Baby Rabbits

Saturday our friends Lynn and Darren gave us a call and asked if we could pick up some baby rabbits for them while they were out of town for the day.  Apparently a family (who is only a few minutes from us in a town called Hubbell) found the babies after their dog dug up the nest and killed three of the rabbits, leaving 5 left for them to save.  Thankfully they did save them and called people who could take care of them and raise them and then let them go back to the wild!

So on the way home from the shooting range Joe and I took a detour and picked up the rabbits and then we had them for about 24 hours feeding/taking care of them before Lynn and Darren could pick them up and take them back to their house to continue raising them until they are ready to be released.  While they were here they got to snuggle in a grassy bed and Joe and/or I fed them every few hours with kitten milk replacement formula.  Rabbits are really hard to raise from so young so we’ll see if they make it, but so far they are doing well!

So cute and cuddly looking, they were very sweet…and very, very squirmy and fast!

Joe was much better at getting them to eat than I was

Home again a little bit smarter

I’m back home again this evening after a long two days of Wildlife Rehabilitation class.  Our first day was filled with 8 hours of lecture and thankfully we had done our homework before we went to class because some people didn’t and then they had to do their homework at night or will have to mail their homework in later if they can’t get it done… it worked much better for us to have it done and ready to turn in!

We covered topics like intake procedures, how to look at an animal and figure out roughly what it is, where it lives, what it eats etc., we did drug dose calculations and nutrition calculations, we talked about what kind of housing different animals need and the different ways to capture them and handle them safely.  We also covered common problems with animals that come in such as emaciation, dehydration, hypo/hyperthermia and vitamin deficiencies. And of course we had to talk about diseases that handlers may get from wild animals (which is kind of creepy), and euthanasia when its necessary because that is also part of rehabilitating.  Finally we talked about release procedures and how to know when an animal is ready to go back into the wild since that is the main goal of rehabilitation.  It is usually illegal to keep a wild animal and rehabilitators must be licensed and have permits in order to work with them.  If an animal is not-releasable then they must be put down or must be used in an education setting or used as foster parents etc. There must be a good reason to keep them and there are permits required for long term keeping of wildlife that the rehabilitor must get in addition to the ones needed to help wildlife short term.

The second day morning was filled with hands-on lab time.  We learned how to bandage mammals, do wing wraps on birds, perform intramuscular (into the muscle) and subcutaneous (under the skin) injections on both birds and mammals, insert gavage (feeding) tubes, and perform physical exams on injured animals. To do this we worked on deceased chickens and rabbits, and there was also one unfortunate squirrel as well.

After lunch on the second day (today) we did a quick review and then took our final exam which covered the lecture and the lab both.  We won’t find out how we actually did for about a month. In Michigan this course is one of the requirements to become a licensed rehabilitator.  Once we are sure we both did well we’ll see what we can do about finding a currently licensed rehabilitator and a vet to work with us and eventually maybe we will be able to get licenses and permits! Right now there are no licensed rehabilitators within a couple hours of us so it would be pretty useful to do up here since we have so much wildlife! Although in Michigan we for sure aren’t allowed to help bats or skunks and I thought I heard adult deer as well too but I’m not totally sure on that one.

I did not take pictures inside the class because I thought I would look a little strange.  Plus I don’t think anyone wants to see dead chicken/rabbit carcasses on my blog.  They weren’t the prettiest things to see.  But I do have a picture of the car bumper that decided to fall off on our way to class this morning!

We stayed in a town called Menominee which was about 30 minutes away from our class and it was very, very windy out.  The bumper has been a bit loose and partly hanging for a long time now, but it never moved and we figured it would be fine, but the wind must have really caught it and the next thing we know we were slowing down to stop on the side of the road because the front bumper was draging on the tires/ground.  It was still screwed into the car, but had mostly fallen off. Of course, we had no tool kit or rope or anything in the car with us! We couldn’t snap it back on, and all we had was a blanket to rip for something to tie it with but as we were doing that a very nice older man stopped his truck, found some rope and tied our car back together! It was super nice and we were on our way again in no time, we weren’t even late for class! And, the tie job is still holding the bumper up just fine! Maybe Chrysler should have just done this in the first place It doesn’t even look that bad.

On my way…

I am on my way to a Basic Wildlife Rehabilitation class this morning.  A friend and I are going together to learn some basic skills that we could use to help any injured wild animals we come across.  This class is two full days long and includes a lab (with real practice on dead animals), a bunch of bookwork, some homework and a final exam.  It will be a busy two days!  We were supposed to go last October but ended up not being able to go, so now we are making up our class this week.  It ended up working out even nicer because last fall the class was about 8 hours away and now it is only 3 which we like a lot better! We are leaving early, early this morning (my alarm is set to go off at the same time, 4am, that I have my post posting since I really wrote this the evening before!) and will be home at a reasonable hour, before bedtime, tomorrow night after we finish our exams.

Our husbands are staying home because they both have to work and get the job of taking care of all of the animals by themselves.  Combined we are leaving behind a total of two husbands, two children (both hers!), and approximately 55 animals if I have my count right.  They range from cats/dogs/rabbits to chickens/llamas/horses/ponies (she has the most by far though if you don’t count our chickens!)…so a variety of inside and outside animals and that does not include the boarding kennel she runs and all of the dogs and cats who are temporarily living there too! Hopefully some of the skills we learn in our class will be able to carry over into our normal animal filled lives