Virga, by definition, are......

...wisps of precipitation that evaporate before reaching the ground. But when I speak of Virga, I am speaking of this GORGEOUS creature we got in a week and a half ago!!!

It's a California sea lion! We believe she is about 2-3 years old and she weighs ~150lbs. She was found on nearby Shaw Island, walking down the road about 1/2 mile from the ferry dock and upon approaching her, it was discovered she was blind! She was taken in by a local marine mammal expert/wildlife vet, given lots of fluids, and then transferred to Wolf Hollow. The next day her eyesight was returning and by Saturday she could see just fine. But why she had lost her eyesight was still a mystery. She was given a full examination and invasive injury, like a gunshot wound, was ruled out. And because she had regained her eyesight, congenital blindness was also ruled out. One of the scarier possibilities, as the outcome of animals with this is not good, is Domoic acid poisoning.

Domoic acid is produced by harmful algal blooms in the ocean. These are the same algal blooms that cause "red tide" in shellfish. This occurs when algae bloom in significant numbers and produce a nasty biotoxin. Fish and shellfish can eat these without any harm. But the toxins accumulate and become concentrated so that when any other animal, be it pinnepeds, birds, or man, eats the fish or shellfish, they become poisoned. This can quickly become a deadly situation. The toxin goes into the brain and can mess with nerve signal transmission, causing permanent brain damage along the way.

And, I am sure this comes as no surprise to you, man plays an intricate role in how these harmful algal blooms come to be, as warmth along with the right nutrients are needed for these to grow. So with global warming heating things up and runoff into the ocean from the likes of ship ballast water, untreated sewage, and farming practices providing the much needed nutrients, the conditions are just right. We are seeing more and more of these harmful algal blooms every year.

So, what other symptoms are we keeping an eye out for when it comes to monitoring Virga? We are looking for seizures, whisker twitching, and vomiting among other things. So far, after her being monitored every half hour for over a week and now every hour, she has shown no signs of anything else amiss, so we are keeping our fingers crossed and remain hopeful. If she has it and starts having seizures, she most likely would have to be euthanized, as she wouldn't be able to survive out in the wild.

Because she was doing better on her first Saturday with us, we let her into the main section of the wet pen, which she ran around exploring and eating the herring we were tossing everywhere.

We also filled the pond with a foot of water, which she immediately dove into.

Because we were still monitoring her extra closely for seizures and whatnot, we dared not fill it up more than that, much to her dismay when she tried to swim in it, TRIED being the operative word here.

Now, she is completely different from Sedna, the Steller sea lion we got in last year around this time. She is sleeker, more aerodynamic looking, and MAN, can she MOVE! She is not aggressive at all, but her speed alone is a bit intimidating. The other difference is her intellect. She is VERY intelligent. So much so that we had to do this:

Yep, we had to jimmy-rig the doors so she couldn't get out, as she had figured out how to open the bottom latch to the inside door! But hey, I'll take that and speed over Steller aggression any day!

We do have in a few other animals besides Virga, including my first raven and a Great Blue Heron, but I will write a different post regarding them, as I thought Virga was special enough for her own posting. Keep your fingers and other bits crossed for her! Til next time...

Unmotivated Git Land......

...is where I have been holed up for the last month. Not sure if it's the weather or just my roller coaster life right now that had me hiding out for so long, but there you have it. And to be honest, we have had NO NEW ANIMALS come in to Wolf Hollow for the last 3 weeks! So, if I had posted blog entries for the last few weeks, they would have read something like this:

Released the ---- this past week. Went to the dump today to drop off the recycling. And here's a picture of it!

Seriously, it's been THAT slow. But let's get to the two animals we did get in a month ago and then update you on the rest. This Mourning Dove came to us after hitting a window.

Her left eye was swollen half shut and she was missing feathers on the back left side of her lower head and neck. She was holding her left wing tilted so the wing tip was up and while there was no palpable fracture, she may have had a shoulder injury. For the initial treatment, she was given the non-steroidal inflammatory medicated eye drops in her left eye. It's a bit tricky treating these birds, as they will drop feathers very easily when handled. So whatever you do with them needs to be done expediently.

This Glaucous-winged gull was found in Mt. Vernon with a large wound above his keel on the left hand side, a wound that was so deep it was open to the thoracic cavity, so much so that the trachea and esophagus were visible!

He was given antibiotics and a homeopathic drug for puncture wounds. They tried to turn him over to cover the wound with Tagaderm until the vet could look at it, but he immediately started having breathing problems. Upon turning him back over, he had blood in his mouth and wet upper respiratory sounds. The vet did come out and thinks he impaled himself on a metal pole of some kind, as it was a clean entry wound. The wound was then sewed up with dissolvable stitches.

He wasn't eating on his own so he had to be tube fed, even three weeks later.

After removing her wing wrap and determining that her sutures looked good, we moved the Snow goose to the wet pen to make sure she was well water proofed before releasing her. That meant going out and getting her to fly into the pond or....

..hosing her down. She actually loved this and would follow the water if we moved the hose spray around! Last time I was there, they were looking for another flock of Snow geese to release her with. She has since been released.

The Red-tailed hawk had his wing wrap removed and was eating so well they put him in the Slatted Flight cage to get some room to exercise his wings. When I went in a few weeks ago, Serena decided we would move him to the even bigger Heron Flight cage to make sure he could fly well. But first we needed to catch him and do a quick examination of his wing.

Needless to say he was less than thrilled about this. We then walked across the way and released him into the Heron Flight cage.

Now take a good look at this photo. See that perch that's at the top of the photo? Well this is what happened within the 10 seconds after this photo was taken. He flew like he was somewhat aiming for that perch but instead smacked his head into the wood paneling that covers the area above the perch, bounced off said perch, and then hit the ground...hard. If I had been taking a video, you would have heard Serena and I say things like "OW!" and "Oo!" each time he collided with something. I turned to look at her and asked, and this was more of a rhetorical question than anything else, "Does it worry you that he just did that?" Her reply was something to the effect of "Uh...YEAH!"

I went to do the afternoon check and found him doing what I term the "Linda Blair", where they face away from you but swivel their head 180 degrees to keep an eye on you.

But even this was a bit worrisome, as they almost always face in a direction that enables them to flee if necessary. In this picture his body is facing the end of the cage. He ended up being just fine though and has since been released.

As for everyone else, well, the lump on the eagle was benign and based on the type it was it won't get any bigger, so he was released, as was the Flicker and.....BUCKY!!! WOOHOO! The raccoons are FINALLY big enough to be released and they have been looking for a good area to release them in.

I didn't go in last week due to fighting a cold, but was told the only things there were the coons, the gull, and the dove. Like I said, it's been a sloooooow month. I will be going in this Saturday and then will be attending their fund raiser at the Grange later that night! It promises to be a lot of fun with food, drink, and really good music. If you are a local, come join in the festivities! Til next time...

What a Messy Eagle Day!

This is how my day started on Saturday morning, a minute after I walked in the door to Wolf Hollow.

Yes, those are my legs with eagle "stuff" all over them. And believe it or not, it was a good thing the eagle was still outputting "stuff". Why, you might ask? Because this is what the poor thing looked like the whole day....

Why does it look that way? Well, per some residents of a nearby island, it looks like he, along with the three other dead eagles we got in, might have all taken part in a feeding frenzy where the main course was the carcass of an animal that someone had euthanized and then, instead of burying it deep in the ground like it was supposed to be, it was left out for anything and everything to eat off. That is, until we started getting all the dead eagles in, at which time the animal was discovered and quickly buried.

Now I say "might" because this little one certainly displayed all the signs of poisoning and all the eagles were found within the same area of this poisoned carcass. But until our local Fish and Wildlife office is done conducting their investigation, we won't know the whole story. We are just hoping that the end result is that this NEVER happens again! It's a nasty cycle, as any animals that ate this and subsequently died could poison any other animal that eats them and...you get the picture. I will post their findings when I know of them. Needless to say, emotions were running high during the entire weekend and it's looking like it's a huge tragedy that could have easily been prevented.

But back to the above pictured youngster. A LOT of his day was spent like this:

Sorry for the blurry pictures. Still getting to know the new camera and it was a VERY active day with it. Here we are tubing the eagle, trying to get fluids and charcoal into him to help flush out the toxins. This was done every two hours. Afterwards, he would have no energy left and a couple of times we thought he had died. No one thought he would be alive the next morning.

But die he did NOT! After worrying about him all day Saturday and sending a multitude of prayers to the universe to let him make it, I got a call on Sunday saying he was up and banging around his carrier! At this point I did my special, and rarely viewed by outsiders, "happy dance" around my place for about 5 minutes! By Tuesday, when I went over to take an "after" picture of him, he was flying around the Heron cage, the largest flight cage we have until the Eagle Flight cage is fixed.

Doesn't he look just a THOUSAND times better?!! He did so well he was released today!! I just LOVE great outcomes to situations like this, don't you?!

Our flicker was moved to one of the outdoor mews, as she was going stir crazy in the carrier she was in.

You can just make out the bald patch on the side of her head. She is still being very finicky about what little she is eating, so we are keeping a close eye on her weight.

We have in, for the first time while I have been there, a Snow goose!

Now, having heard the word "goose" I expected her to be quite big, but she's a tiny thing. Isn't she just adorable? Don't let the coy look and wing wrap fool you though. She was quite feisty and was constantly biting anyone who messed with her.

She was found in Anacortes, along with another Snow goose that was already dead. Spotting an eagle in the area, we are wondering if her injuries were eagle induced. She had a long laceration along her left cranial radius/ulna that was deep enough that the flexor tendon was exposed and cut. She also had a deep puncture wound on the right side along her back, slightly under her wing. She got sutures along the wing injury with the flexor tendon being secured. The puncture would was also severe enough to warrant suturing. The wing was then put in a figure 8 wrap and is to be left on for a week to allow the sutured tendon to hopefully develop "adhesions", which is the only hope for healing this type of injury.

We have another eagle in that was found near a barn in Sedro Wooley and was brought to us by the Fish and Wildlife officer who caught it.

Yep, he definitely has down that "Don't even THINK about messin' with me." stare. But, mess with him we did! The reason he was so easy to catch was because he is having flying issues, and that is due to the fact that there is a tangerine sized mass on the right side of it's chest. There was no sign that a wound was the cause of it, but it was noted that the bottom half of the mass had surface bruising. He had blood drawn to test for lead poisoning and for a general avian panel to determine his overall health. All the tests came back fine. A local vet took an aspirate of the mass and we got the oh-so-fun task of x-raying him to make sure there wasn't a foreign body that caused the mass. Hooooo boy.... was that an interesting experience!

Here is Shona, our Educational Director, all dressed up with no place to go but to the x-ray room. Then the challenge was to get the eagle to lay still long enough to get a decent enough x-ray.

Needless to say, it took more than one attempt to get said decent x-ray!

But get one they did....

to find that there was no foreign object in the mass. So the vet will let us know what she discovers in her aspirate culture and then the mass will be drained or removed, assuming it's not malignant in origin.

The Red-tailed hawk is doing well and was moved to a larger carrier.

Kent was released last week, as was the Barred owl. Bucky had his splint taken off and we are keeping an close eye on his bumblefoot, which he has on the foot the he was resting most of his weight on.

And with that, I leave you this one last image to ponder...

Til next time...

Sniff! Sniff! My baby's done all growed up!

HAPPY 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY LITTLE BLOG!

Yes, it's been a year and a day since I wrote those oh-so-creative first words of my blog:

I can't believe my sister has talked me into doing this!

Thanks to everyone for your encouragement and support over the last year. And a special THANK YOU goes to my sister Shannon, whom, after me making some "suggestions" about her blog during a visit said "You should write your own blog. Let's start it RIGHT NOW!" Thanks, Shanny, for "talking me into doing this." It's been a wonderfully creative outlet for me!

Here's to the next year! Til then...

Raptors Anyone?

Well, we have some new animals in residence at Wolf Hollow and from the posting's title I am sure you can guess what kind they might be. Let's start with our latest owl internee.

This Barred owl was found in La Connor lying under a tree and barely breathing. When we got it in, it had balance problems and had VERY foul smelling and loose feces with possible occult blood (blood from the lower GI tract). He also cast a pellet that was poorly formed, made mostly of grass along with a whole beetle, which tells us he had been on the ground for awhile. He was given a homeopathic drug to help deal with trauma and a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory for pain. From what I heard, he looked so bad, no one thought he was going to make it through the night.

But this owl is a wonderful example of owl tenacity, as the next day he was standing and clacking his beak at everyone! And by the time Saturday rolled around, he was ready to be moved to an outdoor mew. Now, I am not sure if I have ever divulged the fact that one of my favorite maintenance type things to do is to go out with some branches, a drill, and some screws and make the mews and aviaries more "homey" for the birds. But, I am so anal about it ("No, you can't put the branch there as he won't be able to hide behind it. No, now it's too low." ) that no one goes out with me anymore. That's fine by me, as I said, I love doing it! So out I went to make the mew more "homey".

This is only part of the mew, but you get the idea! I just love when we first put them back outdoors, too, as they always spend some time looking back and forth, listening to the new noises.

The other raptor we got in is a Red-tailed hawk.

As you can see from this picture, he was a bit banged up when he arrived. Found by the highway in Sedro Wooley, he was initially taken to the Fish and Wildlife office in Mt. Vernon, who then sent him on to us. Upon initial examination, he wasn't using his legs, but he could move them. His right eye had slight abrasions around it with his pupillary response being very slow. But a fluorescein exam ruled out any corneal abrasions, so that was good. An x-ray told the rest of the story.

Can you see it? Here's a closeup of the damage.

His right ulna had what the vet called a comminuted fracture. What is a comminuted fracture, you might ask? It's a fracture in which the bone is splintered, broken, or crushed into multiple pieces. Since the alignment was okay and the radius was in tact and could act as a splint, his wing was wrapped with a figure 8 wrap, to stabilize the fracture site and to immobilize the joints on either side of the fracture.

On Saturday, I got to give him fluids by tubing him and there were antibiotics along with a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory within the liquid we gave him. He isn't eating on his own, so I also had to force feed him some venison. Luckily, if you got the pieces back far enough in his mouth he would swallow them, instead of having to really push them down his throat. We checked his pupillary response, which is slightly improved, and he was standing on his perch later that day, all of which are good signs.

Kent and Bucky continue to do well, with Kent still running around on the ground more than normal for periods of time interspersed with her flying around her aviary at others. Now we just need to clarify why she is running around on the ground so much. Shona, our Educational Director extraordinaire, said that could just be an overly-stressed reaction she has, instead of it necessarily being a physical issue.

That was the major excitement for last Saturday. I did hear that we got an eagle in and a Snow goose that was attacked by an eagle. So it's looking like it may be a busy day on Saturday. Oh, and...drum roll please...I GOT A NEW CAMERA! WOOHOO!! Yep, I finally got something a step up from the point-and-shoot variety I had previously! I've got lots of reading and learning to do, but I am expecting the pictures from this new camera to be a might better than the other one, especially with close-ups. Needless to say, I will be taking both cameras with me to Wolf Hollow until I become comfortable with the new one. Til next time...

Last Saturday,....

and by that I don't mean yesterday, was a LOT better than the week before. So let's get to the latest residences, shall we?

We now have a Northern flicker in the Indoor Mew.

I should stop right here and apologize ahead of time for the blurriness of my pictures this week. Not sure what happened except that the two newest residences were very stressed out, so I hurried. SORRY!

Also, I keep mentioning the Indoor Mew and thought you might like to see how they have it setup for her. And yes, it is a "her", due to the lack of a bright red-orange patch on the side of the head.

Yep, they have a tree in there and everything! She's a pretty picky eater, mainly eating the suet, meal worms, and this new stuff we have been using called Flicker Smear, which is made up of peanut butter, suet and soaked kitten food, and named due to the fact that you smear it onto the logs spread out throughout the mew.

She was found in Friday Harbor and we believe she had been attacked by another animal, as she was missing feathers on the back of the head/neck region and had lost a lot of feather, along with skin on the back, so much so that muscle was exposed.
She was given antibiotics and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication. The wound was cleaned up and covered with Tagaderm.

She is flying well but was losing weight last week, which we will be keeping an eye on.

This is the other cutie we got in. It's a female Bufflehead that was found on Lopez Island.

I just LOVE these little guys, as they seem almost cartoon-like to me. I was fortunate enough to be there when she was admitted, so I got to see how we care for these unique waterfowl from the get go. First off, it was very clear that she was emaciated, weighing in at only 220g, when their normal weight is around 330g. She had been given fluids by the volunteer that sent her to us, so the first thing WE did, after giving her a physical exam, is to draw blood from her leg. This is so we can check on the red blood cells v.s. serum levels and her protein count.

Isn't her foot just fascinating?! Spending the majority of their life in water, salt or fresh, their toes are flattened to help with swimming and diving. Also, their skin looks almost reptilian in nature.

We filled up a tiny tube with blood and into the centrifuge it went. This separates out the red blood cells, white blood cells, and the serum. And here's what it looks like when it's done.

Now, the white blood cells are pretty hard to see, as they are this miniscule layer in between the red blood cells and the serum. We then take this tube and place it on this.

Called a Micro-Hematocrit Capillary Tube Reader, it helps read the packed red cell volume against the serum as a percentage. So you line the bottom of the tube on the bottom line of the chart and slide the tube until the top part of the serum section hits the top line of the chart. For animals avian in nature, you want the ratio to read between 45% and 55%.

The Bufflehead's read 49%, always keeping in mind, though, that dehydration does have an effect on those percentages. If she was completely hydrated, which she wasn't at the time of the blood draw, this could read completely different, so it's a rough guesstimate.

Then we break the tube and place some of the serum on this Refractometer.

Okay, am I dating myself if I say this looks like something out of a classic Star Trek episode? What this actually does is looks at the levels of dissolved proteins in the blood. This level determines if the animal can have food or is so emaciated they need to be started on some liquid food therapy, like Ensure. It needs to be over 2.0 for the feeding of food and hers read 2.4, so we chopped up some smelt and gave that to her.

After all of this, we need to get her feet and legs protected. Being a water bird, their skin is very delicate, so we take precautions to try and protect it as much as possible, seeing as how they won't be back in water for awhile. The first step is to coat the legs and feet with a water based lubricant.

Then, we wrap the legs and feet to prevent as much chaffing as possible.

And here is what she looked like when she was all done.

Even now I can't help giggling at this picture. Not sure why, it just strikes me as very funny! She was then put in a carrier that had a scaffold with netting stretched across it. This also helps with the prevention of feet/leg chaffing.

As you can see, her leg wraps slid off just in the time it took me to walk with her to the back room. They decided to wait and see if more of the lubricant got absorbed before trying to wrap them again.

That's it for now. I'll post my update for yesterday's adventures later this week. Til next time...

What IS that SMELL?!

Hey, don't be looking at me! THIS is what that noxious smell is emanating from!

Thanks for the photo Shona!

Yep, he's a mess! Figured out what he's covered in yet? No? Here, let me give you a closer look at him.

Thanks again for the photo Shona!

Still no idea? What if I told you he smelled like month old fries? Yep, sea gulls being the bottomless pits that they are, and a young one at that, he saw some tasty bits in an uncovered grease pit behind a restaurant and went for it, only to become encased in nasty old deep fry grease. Our wonderful volunteer in Anacortes who picked him up said her hands reeked for DAYS afterwards! Ugh! So it was straight from the carrier into a series of baths he went!

Thanks again² for the picture Shona!

He went through many wash cycles and they even used what looks like an arts and crafts sponge to bath his head.

Thanks again³ for the picture Shona!

After his baths, it was just a matter of time waiting for his feathers to become "waterproof" again, and then he was released, hopefully having learned the valuable lesson the gluttony doesn't always pay!

Last Saturday was one of those downer days that you wish you could forget but know you never will. Like I said in a recent post, during the winter months is when we get it animals that are severely compromised and a lot of them just don't make it.

When I came in, I noticed that the Bald eagle wasn't on the chart to be fed and was informed that they euthanized him. Then, part way through the morning, I had noticed that a car had pulled up. Lorraine, who is another rehabber at WH, but one I had never worked one-on-one with until last Saturday, went out to see who it was and found this guy on our front porch.

Now, before you all get upset, thinking someone had abandoned him there all hurt and everything, I should tell you that the gentleman that found him did call us 10 minutes later. I guess he had been knocking on the door, but with us in the back room, we didn't hear him.

Now, as you can see he has a hurt eye. Looks painful, but not bad enough for him to be SO "shocky" that he is drifting in and out of consciousness, which he was doing the entire time I was there taking pictures of him. It was only when the person who found him called back that we learned about his other injury. To quote him "His leg is pretty messed up." That, unfortunately, was a HUGE understatement. Lorraine and I looked at each other and we immediately knew which leg had to be "messed up": the one that we had yet to see, his hind right one. Lorraine moved him just a bit and then we saw it....his right foot, upside down, pointing backwards. While I was exclaiming in horror "OH MY GOD! His foot is completely BACKWARDS!" Lorraine was stating just as forcefully "We are HEAVILY sedating him!", which we did. At that time we also left messages at a few of our local vet's offices to see if they could come and examine the injury. We ended up not needing their services.

At this time I need to send out a huge THANK YOU to Lorraine, as she was in a position of working with someone she had never worked with before and then found herself working with same said someone, who, frankly folks, lost it a bit. NEVER BEFORE have I seen such a devastating injury and we hadn't even turned him over yet! After we had him sedated we lifted him up to see just how bad it was and it was horrific! The leg above the foot had been amputated and was just hanging on by a piece of skin. The upper leg bone was exposed and it wasn't a very recent injury so it was all dirty, as he had been dragging it on the ground. At that point Lorraine made the humane decision to euthanize him. And as I stood there while she got the injection together, I just started thinking about how much that poor little thing must have suffered and I burst into tears. Poor Lorraine. She rushed over to hug me and said we were doing the right thing and I had to stop crying long enough to explain that I knew we were, and that I was just empathizing too much with how much he had gone through. That whole episode really did a number on me and I was pretty down for the rest of the weekend. I guess I need to develop a thicker skin when it comes to situations like that. And thanks again Lorraine for your patience and kindness!

This Trumpeter swan was awaiting me in the Indoor mew.

You can tell by the grey coloring that this is a juvenile swan and if you could hear his rasping, you would also know that he has a MAJOR upper respiratory infection. That being said, he was VERY feisty and hard to hold while we tube fed him. They had done blood-work and sent it into the lab to see if he had lead poisoning, but I have since learned that he died before the results came back, which ended up being positive. It's a shame, as I was thinking he might have been feisty enough to kick the infection, assuming it wasn't Aspergillus, if he had been lead free.

Let's end this on an upbeat note, shall we? The two Cooper's hawks are doing well. Bucky will have to have the pins in his leg for another few weeks but he is still doing great in the outdoor aviary. And since I haven't mentioned our raccoon youngsters in a bit, I should say they are still growing by leaps and bounds. I always feel sorry for them, though, if I am the one that goes out to take care of them, as I hear that no one usually sees them in the morning hours, yet EVERY TIME I go out there, this is what I see....

Yep, three cute little faces peering at me, all shaking with nervousness and sleepiness. I must just bang around too much for them! I always end up tendering my utmost apologies to them and then hightailing it out of there as quickly as possible so they can go back to sleep.

That's it on my end. Here's hoping tomorrow will be a good day at Wolf Hollow! Til next time...