Friday, November 08, 2013

Party With the Merlins

I'm volunteering once a week at a wildlife rescue center located north of Corvallis--diversity of animal experience and all that, you know. I don't have much interest in working with "exotics" as a vet. Still, it gives me a chance to learn more about wildlife management issues as well as see how a large, successful, animal-focused non-profit is organized (tons of volunteers, for starters).

For various reasons, the center mainly handles birds, and among those, birds of prey are very common (eagles, owls, vultures, hawks, etc.). Winter is the slow season but there is a continual trickle of birds arriving each week, many with cat- or car-inflicted injuries. Spring and summer are when the cute mammal babies show up. Still, the center currently has some non-avian species in rehab: five squirrels and a frog. The principal goal is to release the animals back into the wild as soon as possible. Injuries are repaired and special diets are fed to get the animals back up to a normal weight. Animals are weighed and monitored at least twice daily (all by volunteers). Birds with wing injuries are allowed to heal in small cages, then moved into larger flight cages to ensure they can fly normally. Some animals have to be euthanized but at least it's done humanely. Contact with the animals is supposed to be minimal to make sure they don't get used to humans.

This week I got introduced to the procedures for taking care of the animals outside in the larger enclosures. The most memorable part was going into the merlin falcon cage to clean it up.

There were two of them in the enclosure. I avoided making eye contact with them and focused instead on the mess they had made. Birds of prey like falcons are fed chicks; the owls get mice. The chicks are frozen. We thaw them, clip the skin on their inner thighs and insert a bit of raw chicken cut from a commercial cut (to make them more enticing), sprinkle them with some supplement, and lay the chicks out on a stump for the birds' dining pleasure. The two merlins are fed five chicks a day.

There were two chicks left on the stump that they didn't eat. Those had to be collected and put in a "scrap bucket" in the fridge to be fed to the turkey vultures.

Then there was the rest of the cage--the remains of the party were everywhere. Chick feet sticking up from the gravel. Chick heads and wings scattered around. Chick guts hanging off one of the platforms, even stuck in the wire mesh. I had to pick all of that up (mental note: when assigned the outback cages in the future, bring gloves!). I had to hose off the party platform and some other favorite perches (birds shit everywhere). And I had to do this with two rather unsettled merlins in the cage with me.

It was an interesting way to begin the morning.

Another of the tasks of the morning volunteer crew is to check the 12 live mouse traps placed in the main building. They are baited with cat food, rodent pellets, sunflower seeds, and other mouse-tastic treats. Even though the center maintains a caged mouse colony in one of barns (for the owls), wild mice are returned to the wild. And that particular morning, there was a tiny brown mouse in one of the traps. So I carefully carried the cage out to the back of the property and let the little guy disappear in the weeds. He'll probably be back.

There is an interesting contrast at work here. The moral issues surrounding animal care are complicated.

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