At the Toronto Wildlife Centre – Page 2

The Comfort of Companions

When we think of animals and companions in the same breath, we often think about pet dogs. Maybe some therapy animals. The focus there is really on the companionship and related benefits that the animals provide to humans. All good. But what about the animals’ own needs for companionship? Many of our urban critters have their own social needs and structures.

Coyotes in care together

Of the four adult coyotes in care right now, two have been placed together in the same enclosure – it turns out that they are a mated couple! Both are in care to heal from mange. I think it’s amazing that we’d have both in care, and that we would know they are mates and be able to put them together.

Urban coyotes mate for life and are totally faithful to each other, unlike other canids.

How do we know they are mates? These ones are from the Richmond Hill area, both from the same territory, which is what tipped off the TWC that they might be mates. The TWC’s Hotline and Rescue services often have a variety of people in a neighbourhood watching certain animals. It is likely that these two coyotes were observed together or in the same territory many times before they were brought in.

Although these coyotes came in separately, and were originally cared for in separate rooms, they have now been placed in the same room. The initial stage of mange treatment takes 3 days, so I suspect that they were moved in together after both were passed that stage and into needing time and care to heal. There are always two different kennels in their room but staff person C said that a few days ago she saw them cuddled up together in the same kennel.

I was fortunate to see them both up close this week, as I closed them up in their kennels (usually open) so their room could be cleaned. One of the coyotes is beautiful, with gorgeous fur and alert calm demeanor. The other is in really rough shape with missing fur, one eye halfway closed, scabs and swelling. A lot longer way to go to heal. But it will heal. In the meantime, it must make such a huge difference to them to be together, since their mate and family members are so very important to coyotes.

The Urban Coyote Initiative says, “It’s common to see a single coyote hunting or traveling on its own, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is alone. Coyotes are highly social animals and this didn’t change when they entered the urban ecosystem. Coyotes may live as part of a pack, which usually consists of an alpha male and female, perhaps one or two of their offspring from previous seasons (known as a “helper”) and their current litter of pups. The pack may also welcome in a solitary traveler if their territory can support another member. Packs living in sizable protected areas can have as many as five or six adults.

However, a coyote may also spend part of its life on its own … common when young coyotes disperse from their pack and go in search of their own territory, a new pack to join, or a mate with whom to start their own pack. A coyote may also spend a stretch of time as a loner if it was an alpha in a pack but lost its mate.”

A forever home for the quail

I finally asked about the quail we have in songbird room at the TWC. On her chart it says that she is an escaped domestic bird. It turns out that the TWC is trying to find a home for her – someone to adopt her! A staff person I spoke with said they are looking for someone with an acreage or hobby farm with a family of other quail for her to join.

Quails in the wild live in social groups, or coveys, that are mostly family members. Quail mate for life and are monogamous, with both partners raising their babies and teaching the young all the skills they need to thrive. They are also fairly vocal with a variety of unique sounds they use to communicate.

“The quail, invisible, whistles, and who attends?” – Henry David Thoreau

Peeps the baby pigeon has a pal

Peeps the baby we heard and fed last week is now in a double-wide enclosure with another young pigeon, who is gorgeous. White and auburn feathers – I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that colour before. Brownish red. True auburn, with just a little bit of iridescent purple at the tips of her neck feathers. She and Peeps are calming each other, good together.

Both needed to be tube fed, and it happened to be my final sign-off for pigeon handling. I needed to remove Peeps carefully with one hand since the enclosure opening is so small, and had to tuck one of her wings into the pillowcase that covered her to keep her calm. She pecked at my fingers holding her breast under the pillowcase. But it was smooth with both of them, they were fed by volunteer J, and returned to their enclosure together, and I got my pigeon handling final sign-off.

Pigeons are social and, as we see in all parts of downtown they live in flocks of 20-30 individuals. All of our feral city pigeons, a.k.a. rock pigeons, are descendants of domesticated rock doves. They can live more than 30 years and they, too, are monogamous, with one mate for a lifetime. Pigeon mates can lay multiple clutches in a year, including all year-round if winter doesn’t get too cold. They lay two eggs at a time, which hatch after 18 days.

Young birds depend on their parents for the first two months of their life. Both parents take care of the chicks (called squabs), and feed them a form of “pigeon milk,” which is what we try to replicate when tube-feeding baby pigeons at the TWC. The pigeon is one of only three bird species (the others being flamingos and male emperor penguins) known to produce ‘milk’ to feed their young. Scientists at Deakin University found that, like mammalian milk, it contains antioxidants and immune-enhancing proteins important for the growth and development of the young.

Pigeons are highly intelligent. They are of course well-known for their ‘homing’ superpowers and their history of carrying messages over long distances to accurate destinations. In scientific tests, pigeons have been able to not only differentiate between photographs, but even differentiate between two different human beings in a photograph. They can be taught to recognize all letters of the English alphabet. They are also able to recognize themselves in a mirror.

Bat Cuddles

I wrote about Zenelophon and Yorick cuddled up together in a previous post here. Since writing that, the first time I found them together like that, every time I have cared for them, every week, they are always cuddled up together.

Bats are super social animals, well known for forming huge colonies. Roosting together in such large numbers gives them protection from predators and the social interaction they need. According to James Robertson’s book The Complete Bat, the females gather to form these large colonies, with males remaining largely solitary or in small groups until the breeding season. Communication is vitally important to bats – researchers have found that their wide range of vocalizations are associated with warnings of threats and with general social communication.

Peeps the baby pigeon

[A prose poem by Heather L Kelly]

The middle of winter, no mother, she cries for food, she cries for comfort. The plush stuffed dragon with pink wings in her enclosure to calm her is cute but … not interacting with her, not responding. Little peeps, loud peeps. She is calling for food, for love, for attention. She is a baby. Bird. She doesn’t know she was born a species that people call names like rat – another who is intelligent, affectionate, misunderstood. She doesn’t know what happened to her mother. Or maybe she does, and has nightmares. Where are her brothers and sisters. She calls out, loud peeps, I am here! I am here! Here! Here! Someone please feed me! Someone! I’m hungry! I am a baby and I am here in the strange place and I can’t get my own food. She calls out, someone hear me! Feed me! Hear me! All of the adult pigeons, in separate cages lined up along the counter, hear her. We humans, hear her, down the hall. The other pigeons hear her. None are her mother, the other pigeons can’t help her. They are isolated, they are there to heal from some other trauma. They are city birds, more likely to be burned from hot cooking oil in an alley than in a forest fire. These are city birds, our neighbours, our local babies, this baby. This mid-winter baby calls out, loud peeps. She calls out for food, she calls out for attention. A squab, rock dove, a mess of baby fuzz on her head. Not yet the iridescent plumes of her elders. Alert eyes, flappy flappy flappy fear when I come too near. To cuddle her would be terrifying and dangerous for her. To tell her everything will be ok would be untrue. But to love her, and feed her, is something we can do.

Bat Cuddles!

Bat cuddles! I feel like I know them, now that I’ve been caring for them every week for the last month or two, after getting my rabies vaccination. I work with other species, too, and don’t want to get pigeonholed (LOL). Today I boxed a large coyote for his room to be cleaned, cleaned and fed three of the turtle patients, and weighed and released the fox back into its newly clean room. And of course, fed and cleaned bats. I do love little bats and am happy to feed and clean them each week.

The very last bat enclosure I worked on – a large double size mesh enclosure – was a treat. It houses Zenelophon and Yorick.

They are newer patients and have been there only a few weeks. Last week they were in separate enclosures, today they were together. Very together! I thought I was bringing out one bat to weigh, but when I opened the tea towel there were two bats in my glove!

Zenelophon, a girl, and the larger of the two, and Yorick, the boy, were cuddled up together.

I felt so bad when I had to separate them to weight them and harass their little bodies a bit more than usual to be able to see their belly side to identify who is the boy and who is the girl. Sexing a bat is a lot like a squirrel – they look pretty much the same, but boys are clearly more obvious on bats. “If there’s a gap, it’s a chap” is a helpful phrase – the female organs are closer to the bum and tail, and the male are a little higher up on their body.

So they were separated and each one was weighed and placed back in their enclosure, with two little dishes of fresh calcium water and two dishes full of mealworms, phoenix worms, and wax worms for them.

The last task of the day was to hand-feed Queen Gertrude. Assist-feed, actually. Hand feeding is where you hold the bat wrapped up in the towel and feed it, and assist feeding is where you feed the bat as it is hanging upside down in its enclosure and free to move around if it wants to. Queen Gertrude has not been eating for the last few days.

She was super slow and sleepy when I weighed her, cleaned her enclosure, and returned her into it. Staff person L suggested that I move her out of the very cold room where these bat patients are kept at outside temperature, and into another location to let her warm up a bit. Try assist or hand feeding her once she is warmer and therefore a little more awake. See if I can get her to eat her untouched food from last night.

So I placed Queen G’s enclosure on a countertop outside of the cold room, in a heated central area of the building, and continued cleaning and feeding the rest of the bats in ISO. There are about 11 in there in total right now. And the room is really cold! The window is left open to let in the cold air, so that all of the animals in the rooms of that area – chipmunks, a snowy owl, a coyote, and the bats, all get temperatures close to outside.

By the time I was done cleaning and feeding all of the bats, my fingers were numb. I couldn’t feel my fingertips, despite wearing latex gloves and thicker protective gloves. Queen Gertrude was a little warmer – she had probably been on the counter for an hour – and I needed to warm up a bit before I could use the larger tweezers well enough to feed her.

I ran warm water over my hands, and it just happened that volunteer D asked for help to weigh a fox and return it to its enclosure. I was more than happy to help her with that. So we weighed the fox (in a kennel kab, then weigh the kennel without the fox to get the fox’s weight), and moved the fox back into its clean room, where I released it. Then back to Queen Gertrude.

I had tried to feed her in the cold room before moving her to the counter to warm up. No luck. She would open her mouth a little, but not bite down. She would not take any of the food.

Then I tried hand feeding her in the warmer area near the counter. But she just clamped her mouth shut and would move her head away. No. No. No. I don’t want that! She seemed to be showing me.

But when she was ready – Rawr! Lol.

I had placed her back into her enclosure, taken her back into the cold room, and placed the enclosure on the table there. Queen Gertrude was hanging on the back wall of the mesh enclosure.

Now she was interested! She almost jumped at the food. She would lean way out to get it was I was bringing it to her, grab it with her tiny little mouth, and happily munch away. She also tried to take the next mealworm before she was even finished the one in her mouth. Chomp! Crunch crunch. Another one! Another one! Another one! She quickly ate 15 in total – with gusto!

She was my last patient of the day, and when I left at 6pm we were both happy and satisfied.

Fox in a Box

Oh this day began in an unusual way, so I will tell it to you in the style of Seuss:

I was asked to box a fox!

We did not fight in a ring after a ding

I did not wrap him up for Christmas

It was simply time to clean up his room.

This is no ordinary fox, it is a fox with spunk

he made a big mess, and my oh my how it stunk

he is small and skinny and his fur is all matted

the fox is still healing and smelly from mange

it’s the mange that makes wild creatures sad

until they are cured of the mange that they had had.

So this fox was asked nicely and he walked into his box

I closed up the door and latched up the lock,

carried the fox from his room to the hall,

and to make it less scary, placed him facing the wall.

Then we cleaned and we mopped and we picked up the mess,

set it up all fresh with new toys, dig box, and clean bed,

brought fox back to his room, and let him go free

to be comfy where he’ll make a new mess, surely!

A coyote was next, his room was to be clean

the coyote was tidy and couldn’t be seen

in the back of his box where he lay on his side

he could sniff, he could watch, he could hide

he refused to move for his room to be cleaned

did not get out of bed, barely lifted his head

when I changed the blankets around him.

Then it was time to go outside

to clean the recovery rooms of little racoons.

What’s with all this cleaning, I hear you think

I hardly do the dishes in my own home sink!

But for wild ones, large and small, who need to recover

under their fur or fins or scales or feathers

helping them get healthy and able again to be free

makes my heart grow like the Grinch’s – three sizes bigger.

How to Hold an Owl

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.

Bats Awake in Winter?

*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!

Cirque du Squirrel

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.

Beautiful Baby Brownsnake

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.

Opossum Fare

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.

Great escapes!

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.