This blog reflects my personal experiences and opinions and does not represent or reflect those of DierenAmbulance Nederrijn.
Beginnings and Understandings
My driver, who I’m going to call “Sally”, was already on-site when I arrived. She pottered outside cleaning this and that, keeping herself busy until the official start of our shift. We chatted, and she told me about an upcoming rescue; a great tit caught himself in a mouse (“muis“) trap and suffered with a severely injured leg. And we were going to rescue him on our own, i.e. have a ‘relaxed’ shift without a ‘3rd wheel’.
I went inside to see when we could start. And met our 3rd wheel! 😉
Time for Tablets
The tablet is my window into the administration. The centralist takes calls, provides advice, makes “a rescue” if necessary (like IT departments like us to make “tickets” when things go wrong) and assigns it to one of the teams. I log myself and Sally in as a team, and check the tablet to see what’s been assigned to us.
When I logged in I saw we had 2 rescues; a baby sparrow (“mus“) who’d been attacked by a cat, and the collection of a deceased pigeon.
There was also a rescue for a buzzard with an injured leg that couldn’t fly (I’ll skip the obvious Dad joke here). I’ve never seen one up close so I wanted to do that too, but it went to the other team working parallel with us.
Cat Attack! Baby Sparrows 🙁
Obviously we were going to rescue the live sparrow before picking up the deceased pigeon.
But wait…what about the great tit in a mouse trap? I asked the centralist about it which started a 5-way discussion which I couldn’t follow. I have a lot of respect for the centralists; they’re even paid in other animal ambulances! In any case, I trusted she knew what she was doing. The great tit wasn’t going to get on our list of rescues so we got busy with the sparrow.
We received a slightly different story from the finders when we spoke to them. A cat had caught and killed a baby sparrow that had either fallen out of his nest, or had been snatched from it by the cat. The sparrow the finders had placed in the box was another nestling who had fallen out of his nest. Even though he could flutter around a little bit, his flying capabilities weren’t good enough to keep him out of harm’s reach from the cat. If he wasn’t rescued, the cat would soon have this one too.
Could we bring him to the rescue centre when he’s healthy? We gave them a call and yes – we could bring him in! 🙂
Incidentally, today was our first shift with a new protocol for bringing birds and hedgehogs to the wildlife rescue centre. Instead of filling out a paper form with the same information that’s already in the administration and leaving it with the rescue box at the rescue centre, we can now simply email the administration straight over. And we also don’t need to phone in advance to let the centre know we’re on our way with a patient. I must admit I’m curious how the wildlife centre knows how long we will take, or indeed that an animal has been left with them. In any case, the phone call just now eased my mind!
We moved the sparrow from the finder’s cardboard box to the rescue box inside the ambulance to limit his movement in case he escaped and tried to fly away. I also wanted to take a photo of the sparrow for the admin, though now I come to think of it, that was unnecessary.
The photo shows 2 glass jars in the cardboard box which I assume (*growl* – see personal note) hold warm water and act as hot water bottles. And the cloth thing in the corner acts as a small nest to keep small birds warm – except this one wouldn’t stay in it!
The deceased pigeon was far off the route to the wildlife rescue centre; we’d collect him on another rescue closer by.
On the way my wife sent me a picture of our guinea pigs. It’s how I felt sitting in the middle of the ambulance too!
Back at the Base: 2 Turtles
A strange call came in: 2 turtles were sitting on a nest in a pond. I couldn’t follow why this was a problem, and after a lengthy discussion with a colleague, the centralist called the finder back to tell them this was OK and no-one needed to be called out.
Abandoned Box with 4 Pigeons
Next up was what it said on the tin box.
A cardboard box was found under a public bench with 4 pigeons walking close by. It was suspected these birds had been dumped and we were to collect them.
For an efficient country like the Netherlands where most things work brilliantly, it still comes as a shock to me that road names are often the exception to this rule. The location of these pigeons was such a case; a single road name covered 4 roads in a large rectangle with buildings on the inside of the enclosure, which themselves enclosed a green area. It’s in this green area where the bench was located.
We had no house number for the finder, so we needed to find the bench. But even driving to the green area was problematic on several counts. The buildings were between the road and the green area. One of the roads was actually a cycle lane, and there was an obstruction on it so we couldn’t circle around.
Our only hope was parking up somewhere, looking for the bench on foot and phoning the finder if we weren’t successful.
We were in luck! As soon as we parked we saw the finders approaching us with the box. They told us what they’d found and how they’d put them back into the box – which was filled with bird droppings. This indicated the birds had come from there and some idiot (my words) dumped them.
One of the finders asked if we had anything he could wash his hands with as he knew they were dirty from handling pigeons. We invited him to the ambulance where we have cleaning alcohol, and afterwards I handed them a magazine. Then from inside the ambulance we moved the pigeons into a single rescue box. They were clearly tame and Paddy recognised them as ornamental pigeons (literal translation of “sieren duiven“).
Anyone who considers pigeons as “flying rats” needs to experience birds like these 4! They were calm and curious and my heart bled for them – and it seethed in anger at the moronic cretin (my words) who abandoned them.
Thankfully the pigeons looked healthy (and were found and reported! 🙂 ) so that meant we could pick up the deceased pigeon who was in the same town before heading on to the rescue centre. I emailed the admin over, and we set off.
Buzzard
Something caught Paddy’s eye on the on the way back to the base from the rescue centre. Then it caught all of our eyes – a buzzard swooped down into the grassy verge on our left, then rose with a small bird in his talons! I’ve never seen that before, so it was quite an experience. Also for the prey…
It made me wonder – the catch was good news for the buzzard who now had something to eat (and possibly feed his / her family), but obviously bad news for the small bird that was caught. If it had been dropped and reported we’d have been happy to help it and bring it to where it can be helped.
I mentioned this to Paddy and Sally, and the discussion arose about which animals we should help. Both Sally and I are happy to drive and help any animal; I wasn’t sure about Paddy, but in any case, there are certainly several volunteers who are reluctant to drive for certain animals. I understand their point, but I don’t agree with it.
Deceased Pigeon
We “returned the deceased pigeon to nature” in the local forest just before we arrived at the base.
Bird in Trouble
Jumping back in time a little; a new rescue came in just before we left the centre.
A bird needed to be rescued (unfortunately I can’t remember the kind of bird or what her situation was). She was located in the town we’d just been in, some 20 km away. It was now 17:20 so it would be a long rescue given rush hour conditions. This was bad news for us (obviously not as bad as it was for the bird). The new rule is we shouldn’t start a new rescue in the last half hour, and it was as good as close enough because it was only 10 minutes. At the same time, Sally and I wanted to make the rescue because she’s an animal in need!
The centralist phoned us and asked if we were OK to rescue the bird as we were in the area. Hang on – we weren’t! She’d assigned the rescue to the wrong team, apologised, and handed it over to the other team who were in the vicinity!
So good, the bird would be rescued! 🙂
Back at the Base: Dog
A dog was found so the first call of action was to read his (compulsory) chip. The second parallel team wasn’t close to his location, and it was far from the base where we were too, but Paddy didn’t mind reading his chip on his own because he lived in the area and could go straight home afterwards.
It was a nice gesture but practically it wouldn’t work out; if there was no chip, or it couldn’t be read, or the owner couldn’t be determined or located, then it’s a long story contacting various groups and shelters, especially after hours. The centralist organised something else (I didn’t over hear what).
Passing traffic
On my drive home I saw the second team on their way to the rescue centre. Although technically I couldn’t do anything about that, I felt a little guilty…
Overall
Overall it was a long shift. It was uncomfortable with 3 of us squeezed in the ambulance for so long, but the discomfort is nothing knowing we brought 5 animals to safety! 🙂
