To date, this is one of my most memorable shifts! The co-driver was an absolute delight to work with, the rescues were interesting and the animals we helped melted my heart!
Bald baby mouse
A bald baby mouse was called in for rescue. “Bald” doesn’t mean a stylish non-hair design as it does for me, but the adjective for animals is important; it means a very, very young creature who hasn’t yet grown fur or feathers so is particularly susceptible to the cold (amongst other dangers of nature).
Usually the rescues come via the centralist who takes the phone calls. She assigns them to a team, and the team picks them up on the app on a tablet that the co-driver carries. The first rescue of the shift is usually passed through vocally (at first; everything must go through the admin app!) because we’re all sitting together in the base.
A couple of volunteers were still present from the morning shift and overheard the centralist. I was astonished to hear them express vehemently the mouse should not be collected and that he should be left as food for predators. “Anyway, why should be burn the diesel for just a small mouse?” they said. I don’t know if this was a financial question or a (stupid) environmental one; kill an animal so we can save fuel which saves the environment which saves animals. “It’s just a mouse!” they said, “What’s the point?”
It made me wonder: Should we rescue an animal that’s otherwise not fit enough for survival? Don’t these injured or vulnerable animals simply belong to nature, and by helping it and taking it away we’re depriving another animal of its prey / food?
I didn’t wonder long. I signed up to help animals in need, and I was really happy when the centralist cut through the 2 anti-mousers and reiterated that we should go out and rescue the baby mouse. So we did, and when I saw the tiny, helpless little creature, I was convinced that this baby mouse is absolutely a life that needs to be helped and not traded for saving diesel.
We put the baby mouse in a nest on top of a hot water bottle to keep him warm, and brought him back to the base, ready for transport to the rescue centre.
Homing Pigeon
This rescue was picking up a homing pigeon that had been hanging around a pet food shop but not flying away. (All homing pigeons fly home because if they don’t, it’s just a pigeon 😉 ) The owner of the shop had taken quite a liking to this bird, so much so she’d even named him! (“Kippie” – which means “Chicken”(!) )
I picked up the homing pigeon, read the ring number on her leg with some long-sighted difficulty and put her into a rescue centre box. Guess where we took her!
Cuddly Cat!
The next rescue is one of my favourites because the cat was so friendly!
A cat had injured his leg and was hiding in a garden behind an outdoor settee. She was clearly tame because it was easy to approach her (other than dragging the heavy settee away from the wall), and as I did so, she gave me headbutts – a cat sign of trust and affection. I thought I’d made a special bond with her (somehow)! 🙂
I tried reading her chip but I couldn’t find one. An unchipped cat doesn’t mean it’s wild and there isn’t an owner, it just means the owner hasn’t chipped their cat. And it was clear to all of us that this beauty was social enough that she did have an owner. This made things tricky – if we took her to the rescue centre to be checked by a vet, there was no way of letting the owner know where their pet cat was and what was happening.
Thankfully there’s a solution for this; a “call me collar”. This is a collar that’s fitted onto the cat and has a message asking the owner to phone us. In this way, we can update the owner on what has happened and provide advice, or even vice versa. If we’ve heard nothing for 5 days, and the cat is called in again, then we bring him to the rescue centre. The call me collar isn’t a perfect solution for unchipped cats, but it’s not bad.
Cat owners: chip your cat!
Getting the collar onto the cat was fairly straight forward, even though it was my first time, and that I managed to kneel in a bowl of water than the finder had placed nearby. Crouching behind the settee meant there wasn’t much space to work in, but thankfully the cat was extremely co-operative. Aside from cramped conditions and a wet left knee, I had 2 main difficulties to deal with.
The first was the cat had a large neck which meant the collar was too small. Not really a problem because the collars are made of thick paper and fastened with the sticky ends – sticky ends to which I could attach a second collar and make an extension. The second difficulty had me worried the most – I didn’t know how tight to make the collar because it was difficult to differentiate between thick fur and actual neck, and I only had one go at fastening the sticky end back to itself. And at the same time I needed to make sure I didn’t get the sticky paper onto the fur.
It went OK, but it turned out it was in vain. The co-driver was worried about the injured leg and whilst I was dipping my knee in a bowl of water behind an outdoor settee in the middle of a strange and foreign land, she’d been on the phone to the Pikket line for advice. The decision was that in 5 days’ time the cat wouldn’t be able to walk back to her owner. She’d be better off being checked immediately by the vet at the rescue centre.
The co-driver took many photos of the cat; photos that we’d later enter online where owners can report their pets as missing, and can recognise their pets from the “found pets” section. This was my favourite part of the rescue because it meant I could hold the cat and give her a nice cuddle!
We brought her to the cat rescue centre. By now it was out of hours, but there were dedicated staff still on site. they double checked the paperwork and with heavy hearts, we left her in good hands. Both I and the co-driver wished we could adopt the cat ourselves! (Which by the way, is of course strictly prohibited).
Ringworm
On the way to the rescue centre we received an alert about a ringworm in someone’s basement. The owners of the house needed someone to take it away. We passed on the message to the centralist that we’d do so after we’d finished at the rescue centre. It turned out that by the time we left the rescue centre, the couple’s son had already removed the ringworm for them.
So rescuing a ringworm (or a couple from a ringworm!) wasn’t an achievement, but it is an example of what we get called out to do!
Blackbird by a restaurant
It’s getting late. Today’s last call was a blackbird who’d been stuck in an alleyway by a restaurant. It was a tricky place to drive to, thanks to narrow one way streets which the satnav didn’t recognise, so the co-driver and I walked the last bit.
The restaurant owner came out to greet us, and pointed out the blackbird in the nearby dead-end alleyway. Apparently she’d been there a few days which is when it became clear there was some sort of trouble with the bird. The alleyway was bricked on each side with a collection of – for some reason – crates and tubs of water in one corner.
I approached the blackbird slowly, but it was afraid, and fluttered to the other side. The co-driver ran back to the ambulance and came back with a long-handled net and managed to catch our timid little blackbird – despite it trying to hide behind and then in, one of the barrels of water.
We got her dry and into a rescue box, and brought her to the rescue centre, but not before the father of the restaurant owner came out and chatted with us about what would happen to the blackbird his child helped save.
During this shift I was really impressed with how well the co-driver spoke to the finders. She built a great rapport with them; not just to get a fuller picture of what happened to the animals, but just generally a great social skill!
Back at the Base
It was well past the official time for the end of our shift, but there was an important task to complete – upload the details of the cuddle cat on the website so the owner has a chance to be reunited with their beautiful, cuddly cat.
