Thursday, November 16, 2006

#40 is Golden

#40 was brought to us by Elmendorf AFB Wildlife Management at about 4PM. He was found on the ground and not really caring about much of anything. Dan our office manager gave me a heads up call that he would be coming in. I told him I was just a few minutes away from the clinic.

When I arrived, Dan and the Wildlife Officer were putting him into a kennel. I told Dan I would take him straight to Pet Stop. Cindy, our Rehab Director is at a conference in Florida right now and the Bird TLC clinic crew had left for the day. Dr Todd Palmatier volunteers his time with us but was at work. I was bringing him a patient.

When we got there we took him out of the kennel and layed him down on the exam table. I restrained him while Dr Todd examined him. He hadn't eaten in a while and was very dehydrated. The last thing he had eaten though was a porcupine. He had quills in his mouth and tongue and all over his feet. It was obvious that it would hurt to eat.

He was very cooperative on having the quills removed. There were so many I lost count. When we were done we gave him 100CC's of LRS and tube feed him. From there I took him back to Bird TLC and bedded him down for the night.

I checked in on him today (see pic above) and he looked a lot better. He had eaten a quail and is drinking on his own. We'll get him fatten up real soon.

4 comments:

LauraHinNJ said...

Porcupine quills - ouch! No wonder he didn't care for much of anything.

Beautiful bird - hope he's on his way soon.

Susan Gets Native said...

Silly bird...you don't eat something that has a million pointy ends!
I love golden eagles. Still haven't seen one, at least in the wild.
What a beautiful bird. Get well soon!

Duncan said...

What a meal, a lot more painful than a hot curry! What great work you do up there Dave, hats off to you.

Dave Dorsey said...

Thanks all. As of today, our golden is doing much better.