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More shifts, more call-outs!
Working with the animal ambulance means I’ll come into contact with many different animals in many different situations. The variation is limitless and really exciting! But how can I prepare for these different rescue situations with animals that have different personalities, different characteristics and different injuries – let alone different species?
The answers I hear most frequently are “experience” and “learning on the job”. I’m determined to pick up as much as possible!
Cat
My next shift wasn’t a happy one – scooping up a dead cat from the pavement. As I understand it, the local council sees this as litter but doesn’t want to deal with it themselves, so they hand it over to the police who are busy tackling crime. So the animal ambulance deals with it, and the council makes a payment if it’s a wild animal. If the animal has an owner, then the owner pays. Naturally this can lead to difficult and emotionally charged conversations when a deceased (or injured) pet is returned to their owner. They are of course, distraught then on top of that they are presented with a bill…
Returning injured and deceased animals to their owners is emotionally tough for everyone and I’m not looking forward to doing it. But at least I’m helping the owner as best I can. After all, they love animals too.
My colleague read the cat’s chip so we knew he had an owner. The phone number was visible but unfortunately there was no answer when we called, so a message was left to contact us. Meanwhile, we cleaned the pavement and took the cat back to our building where we could clean him and make him presentable for when the owner comes to collect him.
Cleaning a dead animal is physically and mentally unpleasant, but my motivation here is clear; I assume the pet was loved by their owner, and if not, it should have been. So this is the least I can do for both pet and owner. And for what it’s worth, I can give the animal a last bit of dignity.
Pigeon
Our next rescue was an injured pigeon that had been found flapping around in a garden, clearly in some sort of trouble. Some people would argue that pigeons are grey and stupid and not worth saving. I’d argue back: so are some people, and we love them too, don’t we?!
The property owner managed to trap this pigeon inside a cage and waited for us. My colleague was brilliant; she explained to me very clearly how to pick up a bird so that it wouldn’t fly away. I also had the benefit that if I did it wrong, the pigeon couldn’t get far because I was also in the cage (hopefully not for long!)
Knowing there was ‘backup’ gave me confidence and that in itself helped too – there’s often only one shot at picking up a bird – try once and if it doesn’t go well, the bird is extra agitated and more difficult to handle for a second attempt.
It went well, and I had a juvenile pigeon in my hand! I placed her into a box, the lid closed and secured with a stick so the pigeon couldn’t fly hard upwards and escape.
Baby Jay
Normally (I heard) we’d bring the pigeon straight to the rescue centre. But we had another call – a baby jay who’d been found at a petting zoo. The staff there of course knew how to handle animals, and this little baby was already in a shoe box waiting for us. And now I knew what to do! Admittedly she was much easier to handle than the pigeon because she was so small and weak; my biggest fear was that I might hurt her whilst picking her up. Thankfully not! Because she was so small, we put a bottle of warm water in the box with her to keep her warm.
And now we go to the rescue centre!
The rescue centre has many birds and other small animals brought in every day. These creatures cannot come into contact with other animals who are already there because they might be sick, so there’s a special system. We phone in advance and tell the workers there about the animal we’re bringing in and the situation behind it. Then we put the box the animal is in into a wall of cupboards. The cupboard has a clean, empty box we can take in exchange for the one we leave with the animal in. Once the door is shut, we push an alarm bolt which not only locks the door, but alerts the workers that the animal is waiting for them.
It was simple enough for the pigeon. But for the baby jay, on account of her small size (had she fallen out of a nest?) we put her in a small knitted nest and then into a heated glass box in a separate cupboard.
It seems odd stuffing a bird into a box, closing the lid, putting it into in a locker and then slamming a locking bolt for good measure…is it something I’d get used to? I think I don’t need to. The bird is calm in a closed, quiet and dark place, and safe from predators
And I know that she’ll be in good hands.
Paul
