Remember, folks - never volunteer!
Apr. 4th, 2007 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
I spent this morning at the Sarvey Wildlife Centre, where I took the bat. The bat's apparently doing well now, and is living with their Bat Care Lady eating mealworms until he's fully strong enough to go. Bizarrely, he turned out not to be a Little Brown Bat, as the lady who took it from me thought - he's the smallest fully adult Big Brown Bat they've ever heard of. The Bat Care Lady says she's never seen anything like him in 19 years. Trust us to find the bizarre runted mutant bat!
They were looking for volunteers to help out when I dropped off the bat, so I was doomed, and today was my Training Day. I got there a little early (they wanted me at 9, and I didn't have a clue how long it would take me to get there in rush hour traffic, since I normally make an effort to avoid it) and found my trainer for the day feeding tiny orphaned squirrels. 'Oh,' she said, 'you've fed infant mammals before, right?' On a variety of scales, but none of them were squirrels, but she told me to start on the next box along and I was straight in with the baby feeding, which is going to be a big feature of the next few months. So cute! Little wriggly squirrels, with dark eyes and big sucky lips and little grasping hands. I could squee all day. The main difficulty for me is we're not supposed to talk to the babies, just feed them and try not to get them too people-adjusted - hard when you're both animal-inclined and it's a professional habit to talk to the animals non-stop about nothing to reassure them all the time you're handling them. That's going to be a tough habit to break.
The three other trainees for the day then turned up, and we spent a couple of hours being shown round the facility and told the basics about the animals and what happens and where everything is (that last part I don't have a hope of remembering, the place is a maze as bits kept being added on as it expanded). Lots of feeding and cleaning cages, and learning the different ways of catching a Cooper's hawk vs a red-tailed Hawk - the Coopers escape if you try to treat them the same as a red-tail. In fact, the Coopers are fast little bird-hunting hawks and often escape even if you do it right, as this one proved, thus amply demonstrating that it's ex-dislocated shoulder was strengthening nicely before it was retrieved. I've also learned the way to pick up an opossum by holding the tail and body so it can't bite you, and the alternative way to pick up an opossum when it's in the corner of the cage with its tail tucked in and all its teeth showing. Getting even higher on the cuteness scale than baby squirrels - miniature opossums still in the pouch :-) Plus there are all kinds of interesting little snippets like that opossums love fruit, but you mustn't feed them banana, and raccoons can't have strawberries.
I was supposed to leave at 1pm, but somehow ended up staying and helping till 2.30, and I was hungry when I got home! I'm on the schedule now to help out every Monday morning, so that will be my bizarre-o fix for the near future. As an idiot volunteer, they're not going to be asking me to do anything with the bobcat or the black bear, but it's pretty cool that those things are there to look at - I think I'm perfectly happy not playing with them!
They were looking for volunteers to help out when I dropped off the bat, so I was doomed, and today was my Training Day. I got there a little early (they wanted me at 9, and I didn't have a clue how long it would take me to get there in rush hour traffic, since I normally make an effort to avoid it) and found my trainer for the day feeding tiny orphaned squirrels. 'Oh,' she said, 'you've fed infant mammals before, right?' On a variety of scales, but none of them were squirrels, but she told me to start on the next box along and I was straight in with the baby feeding, which is going to be a big feature of the next few months. So cute! Little wriggly squirrels, with dark eyes and big sucky lips and little grasping hands. I could squee all day. The main difficulty for me is we're not supposed to talk to the babies, just feed them and try not to get them too people-adjusted - hard when you're both animal-inclined and it's a professional habit to talk to the animals non-stop about nothing to reassure them all the time you're handling them. That's going to be a tough habit to break.
The three other trainees for the day then turned up, and we spent a couple of hours being shown round the facility and told the basics about the animals and what happens and where everything is (that last part I don't have a hope of remembering, the place is a maze as bits kept being added on as it expanded). Lots of feeding and cleaning cages, and learning the different ways of catching a Cooper's hawk vs a red-tailed Hawk - the Coopers escape if you try to treat them the same as a red-tail. In fact, the Coopers are fast little bird-hunting hawks and often escape even if you do it right, as this one proved, thus amply demonstrating that it's ex-dislocated shoulder was strengthening nicely before it was retrieved. I've also learned the way to pick up an opossum by holding the tail and body so it can't bite you, and the alternative way to pick up an opossum when it's in the corner of the cage with its tail tucked in and all its teeth showing. Getting even higher on the cuteness scale than baby squirrels - miniature opossums still in the pouch :-) Plus there are all kinds of interesting little snippets like that opossums love fruit, but you mustn't feed them banana, and raccoons can't have strawberries.
I was supposed to leave at 1pm, but somehow ended up staying and helping till 2.30, and I was hungry when I got home! I'm on the schedule now to help out every Monday morning, so that will be my bizarre-o fix for the near future. As an idiot volunteer, they're not going to be asking me to do anything with the bobcat or the black bear, but it's pretty cool that those things are there to look at - I think I'm perfectly happy not playing with them!
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 02:05 am (UTC)I'm sure there are wildlife places everywhere desperate for
suckerspeople over the spring and summer. People having the time to do it is, of course, a different thing entirely....no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 02:44 am (UTC)Not talking to the animals would be a HUGE problem for me, too. Well, there's also that little *squeee!* factor... :)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 02:55 am (UTC)Enjoy your Mondays!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 04:46 am (UTC)Babies! I have fed lots of squirrels in the past year - our school sees a lot of wildlife cases. They are super cute; greedy though and they tend to aspirate a lot.
It all sounds like fun!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 05:28 am (UTC)Your college sees wildlife cases? Good grief, mine certainly never did - nobody would have paid for them! I was so worried about aspiration, having no experience with squirrels, that I fed them very slowly. Much too slowly for the squirrels, who grew frustrated with me. But the lady who works there full time had hers aspirate, so over-confidence is clearly bad with them.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-05 10:03 pm (UTC)