Christmas Is All Around Us

I started this week feeling like life might just be impossible after all. After five hours of sleep riddled with bad dreams and intermittently punctured with the insistent demands of spoiled cats, I got up long before the sun to start another week of internship. Driving an hour and a half sounded far from appealing, and in general I felt like everything would feel better if I could just climb back into bed and forget about the world for another day or two.
But, this wasn’t an option at 5:30am on Monday morning. So I begrudgingly made my way, making sure to stop at the nearest opportunity to fill up on gas station cappuchino.
Getting to WildCare that early, early morning, I was met with a few surprises. My first task of the week was to help feed five tiny fawns, four of which were brand new to the clinic. The new fawns were skinny and hungry, but still strikingly beautiful (as I have recently discovered that fawns have a tendency of being). I think that I could sit and stare at a single fawn for hours, so getting to feed and pet several within half an hour of starting my week was a joy, to say the least. Expressing their bowels and bladders was a considerably less joyful task, but a potentially useful skill that I have to say I’m happy to have under my belt now.
Almost immediately after loving on the fawns, I met Daisy. Daisy is a baby skunk who was unceremoniously placed into my unsuspecting hands that morning. As baby skunks are easily the absolute cutest of ALL baby animals (trust me on this one), it took me all of 0.0001 seconds to fall in love. Daisy was the biggest of the three new baby skunks at the center, but was still no larger than a two-week old kitten. And, I may dare to say, cuter than said kitten. Daisy climbed up to my shoulder, rooted around a bit near my ear, then settled down for a contented nap on my shoulder. When it came Daisy’s time for breakfast, I traded her in for a much tinier skunk who, eyes and ears still sealed, fit snugly into the palm of my rather small hand. Those sleek little black bodies tainted my hands with a faint baby skunk smell which lingered, but even that seemed to be merely a pleasant reminder of the tiny little beauties.
The rest of the week was a lot of routine mixed with a sprinkle of delightful surprises and some hearty experience. I learned that before attempting to open a cage full of raucous raccoon cubs, it’s best to throw a few animal crackers in through the back of the cage, and to be really, really fast about getting in and out of the cage with whatever it is you might be needing to do in there. Otherwise, baby raccoons everywhere.
I’ve also learned that a newborn turkey chick looks almost exactly like a chicken chick, except with bigger, almost comical feet, and some subtly brown-speckled wings. And that two turkey chicks are delighted to cuddle together under a heat lamp, even if they happen to be complete strangers to each other.
I’ve seen some pretty sad things this week, and that simply comes with the experience, but it has been completely balanced by the number of wonderful things I have seen. Earlier this week I warmed a baby opossum, not much bigger than a mouse, by carrying him around in my shirt for about an hour. At first he was too wet and cold to do any more than curl up and hope for the best. But as time passed he began to wiggle a bit, and by the time I had to replace him with his siblings he was lively enough to protest by climbing up into my armpit and refusing to be removed.
And just today I laughed when I discovered an older baby opossum, no more than a pound heavy, trucking along a hamster wheel at full speed in his cage. It is easily one of the most amusing things I have ever seen, this miniature opossum with head and tail held high, looking like he was having the time of his life..
I have adopted a mantra this summer which goes something like this: Do what scares you most. In other words, if you are nervous about whether or not you are able to do something and unsure of yourself, jump in and make it your hobby or your specialty. I used this motto this week to confront something which really scared me at WildCare….feeding the doves. I know, it doesn’t sound like something that anyone should be tentative about, but I really shied away from it in the first two weeks. Unlike the majority of the baby birds at the clinic, the baby doves cannot simply gape open their beaks and have food placed in their mouths and be done. No, they have to be caught first, and then the real fun begins. I’ve developed a method which involves wrapping each bird in a little towel burrito with only the delicate, blinking head exposed. Then the long, stubborn beak has to be pried open ever so gently with a fingernail, and a long feeding syringe pushed into the mouth and directly into the crop of these fragile little birds. If the tube goes, well, down the wrong tube, then the bird will aspirate (which I pray never happens!). Through the past few days of sucking it up and volunteering to feed the doves as often as I was able, I am proud to say that I can now actually handle it on my own, and that, thankfully, the doves don’t seem much worse for the wear.

And now it is back to the Real World for another four days until I begin another week at WildCare. Needless to say I’m looking forward to getting back to see what the new week has in store for me, and to see which little furry and feathered (or scaled) creatures get to steal my heart away.