There
are four owl patients at the TWC right now. Two Great Horned owls, one gorgeous
Snowy owl that everyone is excited about, and an amazing little Saw-Whet owl. The
room that has been the squirrel nursery, ever since I first started there, is
now an owl care room.
This week’s shift at the TWC was full of delights. I was able to hold a fox for treatment, and a wounded and frostbitten pigeon to be tube fed. Was hissed at by a racoon in an outside enclosure (as I was standing on a ladder to remove his fleecy blanket and replace it with a warm thick duvet on his high-up platform). Had a meaningful moment with Hot Dog the snapping turtle. And was happy to feed a room full of opossums in different enclosures and take care of the sweet little bats.
A
highlight of the day was holding a Great Horned owl.
The snowy owl that is in TWC’s care was scheduled to be fed and given medication at 5pm. I joined J and CA, intending to observe. Really, just to get a look at this beautiful snowy owl that everyone is enamoured with. L, the TWC assistant volunteer coordinator was there, too, to take some official photos.
As J and CA were about to move the snowy owl out of its enclosure, they realized that its wing bandage had come off. A senior staff person needed to come and replace it before they could move it to give it food and medication.
CA
decided feed and give meds to the other owl in the room in the meantime. I’m glad
I was there with thick gloves on! J generously suggested that I hold the Great Horned
owl while he waited to do the snowy owl. Super awesome of him, since he was
lined up to do both.
So
CA removed the Great Horned owl from his enclosure, and passed him over to me. The
key to holding an owl and other birds of prey is to ensure that their very
strong, sharp talons are held securely and pointed away from anyone, so no one gets
hurt.
You
hold their legs with your hands (in very thick protective gloves) and use your
thumbs to point their talons downward. Your arms help to hold the owl against
your chest, facing outward.
This
owl came in with wounds and one blind eye. One eye is completely black and the
other has the usual bright orange iris around the black pupil. The great horned owl has the biggest
eyes of all North American birds, even though its body size is smaller than a
snowy owl, the largest owl species.
I
was able to hold the owl against my chest, talons secure, as he was given medications.
He was very calm until it came time to go back into his enclosure. Then he got
restless and wanted to jump back in. All good.
Great horned owls are common, year-round residents with a relatively small home range, and apparently are one of the most aggressive owls in North America. Their call is unique and has earned them the name hoot-owl. Whereas other own have a softer hooo hooo sound. Each owl has its own voice and a range of sounds, including shrieks, whistles, hisses, cries, coos, barks, and a stress-related beak-snap.
After I returned the Great Horned owl, I went to feed opossums until the Snowy Owl could be treated. By the time I was done and returned to the owl room, J and CA had finished the treatment and were returning the owl to its enclosure. I missed it!
A little later in the evening, I helped Ak, another volunteer, move a different Great Horned owl out of a room that needed to be set up for a new coyote patient. And we got a great example of needing to secure its claws right away.
This
owl apparently has spinal damage and it seems possibly neurological damage. It
was on the ground of its recovery room, looking up at us, when we opened the
door. Ak captured it easily with the usual bedsheet method. But as she was
trying to position the owl so she could properly secure its talons, it tried to
hang on and secure itself – by grabbing her hand.
Thank
goodness Ak was wearing thick protective gloves, but she could still feel it. Owl
talons are super strong and shockingly sharp. In fact, thanks to their powerful legs and talons, great horned owls can
exert 300 PSI (pound-force per square inch) of power. I removed
the claws from Ak’s hand – not easily. And I removed them from where the sharp
points had easily pierced through the sheet.
Ak was able to get a good hold on the owl. We then moved it to the new owl room and placed it into its new enclosure, Most owls would prefer to perch, but this one sort of fell slowly sideways off his perch – only about 4 or 5 inches from the floor of the enclosure that has been covered with two layers of a soft fuzzy blanket.
After the owl was moved, Ak and another volunteer cleaned the room and set up for the coyote. I took the tree branches that had been in the owl’s room and placed them in the recovery room of a gorgeous fox who tends to trash her space – the branches will smell like owl to her, and stimulate her foxy curiosity.
Warm thanks to Lauren Clift, Assistant Volunteer Coordinator at the Toronto Wildlife Centre for taking and sharing these photos.
Fawn and Heather. Photo by Lauren Clift, Assistant Volunteer Coordinator at the Toronto Wildlife Centre.
I met Nestor today. He is a tiny little guy, the size of a roundish thumb, but called a Big Brown Bat. There’s nothing big about him. Bat reputation is way larger than their tiny little bodies. They are only 15-25 grams! Smaller than a mouse.
I also met Ophelia and Fawn. And was reunited with Lady Macbeth, Miranda, and Leontas, who I weighed and fed last week. All of them are brown bats, except Leontas.
Last week Lady
Macbeth was very vocal – not happy about being disturbed to be
weighed and for her enclosure to be cleaned. Leontes had to be convinced to eat
worms he doesn’t like and tricked into drinking calcium water from a tiny 1cc
syringe. The third, Miranda, was a mover, a dancer – it took me a little longer
to wrap her like a burrito in a tea towel to weigh her and clean her enclosure.
Today,
Nestor got a little bum rub to encourage him to move from his current hanging tea
towel (destined for the laundry), to the clean tea towel I was trying to get
him into. I wrapped him up to weight him and keep him contained for a short
while as I cleaned his enclosure. He wasn’t happy about it – buzz-chirping his
annoyance at me.
There’s no sound quite like a bat’s vocals. Sometimes it’s almost like a buzz or a crunch-squeak. Sometimes like a very quiet version of those old coil door stoppers that resonate when fwipped.
Once
I had removed and replaced Nestor’s tea towels, replaced fresh calcium water in
an upturned baby jar lid, and had his mealworms ready, I placed him back into his
enclosure. He chose to climb onto the back wall, and positioned himself head-down,
bum-up. A pretty typical, comfortable, position.
Nestor
is learning to eat food from his dish, so I fed him one mealworm with the
plastic tweezers. Then I brought the whole dish up to his face. He immediately
started leaning into the dish to eat. He ate 9 more mealworms like that. I left
him with 5 in the dish he could eat if he felt like it over night.
Bats
should be asleep hibernating right now. So, on many of their charts, one of the
problems or issues noted is “awake.” There are four of them, each in a small
enclosure, in a humidity tent in the Songbird Room right now. And a few others being
cared for in other rooms.
I
had just finished up with Nestor when two volunteers taking Hot Dog, the
snapping turtle, for a walk were in the hallway right outside the Songbird Room,
where I was with the bats.
Hot Dog was a pet before coming to the TWC, not well cared for, and is a bit of a celeb around the TWC. He is now an education animal. Hot Dog gets exercise by occasionally going for accompanied walks around the building.
So I took a moment to encourage Hot Dog and the team, before returning into the Songbird Room to take care of Leontes.
Thanks to @nickisimms for the photos. TWC patients are rarely photographed by staff only, but Hot Dog is an education animal and public figure.
Leontes is a sweet little silver-haired bat, and a fussy eater. He came in to the TWC with bruising. This week I was able to sneak a few more phoenix worms and wax worms into his mouth as he was enjoying his mealworms. A bit of nutritious variety.
He
clearly does not like anything but mealworms – sometimes he will just chew and
spit out the others. He and the other bats have the cutest tiny tiny little
pink tongue. Like all of us, they use it to move food as they eat, but Leontes
also uses his little pink tongue to blech! out the food he doesn’t like.
Miranda
has been renamed Portia. Just for admin, nothing to do with the bat. None of the
other patents at TWC are named. Only the bats. I don’t know why. Last week I
had to feed Portia with the tweezers, and now she is eating on her own! It’s
heartwarming to see a patient’s progress.
Ophelia
is a patient because she was awake, dehydrated, and had mites when she arrived.
Today, she just needed a cleaning, and fresh food and water. So I wrapped her up
burrito-style in her tea towel, weighed her, and cleaned her enclosure.
Bats
are so calm compared to songbirds! Tiny birds are fluttery and jittery and non-stop.
Tiny bats mostly stay still or crawl a little, holding on to their towel or
enclosure walls. And when they are wrapped up in a tea towel, they are
perfectly fine resting on a table top as their enclosures are being cleaned,
food and calcium water prepared, and charts updated.
Ophelia
is the only one whose food is scattered on the floor of her enclosure. And as
soon as she was returned to her clean enclosure, she scooted herself right down
there and had a great time catching and eating up her dinner.
In
a cool room (no heating) on the other side of the building, I met Fawn and was
reunited with Lady Macbeth.
Fawn immediately crawled over to her food dish, and within minutes was bum-up, face first, in the dish, eating her dinner. Two little back legs and hind feet hanging on to the rim of the ceramic ramekin. Nomming joyfully.
Fawn
had buzzed at me, assertively telling me to buzz off, a few minutes earlier. When
I was capturing her to weigh her and clean her enclosure. And now, the whole
time I was weighing Lady Macbeth, cleaning her enclosure and preparing her food,
I could hear Fawn happily chip-chip-chip crunch-munching away.
I
had taken care of 6 bats, cleaned a racoon enclosure, moved a mallard and a snow
goose into a new enclosure. Last thing of the day: I was asked to set up a new
enclosure for a new patient.
A brown bat who had come in yesterday. She needed all new towels and a new enclosure. And she needed to be fed and set up in the Songbird room bat humidity tent.
After
setting up the clean new enclosure, I wrapped up this new patient in a tea
towel to feed her. But I had a hard time hand-feeding her with the large plastic
tweezers. She turned her face away every time I placed food in front of her. She
clamped her mouth shut and was not having anything to do with it.
So
after quite a few minutes of trying, I thought I would put her into her
enclosure and see if I could feed her in there, where she was free to move,
like the other bats. Wrong!
As soon as I put her in the enclosure, she stormed all around it. She was buzzy-vocal and stompy. Even opened her amazing delicate wings for a moment, which I have not seen any of the others do. She was pissed. right. off!
No way I could feed her like that. Quickly crawling all over the enclosure. So, with J’s help, we put her into a thinner tea-towel burrito hold with her face uncovered and fed her. Once she got going, she was a champion eater!
She
was left with a bit more food in her dish in case she was hungry later. She was
still very active, but much less vocal and annoyed when she was returned to her
enclosure for the night.
This one is so new she doesn’t have a name yet, but she sure has personality!
“This is a Dusty original…” is the first thing I hear as I walk into the Olga Korper Gallery. To my left, artist Ken Nicol is beside a piece of artwork, and speaking to a group of thirty-somethings. He takes the piece of art by its white frame and lifts it off the gallery wall.
He shows the group the back of the frame, “….and this is Dusty.” It’s a photo of a black squirrel with fluffy orange tail, holding her half eaten almond, looking directly at the camera.
This exhibition, the laughter between two miles, is a Ken Nicol exhibition “with special guest Dusty the squirrel.” There is a series of three of Dusty’s art pieces in the middle of the largest wall in the exhibition. And there is this stand-alone piece near the entrance.
Ken’s work is precise, pattern-based, and, to me, irresistibly captivating. Words, weaves, lines – all patterns. Each with an interesting backstory or concept. There is a lot of containment. Like index card forms in a page, and teeny boxes in tiny boxes. He also plays with the idea of a “line” with grid lines, lines of text, lines representing distance, and referencing the line “no ifs, ands, or buts” in a hilarious piece where he has connected all of the ifs, ands, and buts in the text with straight lines.
One of the enthralling aspects of his work is the visible variations. The same but different. Being able to see a weave get smaller and tighter. Lines getting lighter or darker using different hardness of pencil lead. And in one of the series, Sol Lewitt sentences on conceptual art are numbered and typed on a page. A grid of four pages is created with the typed page plus three other pages of what looks like the exact same typing backward and upside down – but those pages are actually hand-rendered. Represented by Olga Korper Gallery, his work has been purchased by the Art Gallery of Ontario, and has been shown in exhibitions in Toronto, Hamilton, and New York.
Dusty’s art is more minimal, though she uses an understated colour palette similar to Ken’s. Her subtle paw gestures are very in the moment and a little unruly. She leaves whitespace around the markings, appearing deliberate in her movements yet aware of the element of chance in the creation of her work.
Now, full disclosure: I’m not an expert on professional squirrel art. I’ve worked on fine craft, visual art, and photography exhibitions, as well as performing arts for many years. But I am not qualified to assess squirrel art. So with that in mind, I will just tell you my personal reaction:
I love Dusty’s work. It encapsulates the speed of squirrel life. It appears to be a meditation on and celebration of being one’s true self. And it seems to address the idea of evidence of each individual’s existence.
In front of Dusty’s three mid-sized art pieces in the middle of the gallery, Director Shelli Cassidy-McIntosh said, “Ken had these papers ready to roll for something bigger, and Dusty had other plans … so Dusty gets a cameo in the show.”
“I have squirrel friends.” Ken told me as he showed me a
video of a sweet black squirrel who he met on the street. I can relate, as can
many other Torontonians.
“There’s Deedee, Mimi, the original window squirrel, Gerald…” There are so many, he doesn’t call all of them by name anymore. They come to his shop window, and he lets them in, feeds them almonds. Some of them make art on his prepared paper.
His squirrel pals (at least the most talented and ambitious artists among them), are fortunate to have befriended an artist who is opening art world doors (and windows) for them.
Ken showed me a brilliant video of Gregory squirrel in his studio, black furry body flying through the air toward the camera. It’s amazing. And in a photo of DeeDee, a grey squirrel, she looks very happy and comfortable posing on a beam in the studio.
I asked Ken if it freaks him out to have squirrel chaos in his studio. He answered by explaining his three-part Francis Bacon piece on the wall to the right of the gallery entrance.
Ken asked me if I knew anything about Francis Bacon’s studio. I said no. He explained that Bacon’s studio was a disaster. A total mess. The work of Ken’s on the wall here is a quote from Francis Bacon that says: “you can see an advertisement, you can see something lying in the street, anything can stimulate and excite you into wanting to do something it doesn’t have to be a great or remarkable thing it could just be lying on the floor “ francis bacon
The quote is on three pieces of paper, each framed. “This
piece I had in my pocket for a year.” That version is in a grid pattern of
small rectangles, some that fell apart along the fold lines. “And this piece I
had in my bag for a year.” The middle piece is ragged around the edges. “And
then this piece I had in my shop for a year, but I was kinda disappointed that
nothing happened to it.” The final piece looked perfect. No marks or damage
whatsoever.
On the other side of the entrance, the piece I saw first as
I arrived was created by Dusty on March 18, 2019. As Ken put it on his
wonderful blog every3point65, “…there was an incident… dusty hopped in through
my window and kinda freaked herself out then bombed around my studio like a
jerk. She put a couple footprints on my next mile. Luckily I had only put down
the grid, but that takes most of a day and I had to start again. …”
Ken Nicol’s work in the exhibition was selling for $3,500 – $40,000. Dusty’s pieces are priced at $1,200.
the laughter between two miles exhibition ended on November 16. But I believe that Olga Korper Gallery now represents them both.
The Olga Korper Gallery can be visited online at olgakorpergallery.com or in person at 17 Morrow Avenue, Toronto.
Ken Nicol’s work and blog can be found at k-nicol.com
Keep an eye out for a Dusty the squirrel artist website
in the future.
As soon as I arrived in the nursery room I was concerned
about very loud, deep, growling and yelping. It was coming from one of the enclosures
where there was also a lot more frenetic movement than usual. The vocals were coming
from a grey squirrel. It was in an enclosure with a black squirrel who was
hiding in a box.
I looked under the sheet covering the enclosure from time to
time. Trying to figure out what was going on. The grey squirrel would climb
quickly around the enclosure, and periodically stop on its back, fuzzy white
and caramel-coloured belly exposed, growling loudly. I am not sure what kind of
behaviour this is, but it is unsettling.
It seemed like it was being bullied or was bullying the other squirrel. I mentioned the very vocal sounds and strange physical behaviour to staff member CA. She told me that they had just been put into the same enclosure together and needed to get to know each other. I was scared they would stress each other out or kill each other before they settled in together as roommates!
In any case, the job at hand was to feed the babies in one enclosure, and clean two of the other enclosures in the room. I didn’t know the adventures that would unfold.
This late in the season, there is no nursery-specific shift at
the TWC anymore. But there are still some squirrel babies who need to be fed formula.
Right now there are only 4 squirrels who are fed 3x per day and one who is fed
2x per day.
I got formula from the fridge and was putting some into a smaller jar to heat up, as N, a very experienced nursery volunteer arrived.
Each of the four young squirrels was to be fed around 16-20cc of formula. Some were just not interested. They are squirmy, scratchy, and feisty. They might guzzle formula for a moment, then try to make a run for it. Or just wiggle away, into the pillowcase being used to hold them. But we managed to feed all of them the required amount of formula – it just took a while.
Sidenote: No matter how squirmy and feisty a baby squirrel may be, they almost always hold still when a warm damp scrap of paper towel is being used to wipe formula off their face, paws, belly and tail fur. (The formula will dry and pull out their fur, if not cleaned off.) I think this strange momentary stillness must be instinctual. The feeling is probably similar to the feeling of their mom squirrel licking them, which would happen naturally in the wild.
Then it was time to clean the other two enclosures, weigh and give medicine to the patients, and put them back into their main enclosures. These were not the babies, these were older juvenile squirrels, larger, and mind-boggling fast.
And two squirrels made a break for it! (To be fair, they all
tried.)
There were four black squirrels in an enclosure on the other side of the room from the one where the squirrels to be fed were housed. These four were weaned and didn’t need to be fed, but they needed medication to be given to them orally. Tiny amounts, .06 and .07 CC, in tiny 1cc syringes. Two different meds each.
Staff member CA prepped the meds for N to administer. N organized each pair of syringes on each squirrel’s chart. N cleaned their main enclosure earlier, and the squirrels had been placed in a smaller temporary enclosure.
Since these squirrels are older, larger, and wilier, gloves
are required to handle them. But the gloves are really awkward. Especially for
small fine enclosure lock clasps or unhooking little claws.
I took the first squirrel out of the temporary enclosure, and N helped unhook its tiny claws from the wires. I held the squirrel for N to quickly give it the two oral medications. I then placed the squirrel in a large cardboard box that was on a small scale for it to be weighed.
Once weighed, I removed the box to near the squirrel’s
enclosure. As I was unlocking the main enclosure’s opening, the squirrel escaped
through a tiny hole that had been chewed through the top of the cardboard! And
it was off!
First to the top and then behind the enclosure. Then it ran
all over the room, under chairs and the table, and back to the area where its enclosure
is. Where it found a little two or three-inch crawlspace below the enclosure
where I couldn’t reach it. It got out from there and past us all again.
N and I had nets and tried to catch it as it ran all over the room. Finally, N got a net over it. As I was trying to remove the squirrel from the net, it escaped again! Ack!
And so we went through the whole thing again, until the squirrel was recaught in a net by N, and safely returned to its enclosure.
Needless to say the other three were brought out of the temporary enclosure, given meds, weighed, and returned to their large enclosure, all as quickly as possible. Less chance of escape!
That little black squirrel was not the only escape artist of the afternoon.
The other escapee was the grey squirrel who had been loudly growling and yelping and sprinting around its enclosure all afternoon.
As it was being moved from its enclosure temporarily, to be weighed as its main space was cleaned, whoosh! A quick aerialist move, and it was out!
Grab the nets again. More chasing and herding and crawling
under the table – it was easy for the squirrel, not so easy for me. More squirrel
antics. All in fast forward, it seems.
N was able to net the squirrel as it tried to race across the open floor. We did not trust that it wouldn’t escape from a cardboard temporary enclosure, so we placed it in a more secure wire enclosure until its main space was finished being cleaned. Its roommate also needed to be removed for the enclosure to be cleaned, and it also needed to be weighed.
So I caught on. As we were waiting for another volunteer to
finish cleaning that enclosure, I placed a net over the cardboard box that the
last squirrel was being held in. It chewed right through the top of the box and
leapt out. Ha! Into the net!
So we gently placed the squirrel back the box. And covered the top tightly with a pillowcase. It’s not easy to outsmart a small Houdini of a squirrel! Contortions that a Cirque du Soleil performer would envy, smarts of a fox, and speed – that supercrazyfast squirrel speed.
When the squirrel escaped the box again, it went right into the pillowcase. I took the pillowcase end off the box, twisted the top closed, and held it tightly. The squirrel was now in the pillowcase, on the table.
It twirled and turned and scratched and leapt! But I was holding the pillowcase closed. I was ensuring that the squirrel didn’t bash itself into anything (like the scale or the formula heater), and that it was safe from falling off the table as it did acrobatics in the pillowcase.
As soon as its enclosure was clean, with fresh food and water placed in, we could return the final two squirrels. This one in the pillowcase was easy. I could gently place the whole pillowcase in the enclosure and open it up for the little one to leap out of.
Returning the other one – the lightning fast growly wily grey squirrel – was another story. (BTW, it had been perfectly calm and quiet, as far as squirrels go, the whole time it was alone in its smaller temporary enclosure.)
I didn’t trust that it wouldn’t pull another stunt move and escape again. This time I lifted the whole temporary enclosure and placed its opening against the opening of the main enclosure, to return the squirrel directly. Do not pass go, no human handling, nor any space tempting to squeeze through.
Funny thing was, it was in no hurry! I think it found
remains of formula on my shirt to lick, which it was more interested in than
going back into its larger enclosure. So it took a little gently coaxing and we
finally got it back into its enclosure. Whew.
Later in the afternoon, we were back in the nursery for the final
round of feeding for the day. I was reaching into the enclosure to bring out one
of the baby squirrels to feed again. One of the branches in the enclosure was
in the way, and it was loose. The branch was about 18 inches long, like a tiny tree
trunk.
I ended up bring out a squirrel – holding on to the vertical branch for dear life. I was holding on to her from the back. She had all four arms, legs, and paws wrapped around the branch and was holding it tight to her chest, with her little head to one side to see around it.
I showed N and we both had a smile. You never know when these little patients will melt your heart. We then finished feeding everyone their formula for the evening.
At the end of the night, N told me about her wonderful Instagram account @nickisimms. It is full of photos and videos of animals at sanctuaries, around the city, and her sweet creatures at home. Check out @nickisimms – it’s awesome.
A perfect tiny little Northern Brownsnake just made my day. As soon as I saw her, I fell in love. She must be a few months old. Born this springtime. Gorgeous silvery-pewter colour. Perfect little head, smaller than half the size of my pinky fingernail. Alert and unbelievably cute.
I’m not sure why she was brought in to TWC. Senior staff member
D said that she didn’t find anything wrong with her. But now that it’s November
and she is not in hibernation, she might have to stay at TWC over winter until
it is warm enough to release her back into the wild.
So I set up a little enclosure for her. A small aquarium with a very, very fine double mesh lid. Bricks to hold down the lid securely. Newspaper on the bottom, then filled the aquarium about two inches high with coconut substrate.
Why coconut substrate? It’s like a cross between soil and a very fine mulch. The fibers are soft, naturally anti-microbial, very absorbent, resist mold, and it is great for burrowing into. The alternative would have been paper towel bottom with shredded paper for the little snake to move around in. Not nearly as nice for her.
After setting the substrate, I put in a hide for her. A plastic dome that looks like a rock with a cave opening on one side. And I found a small plastic box with round entrance/exit hole in one end, to be her humidity box. Substrate was placed in it up to the hole, I dampened that substrate, and placed the box in her enclosure. A small water dish, made from a clean blue plastic jar lid, was filled halfway with water and placed in a corner.
D then brought her out from the Assessment room. She was hiding
and staying warm in the folds of a towel that was in the small critter carrier
for her, until we moved her into her new enclosure.
Once she was safely moved, I got her two micro mealworms and two phoenix worms, and D found a tiny baby earthworm. We put these in the enclosure so she would have something to eat when she felt ready. It’s hard to find food small enough for her! Her head is smaller than the eraser on a mechanical pencil.
She brought back memories of Long John Slither, my childhood pet. When I was little, I studied snakes and I had asked my mom for one for more than a year. She thought it was a phase that would pass. We ended up purchasing Slither, a Garder Snake, from a local pet store when he was a tiny baby.
L. J. Slither was a beloved family member with us for 4 or 5 years when I was in elementary school. I still have photo albums of his sheddings and photos of us together. Seeing this sweet little wild brownsnake, I couldn’t help think of Slither. Of course, this little one will be at the TWC only until it is safe for her to be returned to her home in the urban wild.
Northern Brownsnakes, a.k.a. Dekay’s Brownsnakes, are pretty common in Ontario. Smaller than other snakes. And totally harmless. I have only seen snakes in the daytime, so I didn’t realize until now that they are mostly (though not totally) nocturnal. This one is too young for the rows of dots down her back to be visible yet.
Her enclosure was placed on a heating pad in front of the viewing window. So that people bringing in new patients, and visitors to the Toronto Wildlife Centre, can see this beautiful little brownsnake while she is with us.
There are few sounds as happy as an animal safely and quietly nomming away on their food. Like a bird quietly pecking at its seeds, or cottontail bunnies munching on greens. Or a family of opossums gathered around their dinner dish together. Round furry bodies and whiskered faces with pink noses – all in a polite circle, quietly crunching and num-num-yumming away.
These
opossums arrived at the TWC with their mom in the springtime when they were
tiny babies. Mom didn’t make it. The babies were kept in the nursery at first and
fed with a syringe for weeks. They are now in an outdoor enclosure – all seven siblings
together – where they’ve been since mid summer.
They are almost adult now. Large juveniles. And they need to be taught that humans are awful, scary, dangerous creatures. These sweet opossums are a little too friendly and too used to people, which means they would not survive in the wild. So they need to get a little more healthy fear before being released.
The first time I’ve handled a juvenile-adult opossum was in the ICU room at the TWC tonight.
When I gently lifted the hide box to get this little guy out for treatment, he was on his back, furry tummy exposed, legs up, like a small dog who wants a belly rub. He wasn’t doing the famous opossum play-dead act complete with stink, but he didn’t do the usual open-mouthed hiss that opossums of all ages, from youngsters to fully grown adults, usually do.
It
was like I uncovered him when he was a sleeping. Which is likely, since it was very
early evening at the time, and opossums are nocturnal. They usually start
getting active at dusk and after dark. Of course, a belly rub was not the plan.
These are patients, not pets, at the TWC.
Opossums get a bad rap unfairly. Surprisingly cute in person, opossums are among the most helpful and harmless animals we have in the city: they don’t harm people, or property, or pets. Not the smartest creatures, but they can eat almost anything. And they do – including all sorts of things that most people don’t like and are happy to have removed, like beetles, ticks, cockroaches, snails, slugs, mice, rats, snakes, dead animal remains, and over-ripe fruit.
As City Wildlife says, “Opossums
usually don’t tip the trash cans or dig up gardens but they often stop to clean
up the mess left by another animal and get all the blame.”
Sometimes
mistaken for a large white-grey rat, the opossum is more like a kangaroo. It’s
the only marsupial in North America, carrying its babies in a pouch when they
are first born.
The
first thing an opossum will usually do when it feels scared and threatened is open
its mouth to show its sharp teeth and hiss at you. Trying to be oh-so-scary.
They will bite, like any animal, but these little guys are more likely to faint
if their hissing doesn’t scare you away.
This one in ICU is almost but not fully adult. A juvenile, probably a little younger than the family in the outside enclosure, and very thin. I could feel his hip bones.
Similar to handling a snapping turtle, I held the base of the tail gently but firmly just for stability. Then slid my dominant (right) hand underneath his belly from the back-side, to lift him up. As is the system at TWC, I used a bedsheet to help secure him, and to help alleviate his stress by covering his head and eyes.
Unfortunately, this particular opossum has had diarrhea. Which C warned me about. She said it looks like liquified dark chocolate. Which was true. But my oh my it doesn’t smell like chocolate. Yow. He is being given special foods to help with refeeding syndrome. As well as medication and fluids.
Apparently
opossums are one of the few creatures who don’t need to be held gently but
firmly as they are being treated. They will stay mostly still on their own and
are more likely to squirm or thrash if they are held. And they have thick tough
skin. It wasn’t easy, but C managed to get fluids into this little guy and quickly
give him oral medications as well. I then gently returned him to his hide space
in his enclosure for the night.
Opossums are not equipped for winter, with exposed tails and ears susceptible to frostbite. I think we will be seeing more who need treatment as winter progresses.
The TWC songbird room is full with various kinds of birds right now. All of the tables lining the walls, and all of the shelves on the back wall are full of various kinds of enclosures. Some with one, some with up to three or four birds in it. More blue jays than I have ever seen in one place, yellow-bellied sapsuckers hammering at the plastic walls of their enclosure, and sparrows, ovenbirds, kinglets, mourning doves, warblers, and thrushes.
Oh, the thrushes. Taller and leaner than many of the smaller songbirds, with slightly green-hued brown back, and white breast with a chandelier necklace of small brown spots cascading from the throat. Two of them were little escape artists tonight.
First time that any bird has escaped as I was replenishing their food. I had started at one end of the room, to the left of the door, and was making my way around the room, replenishing water, worms, seeds, and fruit for the various birds. And I was a half way around the room, at the very far wall of shelves that have 16 different enclosures on them.
I peer through each enclosure’s sides to determine how their supply of food and water are, so I don’t disturb the birds or risk flight. But I do have to open a corner of their enclosures, usually by carefully lifting fabric from the top, to be able to place more food into their dishes. And these little thrushes were ready!
Zap! In an instant – not one, but both had escaped their bird bin on a lower shelf. They were now flying around the room just below the ceiling. Immediately I turned off the lights, since birds will always fly directly to light. And I moved the sign from inside the door handle to the outside handle – it’s like one of those ‘do not disturb’ hotel room door signs, but this one tells people that a bird has escaped in the room, so they don’t open the door. And of course, I reached for a net.
The birds were now flying around the room and landing on the tops of the tall shelves and the other enclosures. Fortunately I was able to catch them quickly and gently, and no one was hurt. But the goofy thing was that their enclosure was perfectly covered, like all the others, and I wasn’t 100% sure which one they had escaped from.
Because I wasn’t confident which was their enclosure, and you don’t want to be checking three or four different ones with a terrified thrush in one hand, or worse – put them in the wrong enclosure with other birds – as soon as I caught them, I placed each one in a paper bag with a clip on it.
When both birds were safely each in a paper bag, I could then go back to find which one was their enclosure by checking the charts and, of course, seeing that no other bird occupied that enclosure. I then gently took the birds, in their bags, directly into their enclosure and released them back into their space with branches and water and food for the night.
Birds aren’t the only escape artists, and not the only animal that can escape in three dimensions of space.
Tonight a wily adult squirrel patient needed to be checked and given fluids. Now, I have learned that adult squirrels are in a completely different league from baby squirrels. The babies are squirmy and fussy but manageable. Adult squirrels, and this large grey speedster in particular, are astonishingly slippery, smart, lightning fast, and will jump and climb in all directions. In this case, there were three of us humans, including two experienced staff people and me – and the squirrel out-manoeuvered us all.
First thing it did as the senior staff person was checking the healing progress of its eyes, was jump out of its enclosure onto her shoulder, leap past all of us onto the wall of the small room, and start to climb up the wall. When it realized the wall was made of plastic not good for gripping, it leapt in the opposite direction – bounded off my hand (fully covered in thick gloves for handling adult squirrels), onto and over the shoulder of the other staff person, and up the pipe on the far wall.
Though terrifying for the squirrel and frustrating for the humans, really, the whole scene was comical.
The staff each had a net and were working to catch the squirrel. Once they did, we realized the squirrel had cut its lip in its efforts to escape. It was checked over and placed in a different enclosure to rest and de-stress for a while, as its main enclosure was cleaned.
When it came time later to give the squirrel fluids and treat the cut lip, it was two of us – C, the wonderfully patient and great instructor staff person who I work with on most Sundays, and me. I was wearing thick gloves to handle and hold the squirrel while she treated it. And we were doing well. I had captured it inside the temporary enclosure using a soft fuzzy blanket and thick protective gloves, and was able to hold it to be hydrated. Despite always having water in its enclosure, it was quite dehydrated as C noted by pointing out how the fluids were going in and the texture of the squirrel’s skin.
Then the squirrel pulled an impressive contortionist move as it flattened itself enough to slightly loosen my grip on it, while at the same time propelling itself forward, out from under the fleecy and my gloves, and up the pipe in the corner of the room again.
As noted in Wild City, “Their specialized vision makes instant trigonometric computations using vertical objects, mainly trees, to judge leaping distances, while four sets of whiskers and other sensing hairs guide them to twist and contort around obstacles at hyper-speed.”
Exactly. This squirrel leapt around the room until we caught it with a net. By this time, the net was destroyed. The squirrel was ok.
I ended up holding the squirrel against my chest, facing outward, for C to treat its lip. Which it took to surprising well, biting the medicinal foam and therefore helping to treat its mouth. Thank goodness for the thick gloves – I didn’t feel a thing as the squirrel chomped on my hand as I returned it to its clean, food and branch-filled main enclosure.
Loons up close are gorgeous. We know their distinct call, as it carries in the air over lake water. But we don’t all know what they look like up close. (I didn’t.)
Elegant black head and neck, with a white and black necklace at the throat. A body of deep black feathers with white dots. And not as large as I would have thought – more like the size of a duck. But their beak is sharp and accurate, so the staff members treating her wear clear protective eye shields.
As with securing the talons of an owl or hawk, ensuring that the beak of a loon doesn’t injure the staff person is the key to how it is handled.
This one was in ICU, and needed hydration fluids and tube-feeding. In this case, a staff member retrieved the loon from its enclosure, and I was able to help hold it while it was being treated and fed.
We then moved it to a different room down the hall where it has a large pool to swim in, with a floating raft it can step onto if it wants to, and live minnows to catch and eat. As soon as she was released into her pool she dove for the minnows.
How do you pick up a large adult snapping turtle?
Carefully – LOL. One of the adult snapping turtles at TWC right now has a piece of her carapace broken away, exposing the flesh underneath. But she seems to be healing well. And tonight when she needed to be given an injection of antibiotics, I retrieved her from her pool and held her for the staff person.
So, how exactly do you retrieve a snapping turtle from a pool, and pick it up to move it? Well, first of all, you know you are going to get wet. (Though not as wet as catching an aquatic bird from a pool using a bedsheet.)
In this case, using your non-dominant hand, you gently hold the base of the tail where it meets the shell. This part of the turtle is as thick a my wrist. Then with your dominant, stronger, hand, reach underneath from behind and lift her up from below. This way, she is facing away from you, and her strong beak can’t reach back to bite you. She is heavy!
Then to secure her and ensure no one gets bitten when she is being treated, her face goes into a turtle-specific plunger (see my earlier post here), where she will hiss. The treatment was done in an instant – it took longer to retrieve her and place her gently back in her pool!
The first Mary Anne Barkhouse piece you see in the Undomesticated exhibition at the Koffler Gallery is anything but wild and undomesticated.
It’s an oddly domestic scene where a wooden sculpture of a fox, with no visible legs, sits on a table that has been set with its favourite delicacies – birds, bugs, and a mouse, on platters. All placed, somewhat haphazardly, on a white tablecloth that has a ribbon of what might be interpreted as brown tracks woven into it. There are birds printed on the napkins, which are placed loosely on the table as if someone just stepped away for a moment.
The fox, on the table close to one end, overlooks the spread, unable to move. Unlike some of Barkhouse’s pieces where the animal appears ready to spring into motion, in this piece, the fox appears to be both a part of the table settings as much as the guest of honour.
Artist and sculptor Mary Anne Barkhouse is from the Kwakiutl First Nation in BC, and she now lives and works in Minden, Ontario. Barkhouse’s artistic practice is deeply engaged with environmental and Indigenous issues, and evokes the influence of empire on the many human and animal inhabitants of the land we now call Canada, as the opening line of description of her previous exhibition at the Koffler Gallery states. Her work appears in numerous public spaces across the country and has been shown in many galleries, including the solo exhibition at the Koffler in 2017 guest curated by Jennifer Rudder, and more recently in the exhibition How to Breathe Forever, curated by Lisa Deanne Smith at OCAD gallery in early 2019.
The other Barkhouse piece in Undomesticated is
a chandelier; a large branch full of paper butterflies. It takes up a
significant amount of space in the room and is pretty – appearing like a swarm
of cream-coloured butterflies. Upon closer look, you realize that each
butterfly has been stuck through with a sharp twig. Like they might have been
accidentally impaled on the branch. It is both beautiful and disturbing. Although
relatively colourless, the piece is based on Monarch butterfly migration to
their southernmost destination in Mexico.
Undomesticated, curated by Mona Filip, starts in the Koffler Gallery and extends throughout the entire Artscape Youngspace building. I was fortunate to have a fantastic tour led by Francis Tomkins, with excellent support from Gabby Marcuzzi Herie. The exhibition starts with pieces in an uninhabited house structure in the Koffler Gallery, where Francis introduced the exhibition. This exhibition engages a discussion about who and what belongs in domestic spaces. The idea of changing the function of objects – things we are so used to that we don’t see anymore – so we see them again in a new way, also caught my attention.
The exhibition text states, Encompassing a wide range of media, Undomesticated transforms the everyday to reveal its hidden, unyielding strangeness.
One of the first pieces you encounter is an octagonal video installation on the floor, in what looks like a nest of branches. Hanna Claus’s interlacings explores the ‘interlacing’ of her Indigenous and European ancestry through William Morris-esque interwoven flora imagery. Indigenous medicinal plants are what appear in Claus’s work.
Throughout the exhibition, a wide range of topics address many different fascinating stories and personal histories. Francis explained the pieces thoughtfully and knowledgably. As we discussed each piece throughout the exhibition, themes of loss, power dynamics, resiliency, and repurposing, came up again and again. As well as the use of digital technologies to reimagine traditional art forms, and the humour in some of the pieces in the exhibition that are both meaningful and funny.
In discussing the Mary Ann Barkhouse pieces, Francis explained, “Humans behave as if the natural world is there just for us. We try to control and collect nature. But the natural world is resilient. And we need to think about our responsibility to it.”
The exhibition’s description says: Detouring the objects and settings of dwelling spaces, the exhibition addresses an underlying impossibility to fully adapt to or tame our environments in order to construct places where our bodies and psyches can seamlessly fit in.
Undomesticated will be on view until November 17, 2019. Admission is free. The Koffler Gallery is located at the Artscape Youngspace at 180 Shaw Street, Toronto.
Artists: Mary Anne Barkhouse, Gwenaël Bélanger, Katherine Boyer, Sandra Brewster, Hannah Claus, Erika DeFreitas, Julie Favreau, Nicolas Fleming, Iris Häussler, Lucy Howe, Gunilla Josephson, Lewis Kaye, Valerie Kolakis, Carmela Laganse, Heather Nicol, Dainesha Nugent-Palache, Gord Peteran, Birthe Piontek, Yannick Pouliot, Adrienne Spier, Karen Tam, Kevin Yates, Shaheer Zazai, Shellie Zhang Curator: Mona Filip / Art Director: Nicolas Fleming
