Adventures of a Midwestern Girl (and Her Hillbilly Hermit Tennessean) in Sunny, Sunny California

Every so often someone will come to WildCare and request our help in identifying a large spider they have in a box or to ask how they can keep raccoons from eating the koi in their pond. Fairly standard questions. But this weekend I had the most surreal conversation with a woman who wanted my very professional opinion. The County Civic Center has a lagoon on its property and is home to a very large number of domestic, wild, and hybrid ducks and geese. Said lagoon is a toxic cesspool; every bird we get at WildCare from that location gets designated as Typhoid Mary as it carries every possible intestinal parasite known to show up on a microscope slide. The birds that live on the lagoon also have terrible nutritional problems, including metabolic bone disease, since their "diet" is comprised almost solely of the bread the good people of Marin feed them every day. If bird flu is going to show up in Marin, I frankly wouldn't be surprised if the lagoon was the place. Frankly, the flock could use a little culling.

Well, apparently there has been a rash of killings at the lagoon. Possibly a coyote has found the smorgasbord of foie gras in the urban center. Possibly a misbehaving dog, with or without its miscreant owner, has been ravaging the pond. A few Sundays ago I took a call from a woman who, after reading an article in the Marin Independent Journal, thought the culprit was a river otter that had found its way into the lagoon. She wanted me to tell her everything I knew about the way otters would hunt these ducks and geese because she wanted to stake out the lagoon looking for the criminal mastermind and wanted to know what to look for.

Perhaps this is the time to mention that among the many interesting people who live in Marin, there is a group of ladies who are VERY attached to the birds at the Civic Center. Most of these birds that end up at WildCare are brought to us by one of these women. (We also have a "crazy pigeon lady" who searches for injured pigeons and brings in a good 80% of the pigeons we get every weekend, but that's a story for another day.)

At any rate, I didn't know much about the hunting behavior of otters and I implied that I wouldn't tell her anyway if it was her intent to stop the otter from catching its dinner. Apparently, one of the ducks had made its way to WildCare for a necropsy in which a volunteer vet had determined that the injuries were of the canine variety anyway.

Fast forward to this Sunday. There I am standing at the front desk, minding my own business, when I see a woman hovering in the doorway holding a plastic bread bag. "Can I help you with something?" I ask. Slowly she moves closer and timidly she says, "Yes, I found this at the Civic Center." Here I am thinking perhaps she has an injured animal in the bag and I need to get it from her and out of the plastic. Instead, she says, "I was wondering if you could tell me how long this duck has been dead."

She opens the bag, I look in. All that's in the bag is two duck feet.

Not knowing quite what to say, I tell her that I really can't tell her when the duck died (biting my tongue against saying "but I think it's too late to save it"). She keeps looking at me like she wants something further. So, I comment that I think it's interesting that the webbing on the feet is still intact. Based on the fact that the ants haven't picked the feet clean, perhaps the bird is recently deceased? She jumped on that with almost an "ah ha, so you think it died a short time ago?" She mentions that she's heard that there's an eye witness saying that he saw a coyote attacking a duck a few days ago. Well, if a coyote has found the lagoon he's in for some good eatin'. Actually, I didn't say exactly that, but I did mention the circle of life and all.

Still she looked at me as if she wanted something more. I told her again that I thought the intact webbing was interesting, but that identifying time-of-death really wasn't what we do there, and that most of the duck feet we see are still attached to the bird. Finally she left. Whether she was satisfied or not, I have no idea.

But suddenly I have an idea to expand the franchise even further: CSI: WildCare.

Posted by Anne at 07:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This weekend Steve and I bought something I never thought we would buy. A piece of home exercise equipment. That’s right. In spite of my fears that it will become something on which to hang Steve's seldom-worn suits (we got those thinking he might need them for a job interview or the job itself someday), we are the proud new owners of a FitnessQuest Elliptical trainer.

The reason for this purchase? We are totally out of shape. Before I started my new job last July, I used to go to yoga or Pilates twice a week after work. But that was when I could actually make it home in time for the Pilates class at 5:35. Now we get home after 7:00. The few times I've popped in one of my Pilates DVDs at home, I've worked out in terror of losing my balance and cracking my head on the coffee table a few inches away.

The consequence of these circumstances is that for the last 11 months I haven't done much more than sit on the drive to work, sit in front of my computer at work, sit on the drive home, and sit in front of the TV when we get home. And recently I've begun to feel the effects of stagnation. It's not even so much that the jeans occasionally get a little tight. When I notice that, I cut out a snack or two and get back down. So far, I have been blessed with a decent metabolism. No, it's my aching body and creaking joints telling me to get moving.

I have an old shoulder injury that acts up every so often. It's been bothering me all spring. I can no longer sleep without a pillow between my legs without waking up in the middle of the night with a terrible pain in my hip. My doctor says I likely have loose ligaments. In this case, it means that when I'm sleeping on my side, my hip falls slightly out of its socket, hence the stabbing pain after a while. Propping my knee up with a pillow helps keep my hip in place. The loose ligaments would also explain my other weak joint issues. The answer, according to my doctor, for all of these woes? Exercise, build up the muscles that are supposed to support the joints. After going through all of my complaints at my physical in April, I jokingly "complained" to her that exercise is her answer for everything.

Steve doesn't seem to have these joint issues, but he's out of shape, too, and could use some exercise. So, after agreeing that we have the right, nay the obligation, to nag each other incessantly if the other person does not use the infernal machine, we got a fairly well-reviewed, but on the low-end of the price range, elliptical trainer. I'm simply not willing to shell out $2,000 for what might, in the end, become a glorified coat hanger. Besides, the pedals of the one we got are just the right size to become cat beds if necessary.

Posted by Anne at 07:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Because if I were married to Hugh Jackman, I'd make him play dress up. . .

Posted by Anne at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After our shift at WildCare, Steve and I went back with Melanie to check on the momma raccoon and her babies living in a crawl space. We kind of doubted they were still there. After all, we had pretty thoroughly invaded mom's space the last time we were there. And then there was the coyote poop throwing incident. Besides, at 4-3 weeks old the babies are old enough to be moved. But, we had to see if they were there and close up their access point if they were gone. Suiting up, Steve and Melanie started crawling around the space. The previous nest site was totally empty and there wasn't a sign of them. No trilling babies, no piles of poop anywhere. Determining that they must be gone, we got ready to close up the hole. We instructed the homeowner to give us a call immediately if she heard any sounds down there. Confirming our original thought that they must be gone, the homeowner said that she hadn't heard them for 3 or 4 days. She commented on how comforting the purring sound had been and how she could hear it right in that far corner of her kitchen. The place she said she had heard the sound was the one place that Melanie and Steve had not investigated that thoroughly. It was harder to get to and there didn’t seem to be a good way to climb into or out of it. But, we really needed to double-check. So, while Steve and Jasmine started to prepare materials to patch the hole. Melanie and I headed back in. We went further along this time. Melanie, who had on coveralls, went further along than I did and did a pretty thorough search of the area. She couldn't find anything, not even a nest site.

Now, I'm pretty proud of myself for this next bit. I said, "But the homeowner said she heard them over here. I just feel like we're missing something because there should be a nest site. Where is the empty nest?" So, Melanie started looking some more. She noticed an old blanket and we thought perhaps that was the site. Then she noticed there were little bits of torn insulation on top of it. Looking up (you know, people in horror movies always get taken out because they never look up), she saw a hole in the insulation and she started poking around it.

Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.

GROWL!!!!! "Oh my god!" Scared the crap out us! Momma raccoon briefly popped her head out to look annoyed at being so unceremoniously awakened and went back in her cubby not to return again. Then we started hearing the babies trilling and purring. So, it turns out the nest is still there! There was no way for us to remove the babies to lure momma out of the crawlspace. Momma was right with them. We talked about our options for a few minutes, but then momma raccoon starting growling again and we thought it was time to go.

The homeowners are going to be on vacation this week, so we're going to go back in a few days to set up radios and strobe lights in the crawlspace and hope momma raccoon gets the point. In the meantime, we’ve learned yet another valuable lesson. In addition to "carry a dead rat in your pocket when you go on a dead animal call", we now have "always remember to look up."

Posted by Anne at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh those wacky raccoons. They can cause trouble.

Steve pointed me to this story about a raccoon in Cyprus who caused a major power outage after surviving an 11,000 volt electric shock. Poor fella is facing deportation!

And Melanie supplied this fine example of a stupid human getting exactly what he deserved. This dufus set his own house on fire trying to "encourage" a momma racoon and her babies to leave his attic. I particularly love the fact that, when asked if, knowing how it turned out, he would do the same thing again, the moron said yes. Answers like that make me think the fire department should charge him for putting out the fire he set.

The baby raccoons were rescued by the firemen and sent to a wildlife center.

I also find it amusing that the animal control person was catching these harmless babies with a terribly professional-looking catchpole, especially when the firemen were just snuggling them a few shots earlier. Although I know rabies is pretty prevalent in eastern raccoons, my theory is that this person knew she was going to be on video tape and decided to do things as by-the-book as possible.

Posted by Anne at 08:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apart from my squeamishness with blood and all things medical, one of the reasons I never pursued my childhood desire to be a veterinarian was that I didn't think I could deal with euthanizing animals. It's never really been a huge problem at WildCare because I've never questioned the necessity for some of the animals to be euthanized, and they aren't people's pets . The snake whose spine is broken at the base of the head, the hawk with an infected compound fracture, the squirrel squished by a car, these are things that can't be fixed and it is merciful to euthanize the animal. Still, there's nothing quite like having to euthanize the first baby raccoons of the season.

They came in on Friday after momma raccoon failed to come back to her den for four days. Steve and I babysat three of the five over Saturday night. They weren't suckling the unfamiliar formula yet and feeding five baby raccoons can take a long time in the best of circumstances, let alone with high-maintenance babies. So we took a few to relieve the team leader at least for one night. Unfortunately, three of the five babies started having seizures, along with other symptoms of distemper and they had to be put down. We think it's likely that momma raccoon probably died of distemper herself. The other two have some symptoms as well, but they haven't started having seizures yet, so the team leader is just giving them supportive care and we are hoping for the best.

We've seen an unusually high number of adult raccoons with distemper this spring, so we knew it was going to be a bad season. But having to watch these wonderful babies be euthanized was very difficult today and generally threw a pall over the whole day. Sorry to be such a downer, but really what a shitty day.

Posted by Anne at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday afternoon, Steve and I crawled around under someone's house looking for a dead animal.

How, you might ask, does one get to this place in life. WildCare, our chosen place for animal volunteering, is always on the look-out for new funding sources. Most recently the hospital is starting an exclusion business. What is exclusion? Basically, it is the process by which one humanely rids a residence of "pest" animals, mainly through strong encouragement to leave, and then closes entry points and makes the habit less hospitable. One might put predator scent (i.e. coyote poo) in a basement nest area and install a one-way door over the entry point. The animal leaves and can't get back in. They are "excluded". Since WildCare does not have its own exclusion Web site up and running yet, I will direct you to the Web sites of 2 colleague organizations which helped provide training for more information: Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue and San Francisco Rescued Orphan Mammal Program.

Saturday afternoon we actually made a check on such a job. A few days earlier, our friend Melanie had gone into someone's subfloor to locate a raccoon nest and scatter coyote poop about the area. Apparently in the mad tossing of poo the annoyed mother raccoon was accidentally hit in the forehead. Steve likes to imagine the raccoon thinking, "oh great, there goes the neighborhood. Surrounded by a bunch of monkeys throwing poo." At any rate, after the poo toss, Melanie left and waited for mom to move her babies to a safer neighborhood. Steve and I went back with her on Saturday to see if mom had taken the hint. Unfortunately, her babies were still too young for her to move and we'll have to go back in a few days to toss more poo and encourage them to develop an exit strategy. Their lack of movement did give us a chance to see our first baby raccoons of the season, at least 3 adorable little newborns, eyes still closed and without their black masks.

Another aspect of this work that kind be quite lucrative is to remove dead animals and arrange the property to exclude other, more active bodies. That was Sunday afternoon. Some woman in Tiburon said she had an awful stench coming from her crawl space and she had totally sealed off the access closet. We headed on over with Melanie after our morning shift in the WildCare clinic, Vick's Vapo-Rub at the ready. The woman took the tape off the door and swung it open. Nothing. We opened the crawl space and headed in. Nothing by the smell of dirt. We crawled along inspecting the entire underside of the house and never did find the smell. (Yes, Mom and Dad, I was wearing a mask, goggles, gloves, and a Tyvek suit.) We did find one desiccated rat, but it was too old to be the source of any smell. We even joked that, in the future, we should never go on a dead animal call without at least mummified rat in our pocket just in case we couldn't find anything.

At any rate, the woman seemed "happy" enough with Toby, the dead rat, especially since the smell was no longer present. While Melanie explained that Toby might not be the source of the smell and that we wouldn't be able to find it if it was in the walls, Steve performed some minor repairs to vents and drainage pipe outlets to keep other animals from getting in.

A $400 check later, we were on our way. The nice lady even said that we looked like the poster-children for this business. I prefer to think it was because she is mildly racist/classist and was pleased she didn't have the usual day laborers tromping through her pretty house and not because we looked like we were hoping to find a dead opossum to cook up for dinner.

Posted by Anne at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)