Journal Entry #8
This week has been full of excitement! We recently received a coyote pup. The mother was unfortunately shot, but someone found the one pup and brought him in. This was so amazing, because I believe this is the largest animal we can work with. Even though New Jersey does have bears and bobcats, we are not certified to care for them long term. We can only hold them for 48 hours before turning them over to another certified facility. So the coyote was by far the most interesting animal brought in that I had seen so far. He was perfectly healthy aside from being too young to be on its own. At such a young age he looked practically like a medium sized dog. Our mammal room did not have a cage big enough for him, so he was put in a double cage in the back ICU. There was a cage outside that would be suitable for him, but first it needed deep cleaning from the last resident (fox). A deep clean for a large cage can take a long time because we have to search for hidden poop(foxes tend to bury it everywhere in the enclosure). Next we take all the items in the enclosure like the plastic kiddie pool and the plastic dog house and crate and we disinfect them and scrub them down. The last thing we do is also spray disinfectant on the pebble substrate and soak the floors. This all gets rid of any germs left behind from the last resident as well as any smells that might bother the next animal to go in it. Next, in my last journal I know I talked about safety with the raccoons, but this week I was bitten by a raccoon. There was one by itself in a carrier with no warning tag but needed bottle feeding. I reached in to scruff it to move it to the counter, and it snapped at me before I could pull back my hand. It didn’t bleed, but did break the top layer of my skin so I had to report it. Our protocol on that is to alert a staff member, and make a note in the paperwork that it bit you and what day it happened. This way if it dies or begins to exhibit signs or rabies, they will text the raccoon and find out if it did in fact have rabies. So after cleaning my hands, I added an aggression tag to the raccoon’s identification number tag, and switched her to a dish for her feedings. In contrast to that very aggressive raccoon, there are four baby raccoons that I am obsessed with. They came in with their eyes closed and have been in an incubator for a while. Now, two of them have 1 eye open each, and are the sweetest raccoons to deal with. Surprisingly, they eat really well from a bottle and are growing fast. Other than the raccoons, things have been getting even more busy. There are now 4 separate bins of mallard ducklings, and another fawn making three total. Outside there are a couple cages of possums on the rehabilitation side and 2 avian cages with one being full of native birds and the other being full of non native birds.
In relation to my coursework, I’m not exactly sure of what to connect for this journal. I’m reminded again about imprinting, because some of the fawns are a little too interested in humans. They have been nudging us when we go to feed them, so they really need to learn to rack feed so we don’t have to interact with them as much. It’s really been difficult to discourage the fawns from being friendly, because you can keep guiding them away from you but they just come back. This is why it’s very important to feed and clean the fawns fast, so that we are not around them as much. We also have put up sheets hanging from the inside pen so that they cannot see what we are doing when we are in the same room with them. Eventually, the fawns will be big enough to move into the outside pen where they will stay until they are all big enough to be released. Once in the big pen, they will have even less contact with us, as we will only be feeding them 3 times a day and they will all rack feed. I am really hoping none of the fawns socialize to us, because it makes the release much more difficult than the ones who just run off into the woods.
As fast paced as the work is here at the wildlife center, I am absolutely loving it. Somehow it is fast and yet I never feel stressed doing the work. I’m only about a third into my overl time at the wildlife center, but I have already learned so much. In my first journal I had discussed animal husbandry as a possible career choice, and each day that I work at the center, I become more certain that this is what I want to do after college. I am prepared that it might be difficult finding a job like this, because preliminary searches show that there aren’t many and that the ones there are usually specialize in either reptiles, birds, or mammals. However, I like the more general feel of this wildlife center, because I enjoy working with all types of animals.
