As usual, the morning started with mixing Tocho’s food (hoping for the right amount of medication every time), feeding all babies their first round and off to answering phone messages.
All the fawn are growing, spots are disappearing and man o man can they eat! LOTS of fawn kisses! Now time to wash the earlobes…yet again. LOL
Unfortunately, somebody had started calling at 1:30am last night, not giving us time to answer and hanging up without leaving a message. So I had turned off the ringer, just to stop hearing it. By the time I checked messages, I had three from the vet’s office where the new rescue is being neutered and given shots today. We will be taking him in on Monday. According to the vet, he may have some long term issues, but we are aware of them, so we know what to prepare for in the future.
Lady Di began her daily petition for indoor bird life. She truly does not believe that a kestrel of her standing should be forced to live outside, while her human subjects are inside, where she can see them!
As I was trying to explain to her that living inside with the mammals is probably not the safest way to live, I received a call from a man who picked up a fawn that was hit by a car last night and cannot use his/her back legs. Thankfully this man was very reasonable; we’ve had calls like this end with me being called “cold hearted” and many words I won’t publish here. Having seen this injury many, many times before and having tried our level best to save them, only to watch them suffer and eventually die, we no longer fight the inevitable, but do what we feel is truly best for the animal. As sad as it is, we have learned that the most humane thing to do is to end their suffering. It would be lovely to think, or say, that we can save them all, but the reality is, we cannot. And we have to be strong enough to know our limits and save their suffering. Thankfully, a vet in Greensboro agreed with our assessment and helped in this situation.
Meantime, Damien went off to spend time with the Drazzles. I’m really not sure who is training who in there, but all are getting along REALLY well! I think Razzle and Damien have some kind of strange redheaded bond, while Dazzle seems to think he and Kasha should take over the world, but is perfectly happy to allow Damien to fill in when Kasha’s not around.
And now, before it got too hot, it was time to start working again on the new falcon enclosure. This project would have been done two weeks ago, if emergencies didn’t keep popping up. And, as usual, no project goes without a hitch…the ground is strangely not level (is it ever?)! So, a bit of adjusting was worked out to ensure that the predator barrier is truly a barrier and not an open invitation. I still think this project will be done before the weekend. We’ll see how that goes, right?
Kasha called..oh yay, she’s off today, so let me send her out on errands. Darn, she doesn’t have the key, so much for those errands. Oh well, she will come over and play with Tocho for a while instead.
Back to the computer to talk to Tocho’s angel about her meds dosage. We are still working on it, but hopefully have more of a plan again. Tocho isn’t acting sick or anything, she just needs to digest her food better.
And now it’s time to work on release scheduling! We have quite a few birds to release and quite a few people waiting to release them, but we have to work out when and where for each bird. I’m hoping the next one (after this coming Sunday) is worked out now.
Tocho has decided that counters hold great treasures. She climbed up and found a rope, GREAT toy! Down she brought it to the floor and was rolling around having a wonderful time with it when Garby, the bobdog decided to join her. At first she wasn’t too sure she wanted to share, after all, she did do all the work to find this new toy. But eventually, playing with her buddy won out over being a selfish kitty and hogging the rope. After a vigorous game of tug-o-war, both tucked themselves away in their bed and fell asleep spooning.
Vinny has to go run errands, so before he leaves, we are going to discuss the next dump run and exactly when that HUGE pile of boxes can be taken to the recycling center. No resolution was found before he left.
While he was out he picked up a BEAUTIFUL mockingbird that had been caught by a cat. Unfortunately, the cat had not been kind. While the bird looked to be in perfect condition, her back was actually broken.
Another call from the rehabber in Arizona that we are helping to raise an elk. He’s almost ready to release, should be just a month or so now. Wow, fawn all over the world are all going to be released about the same time. How cool is that?
Oh yay, that loud noise was the Drazzles dumping their water across that room that used to be known as our dining room. If they keep this up, our floors will never be dirty! More towels to wash now…didn’t we just finish with fawn laundry? They really have to create more?
We received a call from a very panicked woman who had an injured fawn behind a chair on her deck. Knowing that, by this time of year, fawn are too dangerous for others to safely transport, very few questions were asked, we just went out to get the poor darling. I won’t be too graphic here. The smell alone let everybody know what a dire situation this was. Suffice it to say that the things a dog can do to a deer are quite disturbing. And for the third time in one day, we had to make that very difficult decision to end the suffering of an animal in pain.
And the feeding starts all over again