Live, Love, Wild: Pictures!

Half way through Week 2. Life is definitely starting to fall into more of a routine, although each day is always something new. In many ways, it’s the perfect balance for a job: your knowledge and routines are similar each day (although they probably improve daily) but you never quite know what may walk through the door next, so there’s always an element of surprise and novelty. Even the staff who have been at the center for years never seem mindlessly bored. I’ve gotten a chance to learn a bit about some of their backgrounds and discovered that basically every single one of them previously came from a job either in finance/marketing of some sort, or computer stuff. They all hated their jobs and realized that their passions lay with working with animals and now they can’t imagine doing anything else. It’s inspiring to hear, as it is likely that they were receiving significantly higher salaries and benefits than they are now at the center, but they think the sacrifice is worth it to be doing what they love.

Okay, details: Wednesday I helped open the BCU again at 7AM along with two other interns (one just arrived for session 3 – now that we’ve all arrived it looks like there’s only going to be 4 interns for the 3^rd session, and it’s going to feel pretty empty once the big group all leaves. My roommate leaves at the end of July, and two of the others are leaving two weeks before that. On that note, it’s hard to believe how fast the summer is flying! We’re almost to July – yikes!) BCU gets pretty repetitive and you can kind of get into a groove as you work, following the schedule set by the timers. There was one adorable little mockingbird in one of the boxes when I arrived, whose chart noted that he had developed a slight head tilt recently. Indeed his head appeared to be cocked to one side every time I lifted the net over the box to feed him and his companion, and sadly it continued to grow more severe as the day wore on, until he was practically standing on his head by the end of the day. One of the staff members took a look and determined that it was probably a neurological problem (possibly developed from crashing into a window, possibly prior to his arrival to the center or if he happened to have escaped one day and crashed into the glass windows around the BCU). It didn’t seem like anything could be done, so we ended up putting him to sleep. Euthanasia is a real and sad part of life at the center, but often has to happen. Many of the animals are brought in after dog/cat attacks, or have been hit by cars for example, and there’s really nothing we can do to help them at that point, as their injuries are simply too severe. Furthermore, if they happened to survived the rehabilitation process, which could be long and painful, they may potentially never achieve the same physical fitness they had before their injury, and it could negatively impact their chances of survival, which would just cause more suffering. As sad as that outcome is, it is balanced out by the feeling of happiness and excitement when you successfully do help save a creature’s life and can watch it recover to the point where it can be set free.

Along with the new intern, we also had a group of new volunteers helping in the BCU and I was placed in the strange position of being one of the “experts,” which I definitely feel is a far from true assessment. I still feel completely overwhelmed by all the new tasks I’m faced with every day, and still have a long list of things to learn. What’s comforting is to know that in reality I’ll never stop learning – the interns who have been here already for weeks are still learning new things each day, and everyone is super helpful and more than willing to explain or show you how to do something if you ask or feel uncomfortable. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m getting exposed to a lot of veterinary techniques/skills, such as doing complete physicals (at some point I’ll supposedly become completely competent in doing this unsupervised), doing limb wraps, medication injections, checking for breaks and lacerations and cleaning wounds. All while also mastering a expertise of California wildlife and being able to recognize different species on sight, even as indefinable baby lumps of feathers. I’m hoping that one day I’ll be able to help with a release and see one of these animals head back into the wilderness, because I’ve heard that there is no better feeling of satisfaction.

On a somewhat happier note, I’m finally getting a chance to experience life in Cali! On Tuesday, my roommate and I both had days off so we drove down to Santa Monica and walked down the pier and at the outdoor mall (where I bought a GRE textbook – blehhh) and had lunch at the great Caribbean place that I visited with Kmo, Graham and Jeff last week. Later that night, we went out with some of the other interns to a nearby British Pub that featured a trivia night, and surprising to say, we didn’t do that bad. J And I finally got a chance to go to the beach a little bit yesterday afternoon – hoping this will happen more!

Until next time, Peace, love and fuzzy animals!

(sorry this post wasn’t as action-packed and interesting) Maybe some pictures below will make up for it.

Pictures of the guest house where I'm staying - so you put some context to these stories!