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This blog reflects my personal experiences and opinions and does not represent or reflect those of DierenAmbulance Nederrijn.
Warm Feelings
It’s set to be an uncomfortable 36 degrees today with inescapable full sunshine. Were allowed to wear shorts in this heat but I won’t use the leniency; my trousers are for protection and although most rescues are birds it’s impossible to tell with 100% accuracy which animals will need help and how. I don’t want to turn down a rescue (e.g. a wild cat) because I’ve exposed my legs. Besides, my bare legs are probably reason enough to send many creatures into shock!😝
Special provisions have also been made for the animals we bring to the base whilst they await an external driver. I doubt hot water bottles will be needed for young animals in this heat; I’ll ask whether cooling measures such as a damp cloth need to be taken instead.
It also feels a little strange coming in today because my days at the animal ambulance may be numbered; I’ve enrolled for a paraveterinary training course and I’m not sure how much time I’ll have next to it. I’d love to carry on though!
Arrival
I asked the co-ordinator staright away about keeping animals cool with a damp cloth. This is a good idea, especially when a bird’s beak is open. If in doubt we can call the wildlife rescue centre for advice for a particular situation.
(I also asked her about an upcoming contact for both the magazine and this blog, but more on that later in another post!)
On the way out of the office I bumped into another volunteer who I hadn’t seen for months! She started the same time as me and we caught up. Now she’s an external driver which highlights how accommodating the animal ambulance is for people and their wishes / capabilities!
I checked the tablet for our upcoming rescues. It was blank! This didn’t make sense, but I spotted Sally by the work stations. She was checking the admin to see what had already come in and what we could ask the centralist to hand over!
Tortoise on Street
Sadly (and somehow) a tortoise was found on a street. We were to retrieve him and bring him back to the base; an external driver had been arranged to bring it (and another) tomorrow to a specialised tortoise sanctuary.
Sally’s often keen to get driving before I’ve had the chance to type in the destination to the onboard navigation. I call it a quirky enthusiasm, but I also call it a pain in the neck because typing on a tiny screen in a wobbly ambulance (or on a disappearing screen when the ambulance goes in reverse) is really tricky!
Sally had set off, and I set to tapping in the address – except we didn’t have one! We called the finder but she let us know they’d arranged to put the tortoise on the neighbourhood whatsapp group to see if there was an owner. A wise solution, and they wanted to time for the owner to make themselves known. The bottom line was the rescue was effectively cancelled (or postponed).
This put us in a tricky situation. Obviously it’s the best solution for tortoise and owner to be reunited, but that wasn’t a certain outcome. In which case, would it be wiser to pick up the tortoise so it could be brought to safety (and presumably later ‘reclaimed’ by the owner)?
We called the co-ordinator; she’d pick the matter up.
“Chicken or cockerel” found in garden
I needed to look this up:
Chicken: general species name
Chick: a young chicken of either sex
Pullet: a young female chicken over 12 weeks
A cockerel: is a young male chicken under 1 year, then it’s a rooster.
Hen: an adult egg-laying female chicken
UK-ers tend to call all male chickens cockerels; the US call them roosters. In Dutch, “chicken” is kip, a haan is a cockerel and a hen is a hen.
In essence, we didn’t know whether this was a male or female chicken.
The find location was at the far end of a narrow one-way track. Sally parked up at one end and we walked through searing heat to the garden. The finder wasn’t in, but he answered the phone when we called, and he directed us to his front garden where he’d spotted the chicken.
We thanked him, put a magazine in his letter box and set to finding the chicken. It wasn’t in his garden! Thankfully Paddy spotted him in the garden next door and identified him straight away as a cockerel.
I knocked on the property owner’s door for permission to enter his garden whilst Paddy kept an eye on the cockerel’s location and Sally went all the way back to the ambulance to get a net. The property owner, when he saw the cockerel, suspected he had escaped from over the road. Indeed, Paddy and I could hear some others, but we couldn’t see a way to return this cockerel there.
Sally came back with the net – surrounded by the ambulance! 😉
I showed Sally and Paddy how to use the net (instructions from way back) and handed it to Paddy.
I was amazed at how fast the cockerel could run! And Paddy! 😉 It was tiring work in this insane heat, and I wondered why the centralist had agreed to this rescue as the cockerel hadn’t already been captured. That said, I was glad we did! 🙂
Paddy handed me the net and I was lucky – I had the cockerel trapped, and with nowhere to go I brought the net down over his head. Paddy brought over the rescue box, and Sally helped me lift him into it.
All of a sudden the cockerel was motionless. Had I injured him? Was he OK? I’d only just remembered a previous rescue of a crow with a broken wing who also suddenly calmed down, when this bird moved again! Relieved his non moving episode was shock, we closed the lid and put him into the ambulance.
Paddy helped Sally turn the ambulance around within the tiny one-way dust track, complete with competing trees, ditches and I think a little bit of fear!
2 Baby Pigeons
These 2 baby pigeons were found in a hedge; their mother had deceased so they only had each other. And now us. The finder placed them in a small nest in a box, and then later left the box with a neighbour as it could be left in a more shady spot.
How anyone could tell these babies are pigeons is anyone’s guess! I suppose the clue was seeing the mother.
In any case, Paddy dived straight in and deftly placed the siblings into the rescue box. I had to chuckle to myself; I noticed she’d marked the rescue boxes with the rescue number beforehand! 😉
Magpie caught by the heat
The finder told us he’d found this magpie by a motorway(!) and it was clearly in trouble. He’d brought her home and left some water by her, but she wouldn’t drink. Her mouth was open which is a sign of thirst in birds.
Paddy grabbed the young, scraggly bird, and once she was placed in the rescue box we could see something was amiss with one of her feet which hung strangely.
I’d brought a cloth with me from the ambulance and asked the finder to make it wet. We could roll it up and bend it around the magpie which would help keep her cool as well as support her during transit.
As we left, all 3 of us commented about how friendly and caring the finder was. We’d expected a bit of trouble as he’d phoned up the centralist asking when we were going to arrive. Clearly this call was made out of care and compassion!
Wildlife Rescue Centre
High time to bring our precious cargo to the rescue centre. It’s usual to email the admin to them and simply place the creatures into the dedicated outdoor cupboards there. This time we called ahead to alert them of the urgency for the tangled hedgehog and the suffering baby magpie.
pushed them far back where cooler
Wounded Starling
This starling was found in a basement suffering with a broken wing. The finder suspected that a cat had brought it there.
Despite the broken wing, she moved around the inside the box a lot, finally landing, it seemed, in a bowl of water the finder had placed inside.
I was going to move her into the rescue box, except I had a problem…
My try didn’t cut it. I needed to be careful with his broken wing – and it was a small bird that needs digital dexterity. With my gloves turning my awesome guitar-playing fret-thrashing fingered hands into canoe paddles, I simply wasn’t equipped for the job. Sally stepped in, and brought our swallow safely into the rescue box.
We brought her straight away to the wildlife rescue centre, but there was trouble; there wasn’t any space left in the outdoor cupboards!
This was a double problem. The first and obvious is is not having anywhere to leave our sparrow, and secondly – why hadn’t the left animals been collected already? We were thinking especially of the baby magpie.
Sally tried calling them, during which time another animal ambulance pulled up with 4 rescue boxes to deliver! It took 10 minutes to reach someone; up until this moment it was looking increasingly likely we were going to bring the animals back to the base temporarily.
Finally the phone was answered and someone would meet us by the door. We handed her the sparrow, and alerted her about the baby magpie still in the cupboard. Although I felt palmed off with a “we’re busy” comment (and a view inside of 4 volunteers) that’s when I realised it’s difficult for them to handpick which animals to take out of the cupboards.
Back at the Base
Like last week we called into the base to discuss our followng rescces. We;d seen what needed to be done but hadn;t yet been assigned to us
Saw a mouse that had been brought there; an external driver will later bring him to further help.
At the end of the shift the external driver arrived. The rescue box pictured above was way too large; someone donated their lunch box, punched ventilation holes in the lid, and the mouse was moved there. I was really touched by the external driver who was smitten by him!
Tangled Hedgehog
A sad story. A hedgehog was stuck in a net by a currant bush and the finder freed him and placed him into a box.
He was in a mess and must have been incredibly uncomfortable. One of his legs was tied up so it was stuck by his ear, and we noticed a strange white stuff amongst the tangle; I wasn’t sure if it was something growing on him or whether it was vegetation.
As the netting was tight against him, I didn’t dare try free him any further. This was something definitely best left to the experts at the wildlife rescue centre.
I usually hide images of animals with gory wounds. In this case I’m keeping this public; I think it’s important to see the detrimental impact humans have on wildlife.
We wanted to bring this hedgehog quickly to the rescue centre, but we were far away and there were 2 rescues relatively close. We decided to pick these up and make a ‘bulk’ delivery.
Young bird (sparrow?)
The first of these was one of two young birds that had been found lying in the garden. One had sadly deceased, and this other was small enough that he couldn’t yet fly. It was likely that both of these birds had fallen out of their nest.
The finder met us at the door and handed us a small box with ventilation holes. Indeed, the bird inside was tiny! It seemed ridiculous to move her into our large rescue box there, and then again into a small nest once we were inside the ambulance. (In hindsight, I should have thought about bringing the nest with me to the door.)
We brought the whole thing into the back of the ambulance where I prepared the nest and Paddy moved the tiny bird into it.
I wasn’t sure what kind of bird this is; I think we marked it in the admin as a sparrow. (On that note, I was very happy Paddy picked up a lot of things! Not just physically, but also the admin, fetching rescue boxes, marking them up, taking phone calls, taking pictures 😉 , etc.. A very welcome difference to some previous Paddy’s we’ve worked with! 🙂 )
(Feeling slightly awkward writing this knowing that Paddy’s going to read this later (I sent her the link!) – but yep, you get honesty on this blog! 😉 )
Cat attack: (another) young sparrow
Another tiny sparrow in another tiny box. This one was left for us outside the door because it was a company and the building was now empty. We knew what to do; straight into the back of the ambulance and move her into a nest and the rescue box.
Back at the animal rescue centre
We phoned ahead to let them know about the tangled hedgehog, but the phone was engaged right up until we arrived – which is when we found the cupboards were still full! We took to the phone again; now it was answered quickly and someone would again come to the door.
It was the vet who was rushed off her feet and had been at the back of the compound! We handed her the sparrows and brought her attention to the hedgehog – and also to the baby magpie (again).
Shift end: Back at the base
There wasn’t much to do back at the base other that throw away a collection of small boxes and restock the ambulance with some nests. I couldn’t find any other latter, but I found some hand clothes which can be used in the same way.
And a look at Gijs, a “Bells Tortoise” who’ll be with us for a couple of weeks before he goes off to NW Holland.
It was a very hot shift today – also emotionally with the nature of the rescues we had the honour of taking part in. It struck all of us that this was also a different shift than usual – nearly every one of the finders wanted to be called to let them know when we were on our way! Maybe they’d got together and had a meeting about it ( 😉 ) but I’d like to think, especially with the finder of the baby magpie, it’s done out of compassion.
And that’s what makes the finders the real animal rescuers! 🙂
