(Header image created with microsoft co-pilot)
This blog reflects my personal experiences and opinions and does not represent or reflect those of DierenAmbulance Nederrijn.
“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” — commonly attributed to Groucho Marx, though the true origin is uncertain.
So goes the expression – and time. It didn’t quite fly by but we were certainly busy with several animals that needed urgent attention. And less attention from those ever-present flies 🙁
Funding and Finding
In order to fund my paraveterinary training – and also to help appease my guilt that my wife works whilst I’m going to have enormous fun doing it – I’ve started a summer job at a (noisy) warehouse. 12 hours door-to-door with only two 30 minute breaks. I got home a little before 2:00 AM with my head thrumming, knees aching and arms like jelly. I crashed into bed and let the world cave in.
6 hours later I was up for my online Dutch lesson. My teacher doesn’t live in the Netherlands so the lessons usually work out being pretty early for me. Thankfully he’s a human being and a decent egg so he understood I wasn’t speaking bad Dutch; I was speaking English but I was so tired it came out sounding like Dutch! We postponed the lesson, I took a couple of paracetamols and hit the sack.
For 30 minutes. My cat had caught a baby bird 🙁 and she (both bird and cat) needed help. Duty (i.e. love) calls!
Cat
First things first. Cat’s are hunters, and having hunted, cats like to catch and play with their find. Depriving cats of this stage gives them stress (which is why it’s not always a good idea to let cats chase after your laser pen; they hunt but they can never catch and maul the red light dot). But what to do when you don’t want your cat to play and further maim a bird?
I’ve read distraction is the trick with cats. i.e. bringing their attention away from the hunt and towards something else. In this case, I threw some dry cat food across the floor. This worked; she sensed the movement and sprinted after it. I could now pick up the bird (no time to put on hygienic gloves) and put her into a shoe box my wife had ready. This time we remembered to make the ventilation holes near the bottom of the box to prevent the bird looking upwards towards skylight.
Baby blackbird
The baby was very still so this gave me a chance to look for wounds. Thankfully I couldn’t see any, and I suspected she lay still due to the shock. Indeed, after 15 / 20 minutes she became active and stood upright in the box.
Healthy as she seemed, I couldn’t let her free back into nature. A cat attack brings risk of infection from the cat’s dirty mouth, so this baby bird needed to be brought to the animal rescue centre. But after last week’s fiasco with the baby mouse I was hesitant to call the Dieren Ambulance. Could she wait until my afternoon shift and I bring her in with me then?
The bird chirped in the box and then I realised. Of course, it’s not about me, it’s about her.
I called the centralist. The team were out on a rescue in a town 10 kilometers away. If they had time, they’d call into my house and pick up the bird. If they didn’t, then I could bring her in with me. For certainty, and knowing how long it can take to pick up creatures, she agreed I could bring her in myself now, and once the team were back at the base they could run her to the nearby wildlife rescue centre.
The centralist was a different one than usual for this morning shift; she’d stepped in because of a personal situation with the one that was scheduled. When I arrived she asked me to move the blackbird into a rescue box, and I left it on the floor by the door.
Not so Chill with this Cat
The centralist asked if I could help her out with a deceased cat before I went back home. She was to be placed on Amivedi, a lost and found site for pet owners, and for this photos are needed. Unfortunately there was only one photo of this particular cat, so I needed to take some more of her to help with identification.
This meant taking her out of the freezer – not an easy job either emotionally or physically. The first is obvious, the latter because I needed to read the labels on the cats to ensure I had the correct one and this meant handling and some re-organisation inside the freezer.
I made the photos and thankfully the centralist was happy with them. There seemed to be a certain circle of events where I’d brought in a cat attack victim and now here I was where cats are the victims. I came home and planned to start applying for internships for my upcoming training, but my head was pounding and I was shattered!
Back into bed, had a deep snooze for an hour, scoffed some lunch then headed back to the base for my shift!
Back at the Base (1/2)
I was raring to go, even despite my fatigue. But I knew I’d need to pace myself. Its usually a chaotic affair at shift changeover but I’d determined I wasn’t going to get involved in the chaos.
“Not my circus, not my monkeys.” – traditional Polish proverb.
But this isn’t true. The animal ambulance is my circus because I’m very proud working with them, and whilst I’m not sure whether ‘monkeys’ refers to my team mates or to the animals we help, in either case I’m definitely involved with them. True, some of the team mates are nut cases (and they might think the same about me!) but I remain really impressed by the teamwork. And in any case, God’s ‘given me’ these people to work with to help His animals so I just need to get on with it!
All that said, it was deliciously quiet! The morning team was out, the centralist was busy on the phone collecting rescues for us, and Sally the driver was already outside checking the ambulance had what it needed (a pet caddy was missing which we replaced). And we didn’t have a Paddy with us today. I took a glance at the list of rescues, plotted out a route and off we set! 🙂
Blackbird attacked by a Magpie
I remember as a child when Dad mowed the grass and found a baby sparrow at the side of the garden. My brothers and I used the cut grass to make nests and Dad chose the best one to put the sparrow in. He chose mine! But the next morning the poor sparrow had had his neck pecked and he was dead. Dad told us the nearby family of magpies attacked and killed him. I didn’t like magpies for years after that.
It was only recently I learned magpies are meat eaters, and looking back, they didn’t do this act to the sparrow out of cruelty, but like my cat and ‘my’ blackbird, they’d done it out of nature. (And if you’re interested to know, the tooth fairy left me a note the following night and let me know the sparrow is now happily hopping around in Heaven! 😉 )
Approaching this rescue I felt no ill will towards the magpies, just compassion for the blackbird. The admin told us the “poort” was left open so we could walk straight in and find the blackbird. But I’d misunderstood! I’d taken “poort” to mean “porch” and therefore tried to open the front door, when in fact it meant the entrance to the back garden!
Thankfully the finders were a friendly and understanding couple, and the owners of a garden with a lot of visiting birds. Sally and I discussed how best to lift the basket (or box; I can’t remember now) so I could reach the blackbird and move him into a rescue box.
Hedgehog “Coughs like an Old Man”!
I love these honest yet accurate descriptions!
The finder asked us to come in quickly because otherwise the hedgehog might escape. She led us to the corner of her garden where she’d placed him in a box in the shade. He was one of the biggest hedgehogs I’ve seen (although I should add that most of my ‘experience’ with hedgehogs has been with babies / young adults).
The beast curled up quickly when I picked him up. Being older and larger than most other hedgehogs I’ve handled, I wasn’t prepared for how much stiffer and pricklier his spikes were! In any case, despite being active during the day time (a bad sign for a (nocturnal) hedgehog), his curling response was good.
The finder has several hedgehogs visiting her garden, and was concerned that if this one had a disease (such as lung worm) then the others may be infected. I made a note in the admin, asking the rescue centre to call her back if she needs to take any extra precautions with her hedgehog house.
Homing Pigeon
After last week’s flurry of homing pigeons, I suppose it wasn’t a surprise to have another one to rescue! This one had been returning to the finder’s garden for a few days. He’d been given something to eat but now he had green, slimy poop (You chose to read this… 😉 ) so she asked us to collect it.
This was was double-ringed homing pigeon, meaning it was a competition homing pigeon, and likely confused and disorientated. The rescue centre would be able to read the number, determine the owner and have contact with them.
Wounded Pigeon
A wounded pigeon was found on the grass in a really bad way; an open wound on his back and something odd with his beak. The finder suspected a cat attack but wasn’t sure. He was a sorry sight, and we put him carefully into our rescue box.
The finder carried a small child so had no hands free for a magazine, so I passed it to a nearby child – who we then invited back to the ambulance for the child version. I checked no-one had touched the pigeon for hygienic reasons, and sort of felt guilty about it; I tend to ask this question only with pigeons…
Wildlife Rescue Centre
We arrived at the resuce centre the same time that someone was emptying the cupboards. This was perfect because it meant that our animals would be seen straight away; in particular this was very good news for the pigeon we’d just picked up.
Hedgehog Decision
We had 2 hedgehogs to rescue. One had been reported early in the morning and was quite a drive away, whilst the other was closer but perhaps more serious. We opted for the further one because otherwise we’d be caught in rush hour traffic resulting in 2 late pickups. We called the finder to let her know we were our way (as requested).
This was the wrong choice. The centralist – now a different one from the one that started the shift with us, and the same one as this morning (so an intense double shift for her) – called to redirect us to the hedgehog that was closer. This one had an open wound with maggots and flies 🙁
Hedgehog with an Open Wound
Our onboard navigation sent us to the wrong location which really didn’t help. It was made worse because the admin told us to walk up a sandy lane and there was one by the wrong location which set us upon a wild goose chase. We ended up in some sort of residence with several buildings with no numbers and the residents didn’t seem to know what was going on. Neither did we…
We called the finder who met us at the roadside and brought us to the hedgehog. She’d kept him in a box in a shed, out of the way of cats who roamed the area. The hedgehog was in a really bad way – a wound on his back, with loads of flies – and maggots wriggling around his poor body. The stench was dreadful; this little guy needed help quickly.
This is an animal in distress so I’ve hidden it. If you’d like to see it, the password is “iwant2cahedgehoginabadway”.
I moved him into the rescue box and handed the finder a magazine.
This is going to be a memorable rescue. My screen crawls as I think back to him and I hope he received the help he needed quickly and effectively. And the finder, like most others, was a very kind soul. In any case, I need to learn to judge priorities better.
We brought him straight to the wildlife rescue centre. We phoned ahead so they could give him quick treatment but there was no answer so Sally left a message.
“Stinky” Hedgehog
Now it was time to rescue the other hedgehog. Obviously we arrived a lot later than we’d originally suggested on the phone (looking back we should have called ahead again) but the finder was very understanding that an emergency rescue needed priority.
She’d heard her hedgehog sitting in her garden for a few days, and called the hedgehog shelter for advice. And that was to phone us! Now I see the photo and how much space he takes in the rescue box, I realise it was this creature which was the largest hedgehog I’ve seen! He was calm when I picked him up, and also curled into a ball when I did so.
We were told this was a stinky one, but I must admit I didn’t notice anything other than a few flies buzzing around. Then again, everything smelt like peaches and cream after the last hedgehog .
Two children came out to watch what we were doing. I offered one of them a magazine but she didn’t want it. The finder was very interested in what was happening – and what will happen – and she was more than willing to take the magazine. Learning point for me: offer the mag first to the finder; no point having someone else turn it down on their behalf.
As I pulled away I felt a little sad for this hedgehog finder, and for the others. All of them wanted to know more about hedgehogs, but I’m no expert and couldn’t help them much. Also disappointing that the hedgehog shelter didn’t seem to be much use. We turned down a kind offer of an ice cream, and set off for our final rescue.
Wounded pigeon
It was well past the end of our shift and we were tens of kilometers away from the base. But the centralist saw we were close to a wounded pigeon that needed helping, so we made our way there.
A bunch of kids met us by the finder’s location so I ran back to the ambulance to get a children’s copy for each of them. Sally had already been welcomed inside, so I trotted in quickly after her. Turns out the children had nothing to do with the finder and were playing in a playground just around the corner!
The pigeon was clearly a cat attack victim. A huge chuck from one of his wings was missing, and his body was especially scraggy. And there were feathers all over the garden path. He lay still in the shoe box with legs stretched far behind him. They stayed stiff as I picked him up which seemed like odd behaviour, so I made a note in the admin.
The finder was expecting, so I checked she’d washed her hands well after handling the pigeon; she’d used gloves so that was great! 🙂
Another Rescue?
The centralist had another rescue lined up for us that was 10 minutes off our route back to the base. In practice this means another half hour with 2 x 10 minutes and a 10 minute rescue (if we’re quick). Both Sally and I felt compelled to help the wounded bird – and also our colleague from the next shift. She was on her own and would need to make a long trip for this rescue when we were just 10 minutes away. But Sally had an appointment planned for the evening for which she’d already be late. And to be honest, I was sort of glad because I was shattered.
Rescue Centre, Back at the Base (2/2) and Home
It was a quick and efficient ‘delivery’ of the hedgehog and pigeon at the rescue centre. Again we tried calling ahead because of the badly wounded pigeon, and again there was no answer. We made an effort to put the animals into cupboards that had a bit of shade on them, and headed back to the base.
There was nothing much further to do. No handover because the following team (member) had already left. There were no cages to clean or equipment to replace, and no admin to catch up on.
The centralist, as I mentioned, was the same one who’d stepped in to cover the morning shift. A really long day for her, and I’ve got to sing praises for her (and other centralists) because they’re really switched on and right at the front lines of the animal rescues! In some other animal ambulance these are paid positions, and I can understand why.
I wanted to hand her back a pile of magazines she’d asked us to drop through the letter boxes of some donors but we hadn’t had the time. She was on the phone so I signaled for attention; she didn’t simply take the mags back, but thanked me for my work. And there she was doing a busy double shift!
It was a massively long couple of days! I built some physical resilience with the warehouse work, but much more satisfying is helping a load of animals in need, thanks to finders, the centralist and Sally! 🙂
I made myself a cup of tea when I got home (I’m English! 😉 ), watched England lose at football with my daughter, and then called it a night.
