It gets this way when I'm tired. The figures of speech and cryptic language start flowing. I've been a little off colour these days. Heck, I put a poem on here...on my blog about veterinary procedures...I'm listening to slow folk music and keep taking swigs from the off-brand, sour orange juice bottle beside me. I've had about half of it now, and the cicada songs are doing little for mine ears...
so let's get back to the purpose. Today was a whirlwind of procedures.
This morning we had to treat some coatis for allergies. If you don't know, coatis are sometimes known as hog-nosed coons, and they are racoon relatives. They are very docile and adorable.
Ours have seasonal allergies, and they become very itchy. During this time, they scratch alot and remove some of the hair from their tails and behinds. This morning, we had to give two of the ladies a steroid shot for their allergies. This will reduce inflamation and help them feel less itchy. Maybe after this they will quit having bare butts, and starting have coatis butts. But pun aside, they were quite adorable, and kept coming up to rub on the cage side as I observed the injections. They are very playful and avid climbers in their exhibit. It was great fun watching them.
Another thing we did this morning was castrate a baby deer. I am told that as deer grow and become the flighty creatures we know them as, they become very hard to perform procedures on. During the time frame it takes to anesthetize one, and the stress it puts them under, they can end up hurting themselves. This is obviously not what we desire from our animals, so the neutering was performed very early. During this same time frame, we injected microchips. A microchip is the size of a grain of rice and is easily injected between the shoulder blades. It has a corresponding number which is read by a scanner. Because of this microchip, we can keep up with exactly which deer is which, and which deer is our zoo's. The little darlings were just bawling as they were restrained for the chipping, and my heart bled for them. I swear there is nothing cuter than a baby animal. I can't think of one single thing more wonderful to me. Chocolate and the forest are close seconds. But number one is baby animals, hands down.
In other news, we have a new guy in quarantine. Did I mention this already? I can't remember if I did. Anyway, he is a hamerkop. They are a pretty brown bird with a head shaped like a hammer! I will try and get a picture tomorrow. He's not been very interested in me so far, preferring to stay outside as I clean his stall, unlike Tiffany the curassow who would curiously peck me the whole time. But I am eager to get to know this new guy's personality. However, I will say, what he eats is not very pleasant! I get to stick him pieces of ground meat through his stall for him to get, and among the ground meat is meal worms and dead fish...I have gagged every morning when I remove the previous day's scraps. I hope to take a picture of this feast as well...
The baby pintail is continuing to improve every day, though I can hardly call him baby anymore! He has grown so very much over these few weeks of caring for him, and that is another thing I hope to have pictures of soon! I love to watch him take his baths in the sink. He's still a tiny, tiny bit wobbly when walking, but is almost back to normal, and is very active and fiesty! I just love a success story. I hope it continues in this way.
A crazy and frustrating event happened today. It was so bizarre, but made for a great story afterward. I walk back from the quarantine building and see the "procedure in progress" sign on the vet wing door. Curious about what was going on, but not wanting to disturb if it was serious, I slipped quickly into the room. I asked my supervisor what was going on, because I didn't see an animal anywhere in the room. Well, as it would turn out, they had been holding a parakeet to check on it...and it flew away. Well, okay, this certainly happens, but you get a net and you catch the little guy. However, the problem was that we could NOT find the bird anywhere. Somehow, the little guy had gotten completely lost in the vet wing. Me, my supervisor, and a bird keeper began to look everywhere. we moved everything away from walls, looked under stuff, stood on shelves, opened every cabinet door, even going as far as to remove all of the trash from our trash can (which mind you, included deer testicles and many fecal samples), and still there was no bird...Well, people strated to trickle in as fate would have it. At one point, I think we had eight people in the vet wing looking everywhere for a yellow flighted creature the size of a human hand. Doors had been closed off so that he would be trapped in the area that they were certain he was in...but after an hour of all of us searching, we couldn't find him. So the lights were turned off, and we began to wait, hoping he would come out of his hiding in the dark. We went back into the office to continue our other tasks, baffled and a little frazzled...how had we actually lost a parakeet? It seeemed so impossible. My supervisor walked over to the door, exhasperated, and looked wistfully behind a huge filing cabinet in our office. Of course, there the little bird was. He somehow had flown into the office in the brief moment that another employee had opened the door, and was hiding during the whole search for him. How tired we were after this whole endeavour! But the bird actually turned out to be in pretty good condition, and we're keeping him for a few days, especially after the stress he went through today as we turned the vet wing upside down looking for him...but he should be better soon. I am just chuckling remembering the scenario. It's one of those where you just keep shaking your head and wondering, 'What in the world?'
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