab. The first time I went, I was taken down by the tech who was training me, Dana. We maneuvered through the hallways, going right, going left, going through doors, and then onto an elevator. She took me down on the elevator through some more darkened rooms and locked doors, and into this truck dock with a huge, two-story stainless steel double door at the end. Dana took me down to the doors, unlatched them, and told me to put the bodies inside. Then she turned on her heel and said, "Okay, let's see if you can find your way back."

I gave her a slit-eyed look and rolled my eyes. I was older than her, I had lived - I was no chicken.

I opened the door and smelled the odor I'll never forget, and saw in front of me animal bodies inside plastic body bags and out, a horse's head on a shelf, and the legs of at least 10 different species sticking hoof/paw side out of a barrel. I looked up and saw a contraption that looked like upside down toy train tracks-until I realized that the chains hanging from them were used to pull large animals such as horses or cows out of trucks and into the freezer.

(I later found out, quite by accident, that some animals were too big even for the two-story freezer. I remember once in the middle of winter, looking in one of the labs next to the freezer and seeing a moose frozen stiff on the floor!)

I pulled the bodies off the wagon, placed them as gently as I could on the floor of the big freezer, stepped out, and shut and latched the door behind me. I attempted to find my way back up to the front desk of the hospital. What took Dana and I about 10 minutes took me a full hour to pull the empty Radio Flyer back up the elevator and through the maze of dark hallways. And I never did get over the eerie feeling I had my first time in the D-Lab. I went on, of course, to play practical jokes on newbie and long-term employee alike.

I have to say that this blog is renewing my love of writing and sharing. Wow.