Eagles do cry

On Monday I took off from work early and went to the airport and picked up BE 07 - 42 from Homer. It was at a local veterinary clinic where they did the best they could, but they weren't staffed for this type of situation.

When we got it back to Bird TLC and did an examination, we found it extremely dehydrated and it had been vomiting. There was also signs of blood in it's mouth and it was breathing heavy and erratically. I don't know if you ever heard and eagle cry, but it's not a pretty sound. It was so loud the admin staff came in to see what was making that noise. This bird was trying to die in front of us.

Matt and I restrained the bird, with didn't take much, and Cindy quickly inserted an IV of lactated ringers. After a 100 cc's of lr and 1.5 cc's of baytril, the bird started to breath a little more normal and stopped crying for a while. It was exhausted. We bed it down in a mew for the night with lots of blankets for cushioning. If it's alive in the morning, we're one step closer.

Chances are this bird ate something it shouldn't and had a toxic reaction. We couldn't insert a tube to flush it out or to feed activated charcoal to help neutralize the toxin. The bird wouldn't be able to handle the stress. Chances are it had vomited most of it out by now anyways.

I checked in on it on Tuesday morning. The first thing Cindy said to me was "It made it through the night". She gave it another 100 cc's of lr and bed it back down. The crying was back though, but not as bad as the first night on the exam table. I took this picture and as you can tell,, it has a very dull coloring in it's eye's. Cindy was going to give it another 100 cc's of lr before she went home for the night. We would still like to get some activated charcoal in it, but not just yet.

If it's alive in the morning we are again another step closer. I have a presentation in the morning, last one for Ghost and I for the year. I'll be checking in with Cindy to see how we're doing.

Update as of 12/12 @ 5:45 PM AST: BE 07-42 passed away this morning. May he rest now.

Click on pic to enlarge