The rhythm at PAWS wildlife center is shifting with the change in seasons. Every day that I come in, it seems there are less mouths to feed as baby birds get released and squirrels get weaned and move up to the small mammal caging up on the hill. Soon, the raccoons will be going in small batches which means (HURRAH!) less raccoon silo cleaning (possibly my least favorite activity). But less animals means less volunteers and less interns, so while things are not as hectic as they were just a few weeks ago, there’s still plenty of work to do. And while there are less animals to handle, less people qualified to do a lot of the procedures means that you get more hands-on time taking care of the animals that are still there.
And unfortunately for a number of the animals, some of them won’t be leaving anytime soon. An outbreak of avian pox in a couple of the aviaries has led the the euthanizing of several birds and a quarantine on the rest of the affected cages. While the whole situation has been sad, the most heartbreaking consequence of this was that four of the five Stellar’s jays that had been here since they were nestlings had to be euthanized on the eve of what was supposed to be their release; the one jay that showed no symptoms was returned to the aviary for an extended period of quarantine. Jays are intelligent and social birds, and this poor bird went from having four conspecific playmates to being stuck, alone, in an aviary, interacting only with the strange humans who stop by occasionally to drop off food, or with his own reflection in one of the mirrors hung around the cage.
At least he has a chance of release this fall, if he remains pox-free. Several animals are going to be staying with us for the long haul. A pair of Swainson’s thrushes will be our guests for the winter, because some idiot decided to clip the feathers of one of the thrushes (either before or after a cat attack). The feathers had to be plucked to stimulate regrowth, which means that he won’t be able to make the migration down to South America (which is happening NOW) with the rest of his species. We had gotten another Swainson’s thrush in that was in need of medical care and it was decided to keep him over the winter too, in order to ensure that the first thrush had company. Assuming they survive the winter, they’ll be released in the spring when their pals return.
A trio of black bear cubs will also be guests at Chez PAWS for the winter. I’m not sure how we got the little girl (who was here first) but the two boys who came from the Oregon coast (and are thus of a non-hibernating sub-species) were, like the plucked thrush, also victims to human stupidity. Some asswipe decided it would be fun to feed the momma bear that was coming into his yard, but when she killed one of his chickens, he felt justified in shooting her, thus orphaning her cubs. 👿 Sometimes, people just plain suck. Anyway, the trio, who are already getting big and rowdy, will be spending their first winter ripping apart their runs and keeping life interesting for the remaining staff. As an intern, I’m not allowed anywhere near them, but there’s a CCTV camera above their caging, which means I get to see some of their antics. At this adolescent stage, it’s clear they’re going to be a handful.
And even though orphan season is more or less over, we still get our share of sick and injured animals. The staff has been kept especially busy with a group of Common Murres (which I’ve just discovered is the exact same species as what we in Europe call Guillemots [scientific name, Uria aalge or zeekoet in Dutch]) that got brought to us after being washed up on shore. A number of them didn’t make it, but the ones that did require seemingly constant attention, between tubing them and bringing them back and forth between pools and drying pens to try to restore the waterproofing to their feathers (a problem with sea birds). And now that the squirrels are mostly weaned, we suddenly find ourselves caring for seven teeny-tiny orphaned opossums. They are just starting to open their eyes and are possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Because they get tube fed (to approximate how they nurse in the pouch) and not a lot of the volunteers are trained to tube feed, I suspect I’ll be spending a lot of time with those little guys in the next few weeks.
Works for me. 
Nerdsong 