Students from all over the U.S. and the world come to study at the Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro. They learn what to feed baby opossums, how to examine raptors' eyes, and confidence in creating treatment plans for the animals in their care. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
It's lunchtime at the Wildlife Center. Alejandra Olvera feeds a meal of crickets and berries to the baby American robin and Gray catbird bunking together in the hospital's intensive care unit.
[baby birds chirping]
Olvera teaches wildlife rehabilitation skills to students who spend anywhere from several weeks to a year studying at the center.
ALEJANDRA OLVERA: So it can start with ICU babies, and we teach them the how and why we give them the care that we give them. We teach them how to feed them, how to clean them. How to … distinguish if they're dehydrated or not, if they need medical attention.
They currently have around 200 patients at the hospital, from box turtles to baby deer, in addition to ambassador animals that can't be released back into the wild, such as Buddy the Eagle.
[eagle calls]
The rehab and veterinary students are hands-on with all of the animals. Ana Garrido, a wildlife management student at Clemson University, is one month into a 12-week 'externship' at the center. One of her main responsibilities is feeding the patients.
ANA GARRIDO: For raptors, it's usually fish, rats, mouse, we just chop them up or if the animal's big enough we'll just leave it whole and they'll eat it that way. When we do flight exercises with them, we put their meals in, and then they just eat it right there. … Songbirds … we give them soaked dog chow or cat chow. We give them scrambled eggs, minced berries.
Students take turns prep cooking – scrambling eggs and chopping fruit and vegetables for the critters.
GARRIDO: They all have such a unique personality. … There's, for example, a turtle … you'll always find him sprawled out, like his legs and his feet just out of his little carcass. They're always extended. He seems like he's dead every single time, I feel like we all get a heart attack. But he just likes to lay that way. I've never seen a turtle do that!
Every day, the vet and rehab teams get together for 'rounds,' where they discuss the patients' progress.
DR. ZACK LANEY: Eastern gray squirrel 30-25, that came in yesterday for the puncture wound and the lacerations?
SARAH DENSMORE: No discharge, hemorrhage or necrosis. There is slight swelling …
They have a lot of long-term turtle patients –
ALLY SABATELLI: A small army of box turtles right now!
In part because it can take a year or two for their injuries to heal, as veterinary student Ally Sabatelli, from the University of Florida, explained.
SABATELLI: A lot hit by car, mostly, a lot of shell fractures. Which, luckily, we can do a lot of repairs. … They use these metal bars, and they'll do putty on either side, and if they can get the piece back into place, use that to hold it there until the tissue is able to granulate back in and heal.
Sabatelli and Yasmin Nader, a veterinary student from Brazil, were both captivated by a recent osprey patient – who, sadly, did not make it.
YASMIN NADER: Unfortunately, they don't do that well in care. Yeah, they don't eat. … We think it was a juvenile. She was seen swimming. They eat fish, so what probably happened was they were trying to catch a fish, didn't really know how to do it because it was a juvenile, and started swimming, and then the person caught it and brought it to us.
SABATELLI: We couldn't find any abnormalities. His bloodwork looked great. It was low on lead. … So it could have been something underlying, like infectious that we just couldn't detect. … Sometimes we don't get an answer.
Sabatelli is here for three weeks; Nader, six.
NADER: One of the craziest things that I've noticed is the amount of wildlife. I've seen deer in the backyard of the student house – and it's normal! People think it's normal! … I'm used to seeing monkeys on the street in Brazil … but I've never seen a wildlife deer before. That was the first time, and it was in my backyard!
Dr. Miranda Bridges, a veterinary intern from the Bay Area of California, has been here just over a year, and helps supervise the externs.
DR. MIRANDA BRIDGES: We give them a lot of responsibility. They intake cases, they do diagnostics, they do x-rays, they're in charge of all the paperwork. [laughs]
Bridges said they still provide ample oversight and feedback.
BRIDGES: A lot of the common pitfalls we see with students are like, they'll see a woodpecker in a box or something like that and they'll be like, "I think they have hurt legs. They're crouching." And then I get to be like, "guess what? The natural history of a woodpecker is they sit on the side of a tree all day – this is normal!"
Olvera said the students grow in knowledge and confidence in a matter of weeks.
OLVERA: They start with, "I'm so scared to grab this little bird or this little possum, because I'm going to hurt it," to like, week four, and they're tubing this possum, and they're like, "oh they're a little bit dehydrated, can we give fluids please?"
[clinic sounds]
The center trains around 70 students each year. They share lessons they've learned from other wildlife programs – and carry on the ones learned here. Before long, Nader will be off to a placement in Florida; Sabatelli, back to school for her senior year; and Garrido, to Hawaii to work with native birds.
[eagle calls]
