I am so happy to report that Herodotus' eye surgery went great! In fact, it went so well that he is headed off to a raptor rehabilitator tomorrow. At this rehabilitation site there are flight cages and even areas where they can see if he can learn how to catch live prey with one eye. One day I hope to have facilities like these!! I so wish that he could come to Wild Things, but presently I do not have all the special flight cages, and I'm in the process of applying for my Federal Fish & Wildlife Service bird rehabilitation permit. I am going to miss him SO much, and marvel at how well his recovery has gone so far. He's gained almost twice his initial body weight and is almost 800g. And he has gotten very spunky! You can see here that he is not too pleased at all at having his picture taken! He fluffed up to look big and scary!
In other clinic news, all of the sceech owls are doing well, and are also on their way to local rehabilitators who can test their flying and prey catching abilities. We admitted a Great Horned Owl this weekend. What a lovely animal! And so much bigger than teh other owls we have had in this month.She was quite thin and very depressed, but with no obvious injuries. Her blood test revealed that her blood was only about 12% red blood cells, when it should be about 50% or more. After hooking her up to an intra-osseous catheter (like an IV, but it goes into the bone, the humerus in this case), We located a healthy owl for a transfusion by this morning, by which time her red blood cells were own to 8%. Sadly, before we could give her a transfusion, she died. It is strange to see such a low red blood cell count with no obvious signs of external or internal injuries or bleeding. She will go in for an autopsy to see whether she was poisoned. Perhaps by a rat poison or something like that.
