Amendment

So, yesterday I was explaining that the cute and cuddle isn’t all I do at work. I realized today in the haste of me making that post that I forgot some other things that make the job not as fun as it may sound.

First off there is the on call thing. Yes, just like a doctor I have to be on call, this can range from one night (when we have lots of staff in the summer, up to 4 nights a week when we are down to just 2 staff members). I personally have taken a call as late as 12:30 pm, but I know other staff members who have gotten calls at 3 am to come rescue a fox. Other night things that can be included are night feeds. Now this is something that happens either in the early part of baby season or the late part of baby season. Like right now we are taking turns in going in to feed seals and the squirrels. Some times this can include feeds as late as midnight. In some of these cases I bring the animal home and house it in my bathroom. In the early part of baby season this can mean I have an incubator in my bathroom with a bird in it, and that bird can need to be fed every 15 to 30 minutes until 8 or 9 at night. That’s right, all day long!

And the last thing I will leave you with is the fact that this job has quite a strange perversion to it. When we care for infant mammals, we have to do something that the mom would do. Now, a lot of people don’t think of this, b/c well we don’t have to do it for our babies. But animals lick their babies to make them defecate or urinate. Please don’t think that we lick them, b/c well we don’t. But we do have to use a warm cotton pad/ball and gently rub their genitals until they go. I know, eww, right? But they have to have it done since I am playing substitute mommy…



This is what her neck looked like on the first day that we excised the necrotic tissue away (something had bit her neck and everything between the 4 punture wounds was dead!).



Here is a photo of the healed neckwound of Caracara (me holding the struggling beast heads up, and luckly not getting eaten alive!)


Hawt!! Those pants make me look soo good!

To do or not to do

I feel the need to explain my job to some of you. I may post really cute photos and talk about some of the good stuff, but you should understand that is roughly 10% of my job. The rest of it involves doing dishes, cleaning cages, doing laundry, sweeping & mopping, scrubbing pools, prepping formula, cutting up meat, fruits & veggies, and the constant maintenance around the Hollow. This can be anything from setting up a cage for an animal to be upgraded, to repairing the cage, and many other things I can’t quite think of. For those of you who saw me running from a cow in Texas on My New Wild Life on Animal Planet you might understand only a smidge better.

Of course I also have to deal with side that isn’t fun to talk about and also is what causes the most emotional distress. The cases that I can’t repair and mend, or the phone call about something that is just beyond what we can help, a full grown deer or some animal (normally a bald eagle) that is out in the water. It is hard to explain to people while being empathetic that is just quite unsafe to do a water rescue for both the animal and the rescuer.

I have also heard my job referenced to the “Dawn” commercials. As that is what we do in rehab. Granted, there are rehab facilities that are dedicated to this, IBRRC, Tri-state, and many more. But as for me… well I helped with washing 2 birds this summer, a pigeon and a barn owl. I also know that my seasonal rehabber, Jessica; volunteer, Heather, education coordinator, Shona, and intern Kate, washed another barn owl this weekend (it fell into a pit toilet at American camp—so you can guess what they had to wash off…ewww).

I hear from time to time that my job isn’t demanding, or stressful. I merely want to laugh at this. Yes, physical stresses can be limited, but when something comes up it generally takes all the strength you have anything from trying to wrestle or move a full size deer to scaling steep hillsides to nab a raptor, wadding in mucky, smelly Westcott bay to net a great blue heron. I know I can still here your head going cool! Which after the fact, you can think that, but you also think good god, I could have been easily hurt. Of course everyday you work, you are dealing with psychological & emotional stresses. Even on good days, those being days I don’t have to euthanize anything or have anything die. We are still dealing with phone calls, attempting to help people understand situations, or trying to find a volunteer to pick up an animal. Plus even if all animals are “healthy” there are always concerns with specific critters.

I don’t if this put anything in perspective, but I think I have hopefully helped you realize that rehab isn’t all fun and games. It is tough work (and by that I mean a good 12 hours plus on call in the summer).

I want to go here

Black Sea Castle, Yalta, Russia/Ukraine

Offload

Hold onto your hats, I am going to do something that I very rarely do – people that are close to me don’t even see me do. That is throw some emotions out there.

I am a very guarded person with all of my feelings, be those good or bad, because well, I think it had to be something growing up, or maybe just the way teenagers are mean, so I learned to just keep things to myself. That in it self can be quite self-destructive, and right now, I can feel the effects. I can’t exactly say what the effects are; I just know that I am to a point that I feel completely and utterly defeated. I just know something has to be changed and I have to do it fast. But how do you fix what you don’t know to be broken? I mean, I know some of the things that are broken, and can work on them, and just maybe that will cause a change reaction that will do an automatic fix on more of the damage that has been done. I know there is change needed, and getting there is tough.

I feel like I have been talking in code here, and I am sorry to anyone who has actually read this far (thanks for that by the way). But, it is all code to me too, a code I have been trying to break for most of the summer. There are a few thinks that I just know that I can’t change right now, and I fear they are one of those fixes that I need. I am getting itchy to travel, but something about working in the industry in which I am in, doesn’t give me much of a money cushion.

Even if I did have the funds, I really don’t know where I would go. I have some thoughts in mind, but they just lead me back to places that have some emotional tie to them (a lot of them being negative). And I think that would just continue the emotional downward spiral. I need new, something refreshing, and right now I would even be willing to do all that exploring on my own. I can only guess that in March I will be going to Chicago for work, but that isn’t set in stone yet if it will be me who would be going to the symposium or not. And there has been talk of going to up to Vancouver for some work training too, but again I don’t know when that would be, if it would even be happening this year or not. Both of trips would be helpful for me, because it would be someplace new for me.

I just don’t know. I know there are a lot of head games I have been playing with myself, consciously and subconsciously. I wake up in the morning after having some strange dream that draws up some thing from the past that just puts me in a funk and there I stay for a good part of the day. Of course, I front that everything is okay and don’t feel that I have a close relationship with anyone right now that I can offload on them, if I do; I know they are going through some tough shit and don’t feel that it would be fair of me to offload on them. So I do what I have always done, put my feelings aside and try to help them through their struggle. Someday, maybe I will learn to just say, no, I need to talk about me for a minute, but that I don’t see happening anytime soon. Okay so maybe that is what this whole blog was about, but it this was like trying to use cubic zirconium to scratch glass (it just won’t work).

R. otter fun!

R. otter fun on the waterslide

News flash

I <3 It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

It makes me laugh!