Well, it started out just like the past few days.. Chilly and rainy, but by midday the clouds started to clear and temperatures started to rise again.
Even the workplace/day was different. So good things happened and of course normal day stuff too. Today we did our 3 day check on the splints on the little fawn we have that had some tight tendons in the metacarpal region. When we took them off the bow legs were no longer bowed!! It was amazing.. it made for a great start to the morning. Around that time our Marine Mammal Stranding Coordinator came in with something in the back of her truck she needed help with, Oh loardy what could it be!! Well, it was something gross that she needed weight on. They had been watching a California Sea Lion making his way up the westside coast line about 2 weeks ago. It was emaciated (the spine was visible) and would sit on really high rocks. She got a call about a dead Cali and picked it up thinking it is the same guy. Very skinny and weighing only 128 lbs, yikes! The head and parts of the bodies were already being scavenged, but it was interesting to poke at it. Dr. Joe Gaydos is coming over to look at it; I don't know if it is for a full necropsy or not, but no matter what I am going to go to poke at it some more :P
We also got in 4 new animals today... again, oh loardy! The first being a bald eagle. This guy/girl got caught in some netting over top of someones domesticated ducks. The WDF&W, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, had taken it to one of the local vet clinics that hold animals on mainland until we can find a volunteer to pick them up. So, here the bird is. Looks great, I can't feel or see anything wrong, but it isn't willing to fly. We tried to put it in one of mid size flight cages to see if it would get up and start moving and then we could just ship it back across. Thinking that it was just exhaustion for the reason it wouldn't get up and go after he released the bird from the net. They will probably do radiographs at the center tomorrow to see if there is a break or dislocation that we just couldn't feel.
Here is the amazing critter:
Bald Eagle nervous about me being in the room with him/her.
Sometimes timing is everything & creepy. I snapped this picture just as the eagle was blinking his/her third lid!
All the glory and an intacted face!
We also got a two more baby birds in. These little ones were in a dryer vent that was cleaned out and the nest was in it. The person removed the nest and refused to rig an artificial nest off to the side. So, we got them. Two very little peepers! My best guess is that they are sparrows, but I am not very good at actually IDing baby birds. We also got in another raptor, only this one is at the other end of the spectrum... small, mostly nocturnal! A saw-whet owl!! This little adult one was attacked by a dog (still unsure how that could have happened but it did). Again, radiographs are needed to assess. We can see that there is a wing injury, but we can't tell if there is a break right at the elbow joint or if it is just soft tissue damage.
Pretty crazy day, but overall it felt good. I didn't feel overburdened and things just had a very different feel today. It felt like a good day of variety, even though we basically just replaced one eagle with another and one small owl with another, but these are different cases and they are a bit more of a questioning nature.
The weather is suppose to be fairly nice for the next few days so I am pretty excited for my days off. I am still stoked about getting to go poke at the California Sea Lion tomorrow. I may be able to update you on this later. :D
Have a good evening.
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