It's a dirty job

Lucy, Ashley & Gene the Birdman

As a regular volunteer for the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA Wildlife Department, I’ve been blessed with the rare opportunity to perform hands-on care for a variety of species. This work has the ability to be both exceptionally rewarding and, at times, gag-inducing.

During the first of two squirrel “seasons” expected this year, I worked with orphaned and injured Eastern Gray Squirrels, which, interestingly enough, can be black in color if they carry a mutant pigment gene. My duties generally consisted of preparing and then administering formula via syringes outfitted with rubber nipples. The sickly sweet scent of Similac Formula reminds me an awful lot of vanilla Carnation Instant Breakfast – and not in a good way – but the squirrels don’t seem to mind. Watching them grasp the sides of the syringes with their pink little squirrel hands is pretty darn cute.

When squirrels are so young they can’t yet open their eyes (generally under 4 weeks old), feeding is straightforward because it’s permissible to hold them. It’s when they become rowdy juveniles and graduate to sharing a cage with several other rowdy juveniles that the task becomes tricky. By this point, your patients usually fall into one of two possibly categories: (1) they are nearly self-feeding and no longer desire formula, meaning you must chase them around the cage with the syringe or, (2) they are ravenous and steal each other’s food or suck on the syringe with such force that they can aspirate if you don’t hold back the plunger. Alas, the juvenile stage is also when they begin to bite, as I learned during a recent shift (Coincidentally, this happened to be the same shift I managed to squirt Similac into my eye).

With the PHS squirrel patient numbers dwindling, I’ve recently been assigned to the baby bird nursery. Between the nine incubators, handful of reptariums and countless mesh-covered laundry baskets, the nursery can accommodate between 20 and 30 birds at a time with each enclosure operating on a feeding schedule depending on the resident’s age, species and diet. Most of the birds are on the 30-minute timer, which means every staff member, volunteer and intern in the room abandons what they’re doing to feed them every 30 minutes when the timer sounds. With the exception of hummingbirds, which sip nectar from syringes, the feathery patients gobble songbird formula (administered by syringe), fruit and seed (in a dish) and defrosted crickets and live mealworms (administered with forceps). I sometimes feel sorry for the worms, especially when I have to snip them in half to accommodate a small beak. On the bright side, the birds are generally appreciative, gaping wide, flapping their wings and wiggling with excitement when they anticipate a morsel.  During my shift, nursery patients have included robins, starlings, mockingbirds, blackbirds, juncos, towhees, crows, jays and hummingbirds. Starlings, it should be noted, are incredibly messy birds that relish flicking formula across their enclosure. Otherwise, they’re good eaters and tend to shriek until their crops are full.

I’ve worked in the wildlife department courtyard a handful of times, a shift that generally includes scrubbing bird poop off wooden perches and raccoon mess from kennels. A few weeks ago, I had the great fortune of working the courtyard shift just before I was due to meet friends for dinner. On this particular day, the skunk kennel required cleaning with blasts of water and disinfectant from a high-powered hose, so I found a hooded white suit similar to the “bunny suit” John Kerry wore during his tour of the space shuttle Discovery – and I looked just as ridiculous, topping off the ensemble with giant rubber boots, surgical gloves and a face mask. But I remained clean!

Twice I’ve been assigned to Recovery, the section of the Wildlife Department that handles the intake of new patients and cares for raccoons, raptors, pelagic birds and opossums that for one reason or another cannot be placed in outside enclosures. On Wednesday, I prepared a kennel for a Northern Fulmar, a gull-like bird, observed the examination of a juvenile red-tailed hawk, cleaned up after a group of messy raccoons, defrosted 13 mice for the raptors’ dinner and learned how to use the centrifuge and read the results. It was also, unfortunately, a heavy day for euthanasia, with staff having to put down an injured coyote, an enormous skunk with a broken spine and a bat that interacted with a dog and must now be tested for rabies. Also of note, a local man found a baby opossum in his backyard and brought it in. The tiny opossum with his bug-eyed expression was cute, but Lucy, the 16-year-old cockatoo “Gene the Birdman” carried on his shoulder, fascinated me. Lucy is just one of 46 birds residing in Gene’s home, and he has trained her and many of her roommates to perform tricks for children’s shows and the like. He demonstrated how he flips her upside down to pick up items he drops and how he can cradle her in his arms like a baby.

Meeting remarkable Lucy marked the near-end of my shift, and, thankfully, I could “escape” before those frozen mice thawed and Gary, a colleague, could demonstrate his technique for skinning the rodents. Until next week!