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This blog reflects my personal experiences and opinions and does not represent or reflect those of DierenAmbulance Nederrijn.
This afternoon I’m with a new (different) driver! I feel like this shift will be like my earlier ones when I worked regularly with different people.
And on a related note…congrats to me! I’ve been with the animal ambulance for a happy year now! 🙂
A Brief Encounter at the Base
Although we were due to be the only active team today, I pulled into the base as an ambulance pulled out. It was so busy that a second team had stepped in! (Please note the commitment and dedication to the cause the volunteers here have for animals in need!)
There was the usual pandemonium inside the building; I barely had the chance to shake hands and greet 2 new volunteers before I was outside checking the contents of the ambulance with the driver. It was fine, and I stepped inside. And one of the new volunteers stepped in too; I had a Paddy today!
I discussed the order of our rescues with the driver. This is usually simple, but now we had several rescues in the same town plus an appointment, so the order and timing was more critical than usual.
Great Tit
This little bird fell off a high windowsill and landed in the garden. The finder put him in a bucket with a cloth over it. Although I love handling the animals, I was keen to let Paddy do as much as possible. She picked up and moved the great tit into our rescue box, and we headed back to the ambulance.
We had a thought; the bird was a lot smaller than we expected, so we figured he needed a hot water bottle with him in the box. I went back to the finder and asked him for some hot water, and he happily obliged.
Sad and Tearful
It was time for our appointment; collecting a deceased dog. I’m not going to write further about this.
Magpie
This magpie lay motionless in a garden with her eyes open and took “bites of breath”. Other magpies were around her, but when the finder approached they flew away. He placed her in a box and we were to bring her to the wildlife rescue centre.
It was quite a huddle with 3 of us and the finder gathered around the garden table where the bird-in-the-box lay. We saw the skin on his head was damaged so made a note in the admin. With some shock I noticed many of his tail feathers were semi-bald, similar to the wounded crow we helped last week. I asked the driver; this is normal in birds – which makes me worry about last week’s decision.
Bat
Maybe the echo-location wasn’t working; this bat flew into an open bedroom window! The finder managed to trap it under a tube, then called the bat expert for advice. Since the expert wasn’t able to come to the location, the finder was advised to call us and we’d bring the bat to the expert.
Volunteers at the animal ambulance have received many emails and messages recently relating to the safe handling of bats because they carry communicable diseases. The bottom line is we shouldn’t handle them with our hands. With this in mind we approached this rescue carefully. A quick phone call to our helpline resolved which form needed to be completed – a “wild animal form” – the same one we no longer need to complete when we bring other creatures to the wildlife rescue centre.
The finder lead us past a beautiful pet dog, and into the bedroom where we saw a closed-end cardboard tube over the bat on a narrow windowsill. This meant I was able to slide a piece of cardboard underneath the tube and capture the bat without touching him at all – much like the way we rescue bumble bees and spiders at home.
Aside why I love spiders: Because my daughter doesn’t! She asks me to take them out of her room and that makes me feel like a hero! 🙂
We were quick to close the lid over the rescue box, but even in that limited space of time we noticed the bat wasn’t moving at all. The finder signed the wild animal form, we left a magazine, and then left.
Back in the ambulance we deliberated what to do. Originally we were to bring the bat to the expert – but now we weren’t sure if the bat was still alive or not. We phoned the expert directly for some advice: shine a torch into his eyes and see if there’s any reaction. There wasn’t; this little guy had passed 🙁
Our own advice line advised us to bring him back to the base.
My hands were full – and careful – so no time for an interesting photo. Just this one:
Cat Attack: “Small Brown Bird”
None of the 3 of us are bird-spotters, but we wondered what kind of bird this “small brown” one was. A female blackbird? A sparrow? Whatever she was, she was interesting for a cat who’d caught her and left her with “a small wound”(somewhere).
The finder brought us inside to a table where the box lay and to where a cat took an interest. The cat was happy to be handled and didn’t mind being carried away from our patient; I don’t think she was the cat who had anything to feel guilty about here!
Paddy reached inside the box and brought out the tiny bird – and then it escaped from their grip! This has happened before to me too. It’s really difficult to find the right balance between giving the bird enough space in your clasp and crushing it. I couldn’t do anything immediately as I hadn’t any gloves left in my pocket. I asked Paddy for theirs, then I caught the bird from the kitchen floor. By then it was in a corner which made it easier for me to grab.
I must admit to feeling pleased with myself for catching the bird so quickly, but seconds later I realised I’d made a dreadful mistake. Actually two. Firstly, this was only Paddy’s second shift. She hadn’t caught the bird because she hadn’t been taught, Or more accurately, because I hadn’t taught her. And second, I’d already learned I need to teach and show Paddys thanks to a cat bite and I hadn’t remembered my painful lesson. What an idiot. In short, I hadn’t caught the bird; I was rectifying the problem I’d caused by not teaching Paddy how to pick up a small bird.
I heard the driver telling Paddy about how to pick up a bird on the way back to the ambulance. I didn’t add anything at this point for fear of too many cooks.
Back in the ambulance I filled out the admin. I realised I didn’t know what kind of small brown bird this was, so I entered it as a sparrow. Ultimately, the wildlife rescue centre will know what it is.
On that note, I asked the driver about the extra information the rescue centre wants to know within the new system of emailing our admin to them instead of filling out a wild animal rescue form. The required information relates to the contact details of the finder which is usually entered by the centralist. If it isn’t, or if it’s incomplete, I need to complete the relevant section with the finder’s help. (Easy enough.) And any important information we may learn on-site (no change).
Outreach In-reach
Misinformation from an earlier task lead to a tangle in some administration, so we phoned the base for some advice about untangling it. As usual, I could count on the driver who dealt with the phone call in Dutch. Sally, my regular driver, is accustomed to doing this for me (for which I remain ever grateful!) but also this driver had no problem taking over what is officially my role here. (Again, a massive thumbs up here for volunteers who really work together as a team!)
In the mean-time, a parent passing by asked me what kinds of animals we pick up. I told her a bit about what we do as an animal ambulance, and I passed her a (child’s) magazine. They were genuinely interested in what we do, and also shocked when I told her about geese with discarded fishing tackle around their feet, necks or beaks. I must admit this was deliberate, but I hope I did it in a soft way. Awareness is good, even when it’s hard to swallow.
Collision: Window versus Pigeon
A pigeon flew into a garden window and needed our help. And the lady spoke English. Like last week, I misread “pigeon” for “parrot” =, event though this time the Dutch words for pigeon (duif) and parrot (papagaai) are completely different! In other (English) words, I expected an English speaking parrot!
Birds are often dazed for a while after a collision with a window; then they suddenly get up and fly away. But this one had been dazed for at least an hour, so the finder put him into a box and left him at the reception of a large building.
The cardboard box was huge and it was also sellotaped shut. Thankfully there were plenty of gaps to let fresh air inside (and stale air out!).
(This reminds me; one of the earlier finders had pierced holes in the lid of shoe box for their rescued bird – the same as what I did when I found a bird a little while ago. Hang on a sec whilst I check something…aargh I didn’t note it down 🙁 I think it was this course where the trainer suggested making air holes for birds at the bottom of one of the sides of the box and not at the top. This is because birds naturally want to move upwards towards the light, whereas we want to keep birds calm and relaxed in boxes. I’ll write some other time about my own bird rescue and probably come back to this.)
The driver picked up the pigeon. From my angle, still on the floor with sellotape stuck on my fingers, I saw the pigeon was ringed. This means it counts as a pet, and therefore a photo is needed for the admin. (Indeed, high time for another photo here!)
Rounding Off
You might have spotted this already. It was only now, well past the end of our shift, that we got to the rescue centre. A dreadfully long time between picking up our first animal in need (a baby great tit…you remember that?) and bringing her to helping hands.
Of course it wasn’t planned like this. All of the rescues were in the same town so relatively close to each other, except the last which was on the way to a stop related to our appointment. We had a huge delay with what I’m going to label as administrative nonsense (because the ‘problem’ could have been handled with a phone call instead of a form in triplicate with a signature), traffic – and (admittedly) our own convictions in wanting to help as many animals as possible by picking them up instead of simply driving past the find locations and leaving them for the next team. Ah yes, and a stop for petrol so that the following team could still get to places. (The policy is either to keep the ambulance filled up above half-full or (“or” because I don’t know) ensure the ambulance has more than half a tank of fuel at hand-over, so that the ambulance is able to drive to an emergency situation.
We needed to take a slight detour on the way to the rescue centre to avoid some traffic. The route took us through a natural area where we saw a sea of either ducks or geese (I couldn’t tell because of the distance) on the river-side, and a little later a majestic cloudy flock of birds waving and rippling through the sky. Beautiful!
Back at the Base
I had a ton of (paper) admin to hand in, then it was a matter of cleaning and tidying.
- Restock ambulance with magazines.
- Deceased bat needed to be seen to.
- The bat box needed to be cleaned.
- Other equipment needed to be cleaned.
- The ambulance floor needed to be cleaned.
Cleaning isn’t as simple as cleaning; there’s a protocol that ensures it really is properly clean. I can barely bring myself to write a section about cleaning, but I will mention this: a bat bite might be painful, but a scalding hot water is painful too 🙁
A Few Final Thoughts about the Shift
It was odd working with 2 new people, but now with me as one of the ‘experienced’ crew. The driver had their preferred way of doing some things, different from Sally and I, but not incorrect. I didn’t mind adapting to this, but it meant I felt a bit off-edge when I explained things to Paddy.
And yes. Explaining things to Paddy. Whilst I think I did a reasonable job in showing Paddy the administrative side on the tablet (I’m determined to do this well because my own training in it went far too slowly for me), I clearly screwed up on the actual practical demonstrative side of things. I like getting stuck in (i.e picking up the animals) but I’ve learned I stand back too much when I don’t. I need to find the right balance between not taking part and remaining involved.
The driver was awesome!. Sounds odd, but I like the way he drives with confidence but not stupidity. And even though he’s worked only a couple of months longer than I have, he’s well-versed in many of the nuances of the protocols. Maybe he’s had more shifts where these come into play, but to be honest, I think he gives them more attention than I do.
Practically speaking, the shift was tough with a Paddy. Nothing personal, but 3 of us crammed in the front of an ambulance for 5 hours isn’t comfortable. There’s often not much space in find locations and complete with rescue boxes, shoe-boxes, tablets, phone, clipboards, magazines, hygienic gloves and who know what else, plus activities plus explanations – it gets chaotic very quickly. All that said, I don’t see any other way of getting us trained up!
And indeed, if I’m anyone to judge, Paddy did really well today – especially so given they needed to deal with me!
