A Week in Review

Til next time...

Let Me Start Out by Saying....

that no, the wee one didn't make it. That teeny thing was less than a day old when we got it in and we just haven't learned how to do as good a job as "mom" can in these early stages. Let's go check out some newer residents of good ol' Wolf Hollow!

Now, I went off-island last Saturday but did come back that afternoon and dropped by to see what I had missed. The first thing Serena asked me when I walked in the door was if I had brought my camera, to which I replied that I hadn't. To that she said, "Too bad, because the baby Townsend's chipmunks are being fed." The baby WHATS?!!

Uh...yeah. Can it be ANY cuter? Can it?! And we have FOUR of them! And how does one feed such a tiny thing? Veeeery carefully....

These are THE SMALLEST mammals we have had in since I have been there. Okay, there was one exception, and that was this tiny thing.

It's a baby vole that we had in the first month I was there at Wolf Hollow. Unfortunately it didn't make it, but the chipmunks seem to be doing well, so I am keeping my fingers crossed!

We have in not one but two fox kits, one of which was hit by a car and one that was the victim of a dog attack. We have Red Foxes here on the island, but they have different color phases, namely red and black. So lets start with the black kit.

If you think he looks miserable, that's because he is. He was found on the side of a road here on SJI after a dog had attacked him. His mom and litter mates were nearby. It appears that the dog had picked him up by the shoulders and shook him, breaking his right front leg at the humeral head. At the time this picture was taken, he had no deep pain response in the lower part of his leg, but they are hoping that he will regain that after the surgery he had this past Tuesday. Guess I will find out on Saturday.

The other little fox kit is one of the red/pseudo red phase. Now, I have seen a fox near South Beach that wasn't red or black, but a very interesting shade of brown. I have only seen it twice but this little girl could be related.

As you can see, she is leaning heavily against Serena's legs. This is because she is having major issues standing upright. The fact that she is even alive to try to stand upright is somewhat of a miracle. Our wonderful Educational Coordinator Shona, and her wonderful husband Ross, were out driving and saw her lying by the side of the road. They assumed she was dead but decided to stop and make sure. She was cold, but sure enough she moved a tiny bit when they touched her. So in she came to WH. Shona told me that she honestly thought they were just making her comfortable before she died. So BOY was she surprised the next morning when she came in and was told that she was awake and sitting up! That's a really good lesson folks. Unless the animal is OBVIOUSLY dead, and I don't think I need to go into any type of graphic detail when I use that term, you should try and check the animal, as it may just be in shock or unconscious, like this beauty was.

She had obviously been hit by a car and while she has no fractures, she does have neurological damage and as such is being given a steroid to help reduce whatever neurological inflammation she may have. To this end, she has to be supported and her water and food need to be placed right under her nose before she tries it.

Now, they seemed to also think that she might not be seeing too well out of either eye, so she is still in a precarious situation and I honestly don't know if she will still be there on Saturday. I hope she is!

We got in a Merganser baby. I just LOVE these guys, as they look like cartoon baby ducks. This one was found at our local sewer plant all by its lonesome. It gets to swim a bit every day in the sink and we try and put in one of the mallard ducklings with it, as one should always swim with a buddy!

The fawn with the weird bony jaw protuberance is back inside. It developed diarrhea and while that is getting somewhat better, it has now developed a hole at the end of the bony projection.

Yeah, it's not the best picture, as he was all over the place. But you get the idea. They are taking a culture of it to see if there might be some fungal or bacterial thing going on there, and therefore figure out the best way to treat it. And as you can see, by the way he is gnawing on Serena's gloved finger, he definitely has a good appetite. In fact, for the second time EVER, here is a video clip of this bottomless pit draining his bottle in under 15 seconds.

We also got this fawn in and it's just a mess. I call it the "snotty" fawn, and here's why.

See? I told you it was a mess. It was found wandering along a road. It has multiple wounds/tears around the face, its left eye is swollen shut with pus, its nose is swollen, and to top it all off, it has an upper respiratory infection. Needless to say it's on antibiotics and an anti-bacterial eye ointment. It's so bad that anyone touching the poor miserable thing must don a gown and gloves. Yeegs!

Let's wrap up this posting on a good note. The five fawns we have outside, including the piebald one, are all doing great. Going out and feeding them is funny, as they are all just frantic to get at the bottles, sometimes the same one!

See, there's our little girl shoving her way in there. She's no pushover! After they are done they meander off into the trees, or towards the photographer, if one happens to be present.

Til next time...

I'm Speechless...

Fawns Galore!

Yes, we officially have the most fawns in since I have been volunteering. The count was at 6 as of last Monday. We get fawns in for numerous reasons. Like this little one:

Cute, no?! But if you look closely at him, you can see a bump on top of his head. Here's a blurry pic (he would NOT hold still) of it.

They have removed it and are doing a histopathology report on it. This little guy also has what appears to be a bony protuberance on his lower left jaw.

They have no idea what this is. They took an x-ray of it and here is what they saw.

You can clearly see the bony bit and some teeth on that side are out of alignment. Luckily this isn't keeping him from eating. In fact, all the fawns were put outside in a small portion of our outdoor fawn pen last weekend.

They all were initially color-coded to make sure we didn't feed a fawn more than once. But now that they are outside, we are feeding them from the bottle-rack, as the sooner they disassociate themselves from humans the better!

The three opossum babies we got in are doing well. They were found abandoned in a garage in Mt. Vernon. One was large enough to go outside into our Opossum cage.

He's pretty much staying entirely in the hammock we have setup in there. So much so that we took him out to make sure he knew where his food was, as he wasn't eating much at all initially. The other two were in a box in their carrier and I didn't want to bother them. Maybe I can get pics of them tomorrow.

The raccoon baby we have in is SO CUTE!

This little girl was found in Anacortes, alone, cold, and lethargic on someone's driveway. Obviously she was being moved and mom got scared off, dropping her in the process. She wasn't eating initially and had to be tube fed. Now she's eating like a champ!

The Mallard ducklings we got in were actually overflow from another rehab place on the mainland. Thankfully all but one were big enough to go into the outdoor wetpen.

We got in a young bird, a Goldfinch I believe, from off island that had an unknown leg issue. And when we examined it, we discovered that it had broken it's tibiotarsus, the feathered upper leg bone. So we had to put a splint on it and immobilize the joint nearest the break.

Needless to say, it was NOT a happy camper after all was said and done.

Unfortunately, this was not the only issue this wee one had, as every time we tried to give him food, and believe me he was HUNGRY, he would spit it back up before it even got down his throat, like he had a major gag reflex or something. I found out that it didn't make it through the night.

While we are now deep in baby season and I could go on and on about the other birds and whatnot, let's end this post with the latest and one of the most unique residents ever admitted while I have been volunteering there. I went in on Sunday to get notes on the patients I had taken pictures of and heard we were getting a fawn in from Orcas Island and went along with Serena to pick it up. It had been found not even 6 inches off the highway on someone's property who was NOT a deer fan. So much so they threatened to shoot it if it stayed there. Mom was nowhere in sight and there was no safe place to leave it so over to Wolf Hollow it came. Now, Orcas Island is known for having a deer population that has beige/white patches on them. We even had one at Wolf Hollow when I first started volunteering. It had a circular beige patch right on it's side. They are called goat fawns as they tend to have stockier bodies and faces. We were told that's what was coming over.

When one of our weekend volunteers showed up with it, she had it in a blanket and all we initially saw was its head, which looked like this:

Pretty, brown with a few white patches. And then, when placing her in the carrier, we saw the rest of her!!

Isn't she amazing?! Yet she doesn't have the stocky face like we were expecting, especially considering how white she is. And yes, she will stay this color even as an adult.

She was very young, with her ear tips still curved from being in the womb and her teeny tiny hoofs still had white tips on them!

She looks like she went in and got a French tip manicure!

I have offered to be the Volunteer Coordinator at Wolf Hollow and will find out what all that entails tomorrow, along with meeting any new residents. Just to give you an idea of how slow we still are, to date we have admitted 193 animals, most of which we got in but some of which our off-site volunteers have cared for. The last 2 years for the same period, Jan. 1 - May 28, we had admitted anywhere from 248-270 animals. Most noticeably missing, at least to me and Serena, are the Barn owlets! We haven't had any in and I do love them so. I also like seeing the summer interns freak out when first having to go in and get them, what with their screaming fits and all!

That's it on my end. Til next time...

Birds, Birds, and a Squirrel

Okay, this is going to be a short, but cute, post! Needless to say, baby season has kicked into high gear so I am going to concentrate on the animals we had in 2 weeks ago, which is the last time I was there on Saturday.

Here is a Euro Starling nestling we got in and yes, I know it's a blurry pic. I was in a rush since he was in an incubator.

His head was tilted to the side like that, possibly from trauma from falling out of the nest. So while he ate well, it was a bit nerve-wracking feeding him, as he couldn't tilt his head back and I was constantly worried about getting food down his glottis (airway). When I popped in last Sunday after being off island Saturday, I was told his head tilt was straightening and that he was doing great!

Here is a Euro Starling fledgling and he is NOT happy!

See him all hunkered down like that. He's probably more than a little scared as well. But he was being difficult enough to feed that we fed him with a syringe, so that we could get enough food in him without having to spend too much time on it, considering how busy we were.

We also have in some young Towhee fledglings.

These two are a HOOT and very cunning. They act all cute and come up to the front of the cage screaming to be fed and then zip out before you know what's happened! The pillowcase that covers the front of their cage has a written warning stating that they are escape artists. I got to clean their cage and needless to say, that was interesting, as I had to catch them, put them in a box while I was cleaning, and then get them back out of the box and into the cage, all without letting one of them accidentally practice their flying skills!

Here is a BEAUTIFUL Barn Swallow we had in that had gotten caught by a cat, so of course it had to be on antibiotics for a week.

He was found inside a house and couldn't fly. He also was eating sporadically, sometimes eating on his own and sometimes we had to force feed him.

The Killdeer is doing GREAT and is now completely feathered!

Look! Isn't it beautiful?!

Okay, let's get to the one mammal we had in on that Saturday, and that was this Grey Squirrel baby we got in.

Isn't it ADORABLE?! And, they are SO easy to feed at this stage, as they are eager eaters and require little to no work whatsoever, unlike the baby bunnies we get in.

Now, being off island last Saturday, I of course offered to bring back over any animals that might need a lift to WH and sure enough two Black-capped Chickadee youngsters were put into my expert care.

Man, were these two VOCAL about wanting to be fed! And not wanting to leave them in the cold car while on the ferry, I bundled them up, along with their food, and hauled their cute butts up into the ferry with me. Thankfully I didn't attract much attention, but after they started screaming for food for the millionth time, the guy in the booth next to me finally turned around and looked at me with this questioning expression. I apologized profusely for interrupting his peaceful ferry ride, explained what, exactly, the noisemakers were, and where I was taking them. He just smiled and went back to reading.

And that's it. I can hear some of you sputtering "But, but...you posted a picture of some fawns. WHAT ABOUT THE FAWNS?!!! Well, we actually got in last Friday, and after hearing this list I was feeling more than a bit guilty about not coming in the next day, 16 baby ducks, 3 baby opossums, 1 baby raccoon, and 1 fawn! And to top it all off, when I showed up on Sunday with my peeping cargo, I learned that we had gotten in FOUR MORE FAWNS in on Saturday! Again...SORRY SERENA!!! So here are a few more teaser photos:

and....

Oh, alright, here's a picture of an entire fawn, color coded and all!

Tomorrow promises to be interesting and HECTIC!!! Til next time...