Last day of ICU training was a crazy one! It started out normal, no animals had died and we started cleaning cages. However when it was time to do the bins we had a bunch of fast little birds! We had doves ( morning and a cute little inca baby), woodpeckers, finches and pigeons. A lot of people ask why we even bother to take care of pigeons and doves but my answer is why not? It is not fair to treat one type of bird but not the other because it is ugly or we have a lot of them. Even though a dove might not seem exotic it still deserves a fighting chance! Moving on, I was working with another to get a pesky little woodpeckers out of its bin into a new clean one. Not only was he running around his bin like a mad bird but he was pecking at every chance he could get! Next thing we know he is flying out of his bin and to the other side of the ICU room. We run after him and he has disappeared! He could not be found anywhere, we saw where he went but it was like he had vanished into thin air! We searched for about 15 mins and we still couldn't find him but we had other animals to treat so we had to leave him to come out on his own from his hiding spot. At least we knew he was in that room and he couldn't have gone to far!
We move on to an injured owl in a brooder. This poor great horned owl came in with either a back problem or neurological problems. He has trouble moving but we are doing everything we can to take care of him. I was called to grab him out of the brooder and I was really excited for my first owl grab. It did kind of feel like cheating because he was very injured so it wasn't really any trouble getting him, but I will take any chance practicing my bird grabbing skills. I am holding the owl when all of a sudden the woodpecker appears and chaos ensues!Other volunteers start grabbing nets and trying to get the bird and here I am holding this owl while a woodpeckers is flying and running around. Even the owl seemed to be confused by what was going on! The woodpecker disappeared yet again behind the peregrine falcon and owl cages. Funny how the little woodpecker takes refuge behind two meat eating birds. Peregrin falcons especially will eat other birds!
The rest of the day goes without a hitch but still that little bird is hiding! All we can do is wait for him to come out. All the birds are wrapped up in ICU so I go out with the Medical Services to check up on the birds in rehab. Birds in rehab have already been into ICU and taken care of but sometimes they can fall sick again or they hurt themselves in their enclosures. We get to an owl pen with about 9 owls in it and we see an owl on the ground sitting funny. I get the gloves expecting that the medical services would go in and get the bird, but then she tells ME to get it out of the pen. I gave her a look like " are you crazy?" I am just learning how to take birds out of cages and now she wants me to jump in a enclosure of 9 angry great horned owls! When owls are angry they clack their beaks, then they will puff themselves up to make them appear bigger. When we got to the cage only one owl was clacking, not too bad. We step into the cage and every owl starts clacking, now that gets a little scary. These are all very mad owls and they all have very sharp talons and beaks. One owl flies at us and even with the gloves I am not feeling very confident. The medical services senses my nervousness and decides to grab the owl for herself. I step out of the enclosure to give her room and she swoops in for the owl. Owls start flying around then the next thing I hear is " Oh F**k! " and I see the medical services yelling out in pain and cringing! Not quite sure what to do I just yell What happened!!! When reaching for the owl she had been footed and pecked by an owl! Luckily there was not a lot of blood but I can only imagine how good that did NOT feel. Unfortunately in the battle the bird in question disappears with the rest of the owls. After the incident all I could think was holy cow! that was supposed to be me getting attacked! She knew what she was doing, I really didn't it could have been worse!
I head back in ICU getting ready to leave and then I see that darn woodpeckers on a light! I hurry up and grab a net along with the other girl in ICU and we get on either side of the bird. He starts to fly away and I snag him in my net! Success! Last Day In ICU was quite an adventure and next week its off to education !!!
Education post will come soon and will have lots of pictureS!
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