The Things I Know Now… (after fostering a baby jackrabbit)

[A continuation from Taming...]

Here’s what can I tell you about baby jackrabbits that I didn’t know three weeks ago…

I can tell you that jackrabbits are not rabbits but hares. This meant nothing to me, personally, but when I tell people they usually nod knowingly like it means something to them. (They obviously learned more in fifth grade science than I did.)

Baby jackrabbits are born fully furred with their eyes wide open, unlike rabbits who, like squirrels, are born furless with their eyes closed. Which means that baby jackrabbits are set up to run and hide within minutes of being born and are, in addition, unbelievably cute with their massive amounts of fluffy beautiful fur, tiny little face, strong back legs and perfect rabbit ears.

While baby rabbits live in a den with their mother, baby jackrabbits live out in a field. Mother jackrabbit stashes her young in different spots in the field, apart, so if she loses one to a predator she hopefully won’t lose them all. She visits them in the morning and at night to feed them. Otherwise, they are on their own.

My baby jackrabbit, handed to me by the Peninsula Humane Society for foster care, was found along with his sister by some kids in a schoolyard. They were chased, caught, then passed from kid to kid in the classroom, high stress for a wild rabbit. His sister didn’t make it into foster care.

Part of the new protocol for jackrabbit foster care was “taming”. That meant I was to bond with the little guy — groom him, comfort him, and make myself his new bunny momma. This is so our feeding sessions would go more smoothly and so he had the comfort of a mother for those few minutes each day.

When I first got baby bunny, he was just one or two weeks old. His face was young-bunny round and flat, so his eyes faced forward — later his face would get more long and narrow, so his eyes faced to the sides to better watch for predators.

Baby bunny had brown eyes. Perfectly round circles of brown surrounding perfectly round black irises, the windows into his soul. The brown of his eyes matched exactly the brown of my own and Mark’s. So as I lay on the floor with him sitting on my stomach, feeding him formula and grooming him with one damp finger, I had the strangest feeling as I stared into his eyes that he was family. One of us.

As I groomed baby bunny, he groomed me back. Warm, determined little licks on my hand or sleeve. His big brown eyes locked onto mine. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it.

A seasoned jackrabbit foster-mother told me that each jackrabbit she fostered had a very different personality. Baby bunny was brave and stubborn. He wanted to explore… first the couch, then the bedroom. I tried to keep him to a safe area, but the boy could squirm and dash, so we had an incident or two. At first I thought he would settle down after exploration to feed, but it never happened. So with each feed, I had to set the little guy straight — food first.

After a few days of successful eating, baby bunny put on weight nicely. I was a bunny-momma extraordinare! But then we had to enter the next stage… Cecotropes.

So, like you and me, baby bunnies need bacteria in their bellies to help digest their food. But they are much more fragile and the wrong bacteria can be the end of a bunny. So before weaning off mother’s milk and starting on solid food, baby bunnies get their good bacteria from their mothers. They do this by eating momma’s cecotropes.

Quick lesson on cecotropes… Both rabbits and hares have a completely vegetarian diet, eating mostly grasses and hay. To get the most out of their diet, they need to digest it twice. Not having two stomachs like cows, they produce cecotropes — tiny little damp night poops — that they reingest and redigest before producing the dry little balls we see in little piles in the fields.

So our little guy needed some cecotropes before he could start eating greens. Since most bunnies eat their cecotropes directly from the source (showing how flexible they are) and since I don’t make cecotropes (or ingest them), getting them was a bit of a trick. But the good people at the Peninsula Humane Society got some from a resident bunny.

Now I was told that baby bunnies and jackrabbits will eat a cecotrope right off your finger, recognizing it as something yummy they should have. But if that didn’t work, I was to put it in the corner of his mouth and he’d have a taste and happily munch away.

Somehow, baby bunny missed that memo. That first cecotrope evening went a little something like this:

Baby bunny, 7 pm: What’s that on your finger? Ew, disgusting.

Baby bunny, 7:01: Why are you squishing that against my mouth? EW, bleck. Now I have to clean myself off.

Baby bunny, 7:20: Finally, dinner! Wait, this tastes funny… EW, I’m not eating this!

Furless Momma, why are you feeding me poopy milk? Do you not like baby bunny anymore?

Baby bunny, 7:45: Okay, I can still taste the poop in this poopy milk, but I’m hungry.

Baby bunny, 8:10. Thank goodness that’s over. That shit was bananas.

Like a stubborn child, baby bunny avoided the rubber-tipped syringe after that. He’d squirm away every time, but once I got some formula past his clamped jaw, he realized he was hungry and he would lap happily away, like we hadn’t just gone three rounds to get there.

Despite our battles, when the feed and the exploration was done, baby bunny always hopped back to be with me. I sat face-level to the couch where I fed him. So he would hop over and sit right in front of me. Then I would put my hand around him, lightly cradling his fluffy body. And he would inch sideways, closer and closer to my face until he was right up against me. My warm breath on his body, his delicate ribcage against my lips. And then he’d lick my fingers.

One morning he put up more of fight than normal, taking only half of his regular feed. I noticed a tiny bit of eye goop, just the most delicate little bit that I wiped away with my finger. That night again, he ate very little, and I got concerned.

Before I went to bed, I took him out for an extra feed to make up for what he had skipped earlier in the day. That’s when I knew something was wrong — his breathing was labored, his whole body shuddered with each breath. I stayed with him for about an hour, trying to get more formula into him between breaths, but mostly I just stayed with him and held him cradled against my face.

I breathed warm air into his fur and I whispered that he had eat and get better. He had to grow tall and strong to dash around the fields, escape predators, and find his mate. I thought about staying with him all night, but decided he might rest more on his own. I didn’t sleep well and thought about checking on him several times, but I forced myself to give him some peace.

Early the next morning he was still with us, but for the first time he had his head down, propped on his front paws, worn out, still breathing heavy. I got some food into him, but mostly we sat together. I breathed in his warm bunny presence and breathed out my love for him. And we waited for the humane society to open.

When I brought him in, they told me what I already knew — he had a respiratory infection, often deadly for bunnies. They would give him meds and hope for the best. I had a feeling he wouldn’t make it and I wanted to be with him at the end, but they wanted to keep an eye on him for a while. If he turned around, they said, they would call so I could take him home. I never got the call.

Epilogue:

When I told a friend about baby bunny, he asked if I was done with wild bunnies who die so easily. I was stunned at the thought. My ten days with baby bunny were a gift, a rare experience few people have.

Those days made real what I’ve thought for a while — that we are all the same. No matter what our shape or size, whether we have hair, feather or fur, whether we eat hay, seeds or meat, we all take comfort from the presence of our loved ones. And we can, when our minds and hearts are open, feel love for all creatures great and small.

Baby bunny had the brilliant ears of a rabbit, the front paws of an elephant, camouflaged fur like my cat, the bravery of a tiger, the eyes of my loved ones, and the open heart of a child. Rest in peace, baby bunny. I wish I could have watched you grow up and dash off into the fields…

For a photo slideshow, click here.

Video:

Exploring… Check out his wonderful limbs. The extra poof of fur at his front feet reminded me of elephant toes…

An excellent hiding spot… (feel free to skip to the end when he disappears)

Taming

When the good people at the wildlife department of the Peninsula Humane Society gave me a baby jackrabbit to foster, they told me how and when to feed her (twice a day, dawnish and duskish) and how much (based on her weight, which I would hopefully be able to determine with the scale they loaned me).

They told me in this rare case, I was to go ahead and “tame” her by using a warm, damp tissue to simulate a mother’s licks before I fed her in an attempt to develop a bond that would make her likelihood of survival more promising. And they warned me that even if I did everything perfectly, even if everything seemed hunky-dory, I might open her cage one day to find her dead, because wild baby rabbits don’t do well without their mothers. Something I know a bit about.

But they forgot to mention that as I held her impossibly light, tiny body gently in the cup of my hand, stunned at the bones I could feel just under her explosion of beautiful baby bunny fur, and as I used a warm, damp tissue to simulate her mother’s licks — they did not warn me that she might lick me back.

But there I was, a giant wanna-be bunny-momma, having my hand licked by a sweet orphan baby jackrabbit. And I was not just getting randomly licked, but licked with determination. Her tiny, soft, warm damp tongue lick, lick, licked the heart of my hand as she tried to remove some offending scent or groom some imaginary fur.

Whatever she thought she was doing, she did it fearlessly. And in that moment, I was tamed.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
(Disclaimer: No flash was used for fear of freaking out the bunny. She remained unfazed by the clicks of the camera.)

Happy New Year!

Welcome to year 4709, the Year of the Rabbit!

According to one website, this year should be, “a placid year, very much welcomed and needed after the ferocious year of the Tiger. We should go off to some quiet spot to lick our wounds and get some rest after all the battles of the previous year.”

Sounds good to me.

In celebration of the new year, I thought I’d offer proof that even the Tiger and the Hare can live together in peace and tranquility….

Though some of us think tranquility is a bit overrated!

Wishing you a fun, happy, and healthy new year! (And one full of fresh greens!)

Xing nian quai le!

- Loretta, Mark, Maggie, and Hoppington

P.S. No, we will not be getting a dragon next year!

Giving Thanks

Okay, it’s been a ridiculously long time since my last post and for that I am sorry. Here’s the roundup:

- Had a good baby-bird season. It seemed a bit shorter than last year, but we fed and hustled a wonderful bunch of birds out into the world. (For video, see my earlier post. I could not beat last year’s filming.)

- Fostered and released several sweet batches of squirrels. I took so many photos and video that weeding through them will take a herculean effort. Do not despair, dark winter days might soon force me to this task.

- Adopted a bunny.

That’s right, Mark and I are happy to announce the arrival of the newest member of our family, Princess Hoppington. Princess Hoppington — a.k.a. Little Miss Hoppington, Hoppington, Hop-Hop, and The Bunny — is an English Spot rescued from a local rabbit-rescue organization. She has settled in nicely and seems perfectly happy with her corner of the living-room. She wanders freely for many hours of the day, squirming silently into any spot bigger than an orange. Why? Because she can!

Hoppington the Headstrong, Hoppington the Hilarious. She is a wonderful addition to our house, even if Maggie’s still thinking about it.

For your viewing pleasure, I offer pictures: Hoppington’s Arrival.

And video…

The epic saga of a bunny desperate to get her treats:

The continuing struggles of a bunny cruelly restricted to just a few treats a day!

A quiet moment with an apple twig:

And so, I give thanks that even on cold, dark winter days I am surrounded by the warmth of man and (little) beasts.

Wishing everyone a lovely holiday with friends and family!

Loretta

Duck, Duck, Goose!

Finally, after a long, hard winter, I can finally say… IT’S BABY BIRD SEASON!

All winter we had been caring for grown, injured animals: hawks, ducks, geese, mourning doves, skunks, possums, a fox, even a salamander that Mark and I released in Golden Gate park one rainy night. It was sweet and rewarding, but slow.

We took the extra time to clean out the motors of the incubators, and to organize and reorder supplies. We chatted. Sometimes we left early.

Then baby squirrel season hit and I got to foster squirrels again. And then that slowed down and we kept waiting for baby bird season to hit. Each Wednesday, I’d drive in, wondering. The end of March passed… nothing. First week of April… nothing.

(My dad says according to the lunar calendar, spring starts late this year — which makes me wonder who created that forecast.)

Then finally last Wednesday, I walk into the wildlife department to the eeeps of hungry baby birds.

Finches, and chickadees, and mockingbirds, oh my!

Once again, I am struck with awe and gratitude: — to the SPCA for trusting us with the birds (I get to feed and pick up that little fuzzball of a creature? You’re not afraid I’m going to drop it, crush it, or accidentally break some part of its fragile fragile being?)

– and to the birds themselves…who (mostly) decide to take it all in stride and accept food and care from these giant featherless monsters. Not only accept, but embrace — putting on a show for us that only momma and poppa birds normally get to see.

And so, my point is, we have birds! And I’d like to turn for a second to a particular subset I was working with on Wednesday…. the ducklings.

We had a crowd of ducklings in one of our bigger incubators and I got to take care of them. A bit of information about ducklings for the curious reader:

1. They’re messy! Some baby birds instinctively keep their poop away from themselves, and their food and water. Other birds seem to go out of their way to make a mess. Ducklings, in captivity anyway, make a mess. To be fair, they have only about 3 square feet of space for all eight of them, so there’s eight times the poop and eight times the quackers going at their duckmash. And also… they’re ducklings — so every once in a while, they wake up and run around the place, stomping on food, in their water, over their poop, dirtying the last clean bit of their enclosure, then settling down again.

I don’t know if they are collectively running from some dream-predator, if the alpha-duckling chases the others to dominate them, or if they just have the twitch to stretch their legs and run every once in a while, but run in circles they do. It is a hoot.

2. They can drown. Can you believe it? I mean, they’re born, mom nudges them into the water, they float and they can swim — their little paddlers move them through with water with amazing speed and dexterity. But you have to be careful not to put too much water in their enclosure for drinking or they might drown. Google it.

So I was given complex instructions for how to make an optimal amount of water available for drinking — not drowning.

3. You can’t get them wet.

Right…. Wait, what?!

So one of the earlier volunteers hadn’t quite understood the drowning bit, so they left a bowl of shallow water without the safeguards and though thankfully no drowning occurred, the little guys, in their regular spasms of activity, splashed water all over and got their previously-dry food all over themselves. Imagine ducklings after a food fight. Several of them had sections of matted down feathers covered in food.

This is bad. Every baby bird needs to be kept clean so their feathers grow out properly. So I report this and they groan and tell me what happened and ask me to clean it off best I could without getting them wet.

Now, if this were a dog, I’d put them in the tub, run some warm water over the dirty parts, and be done in a moment. If it were my cat, I’d have a bowl of water nearby and try some judicious dunking and sponging of the spot. With tiny, fragile baby song birds, I know to wet a paper towel with warm water and dampen just the feathers in question — avoiding getting the bird wet.

I have to tell you, ducklings are not fragile. Their bones are not one mm wide and hollow, like songbirds. When you pick up a duckling, she is warm and fuzzy and solid — she weighs what you think she’d weigh.

She squirms and pecks at you with its sturdy (rounded) beak — and her feet go into a run as soon as you pick her up, just in case you loosen your hold. Cute, fuzzy, and smart — just like I like ‘em.

So though it was not a surprise to be told to avoid getting them wet, I still had to mention it here: Never dunk a duckling under the faucet. It will get wet and can die of hypothermia — even in a warm incubator. (And I’m pretty sure dishsoap is out of the question!)

I gather now that their waterproofing keeps them from getting wet in the outside world where people aren’t trying to mess with them. Which makes sense, since a wet duck would probably not float. I just never thought about it before.

(If I jumped into a pond on top of my REI “waterproof” jacket would I float? I think not.)

And finally…

4. If you ever have orphaned ducklings, give them a featherduster.

It is a far-cry from a real momma duck, but they love them. They nestle and sleep under them. And when you open an enclosure with ducklings, they race around and hide behind them.

The flip side is: baby ducklings get freaked out and lonely. Ducklings are born in a crowd, grow up in a crowd, and they are mothered well. A solo duckling, one that gets separated from its siblings and brought into the SPCA, does not always make it. We give it exactly what we give a crowd of ducklings — warmth, food, water, featherduster. Even little mirrors in the hopes he thinks it’s a sister. But without the physical comfort of another duck-being, he just doesn’t have the same will to eat and live.

Sad, I know. But it is a reminder that many creatures are not meant to be alone. We need each other. Actually need — for our physical well being.

But luckily, the crowd of orphaned ducks seems to be doing well with their two featherdusters and rotating shifts of caring humans to take care of them.

A day or two later, I wandered back to Stowe Lake for some exercise, with no intention of tracking down anything in particular. And as I stepped up to the lake, my first sight was this…. Duck family!

And just a quarter turn down the lake, the geese were not to be outdone:

Right in front of me was this little guy. He is not dead, he is not blind — he’s just so tuckered out he cannot keep his eyes open. The white you see is the inner eyelid that keeps his eye moist:

How, you might ask, does a gosling safely drowse like that in the middle of a park, not three feet from a bench and well-traveled walkway?

Fierce parents standing guard.

I was heartened to see not two, but four adult geese watching over this crowd of hapless fuzzballs — confirming my theory of last spring.

Backyard Bird Count

*** Update below ***

I’d like to pause from the wonderful squirrel adventures to start catching us up to date. I still have much to share on the squirrel front. But since I’ve clearly not mustered up the storytelling juju to complete that story right now, and since much has happened since then, I’d like to sidestep for a bit and share some smaller adventures.

This was my first year signed up with Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Project Feederwatch. With Feederwatch, you basically put out some bird food, and count the birds who show up, then tell them about it. So you need three things to participate: 1. Bird feed and 2. Time to watch for birds to feed, 3. The ability to count small, fluttering numbers of birds.

Well, the spot where I work offers, coincidentally, a nice view of my back stairs — the only spot where I can actually tempt birds with food — so as soon as I heard Feederwatch, I signed myself up.

I had tried, over the years, to tempt birds to my corner of the world, with limited and short-lived success. Hummingbirds came and went. And the vocal and hilarious western scrubjays were regular visitors for a while, calling us awake on weekends when I was late to provide more sunflower seeds. But I am in an exposed spot above the local trees and shrubs, so every time I went away, I had trouble luring them back.

Feederwatch inspired me to try anew. I got a feeder for niger seed — a tiny seed much loved by songbirds. And I mixed some pumpkin seed and millet with the sunflower seeds. I put them out every day and I waited. Six to eight hours a day, working at my computer and glancing out the window. Nothing…. nothing…. nothing….

Then finally… success!

My lovely chickadees:

Jabbering finches:

I wish I could see/hear/smell what they do — clearly there are times when they’re super nervous and times when they chirp and eat without a care. Here they are watching for hawks (which we have!):

A moment later, it’s all clear and even the chickadee joins in…

At one point, a new bird showed up. What was it?

I thumbed through my books and What Bird looking for an almost-robin-sized brown bird with reddish underparts and a little mohawk on the male (not pictured), but I couldn’t figure it out. Finally a friend at the SPCA helped me out. She’s a California Towhee!

(They’re very common, but I think I have always mistaken from a distances as robins.)

But I still have a mystery bird…

Who is striped like a finch, eats like a finch, but grows considerably bigger? When he’s around alone, I think he’s just a healthy finch, but around company, it’s clear he’s something else. Any ideas?

***UPDATE****UPDATE****UPDATE****UPDATE***

In browsing through a random bird book at the library, I stumbled across a photo of my mystery bird — a Fox Sparrow!

According to Cornell University’s All About Birds website, the Fox Sparrow is…

“A large, boldly striped sparrow of scrubby boreal forest and mountain chaparral, the Fox Sparrow is most familiar as a migrant or wintering bird. Its vigorous ‘double-scratching,’ kicking backward in ground litter with both feet to uncover food, often draws attention to its presence under a bird feeder.” (– which it did!)

Funnily, the What-Bird website calls him a “large, chubby sparrow….” and points out that the upper mandible is dark and the lower is yellow. And I thought he had just hurt himself!

FYI, Mr. Fox has four different forms across the country (that some think are different species — I assume battles wage on this point). Here’s what Cornell says about the western form:

“The large-billed form has a gray back, reddish wings and tail, and a very thick bill. It breeds from central Oregon southward through California, and winters in California.”

That thick bill threw several of us off, but now we know who you are, Mr. Fox… Come scratch by my feeder anytime, you big fat kook!

To read for yourself, go here and enjoy: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Fox_Sparrow/id

Also: http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/145/behavior/Fox_Sparrow.aspx

Thanks for playing, Stacy!

Squirrel Diaries, Part 1

Three squirrels came home with me one evening. The SPCA had six baby squirrels slated for foster care because they could use a little more attention than the squirrel-innundated wildlife department could offer: three girls about the same age and size, and a boy and two girls just a bit older.

They were all eastern grays – light brown with white underbellies – but the boy was a black variant. I knew the little guy had an injury that might require extra care. But I didn’t realize I was taking him home until I picked him up and one eye flew open. He gazed at me with one big black eye… the other was sealed shut.

“Oh my god,” I exclaimed. “Is he blind in one eye?”

The vet-tech chuckled at my alarm. “No,” she reassured, “it’s just not open yet. Sometimes that happens – one eye before the other. The other eye will probably open tomorrow.”

I looked down at him again. He eyed me with his one big eye. He looked not fearful or handicapped, but calm and brave – jaunty even. Like a pirate. Mark had to see him.

Yaaar matey! – I said to him telepathically. Pack yer bags, yer coming with me.

With One-Eyed Blacky came two girls. One was a bit larger. Her head was a bit bigger than it should be, possibly a little swelling from a fall from the nest, possibly a congenital condition that might lead to troublesome complications. She was tagged with whiteout on her ear so we could keep an eye on her. When I picked her up, both eyes popped open. Hello girly, you’re with me too. No dying on me, okay?

Her sister was smaller, almost scrawny. Her eyes were closed when I picked her up, but she calmly turned her head then tilted it up to face mine. Both eyes were blind, for now – their promise marked in place with sweet, simple slants.

These were my squirrels, on loan for a while from Mother Nature and the Peninsula SPCA. By the following day, Mark would name them Rufus, Zelda, and Emma.

One-eyed Rufus:

Whiteout Zelda:

Blind Emma:

Day 1: 7 am. I’m up and working. I am thinking about the squirrels in the living room, but haven’t heard a peep. I plan to feed them around 9.

8 am: Breakfast. I hear rustling. They’re up. Their last feed was at 7 pm the night before so I figured they were hungry. The scratchy sound of squirrel-nails against cardboard seemed to confirm my suspicions.

I go to the kitchen to draw up their formula. 8 cc’s in each syringe, a rubber nipple on top, filled syringes go into a jar of hot water to warm. Baby squirrels won’t touch cold formula, which makes sense when you think about it. And I was told the microwave kills crucial nutrients, so hot water it was.

I had spent two shifts feeding baby squirrels in the SPCA, so I knew what to do. But I was a little nervous about these three because they had just come in and had been fed only once by hand. Though I was told all baby squirrels eventually get used to it, it can take a while. These three had certainly gone some time without mother’s milk before being brought in, so I wanted to get as much food into them as I could.

Zelda. When I opened the box, Zelda was the one roaming around, alert and hungry, so I picked her up first. With the jar of warming syringes and a box of tissues nearby, I sit with a couple handtowels in my lap and a squirrel in my hand.

(One last bit of information: A good squirrel mama, with babies this young, apparently licks her babies’ nether regions to stimulate them to pee and poop. This also awakens the sleepy and gets them revved up to eat. Much as I already loved these kids, I was not about to lick their nether-regions… light brushing with a tissue would have to suffice.)

I hold Zelda up and see if I can get her to pee or poop. Nothing. She looks at me like I’m crazy and obviously wants to get on with it, so I set her in my lap and pick up a syringe. She has no idea what that is, so I nudge it into her mouth and give her a squirt of formula.

I can almost see the lightbulb over her head as she starts chewing on the rubber nipple, then starts to suck. She gets it. She settles down and sucks down the whole syringe in a minute or two. Success!

With full belly, Zelda happily settles back into the box, crawling under a towel to find the warmth of a sibling. Emboldened, I take the next victim…

Rufus. Rufus also has nothing to offer in terms of bodily evacuation, but he had probably hadn’t eaten much the night before, so I wasn’t alarmed. I am happy to report that he still had only one eye open, Mark would get to see our one-eyed pirate later that night.

After a moment of confusion, Rufus also took to the nipple. He chowed a respectable 5 cc’s before calling it quits. At the SPCA, we are swamped and only feed them a few times a day, so we usually force-feed reluctant squirrels to make sure they get enough for the day. But since these kids were home, I figured I’d sneak the last 3 into him later.

Not waiting to get back into the box, Rufus crawled under the towel in my lap and curled up into a food coma.

After a moment, I carefully ease this warm squirrel bun into the palm of my hand and transport him to the box. I lift the towel and slide him in next to Zelda.

Emma. Emma hated the nipple. Like a stubborn baby with little squirrel teeth, she clenched her jaw shut and squirmed when I tried to get the nipple into her mouth. I heard her telepathic message loud and clear – You are not getting that thing into my mouth. I am definitely not chewing or sucking on it. And that liquid you just squirted into my mouth?… Disgusting!

We struggle mano a mano, with me squirting and her only swallowing the tiniest bit, letting the rest dribble down her fur. We went through 2 cc’s, but less than 1 made it down her throat. I didn’t have the heart to keep torturing her, so I wiped off her fur and loosened my hold.

Free but still sightless, she sniffs the air, feels her way around my lap then under the towel. Then without blinking a proverbial eye, she heads down my pantleg. She is outta there – Emma the Intrepid, Emma the Brave.

With a laugh, I unhook her tiny, sharp squirrel claws from my pants and bring her back to my lap for another try. Still a reluctant participant, but not as determinedly difficult as before, she lets me squirt 3 cc’s into her mouth before she wiggles free and clamps her jaw shut again. That made almost 4 altogether. Not great but better than nothing.

I return her to the box. She marches in and curls up with Rufus and Zelda. A sweet squirrel bundle.

10 am: Snack time. Determined to make up for breakfast, I warm up the remaining Emma and Rufus formula and head over to the box.

With a tissue, I got a few drips from Emma, still nothing from Rufus. But more to the point, they both woke up and finished their portions. I actually feel a little bad about Rufus because he clearly would have eaten more, but 3 cc’s was all that I had for him. Emma still refused to chew or otherwise engage, but she begrudgingly swallowed what I gave her.

12 noon: Lunch. It’s beautiful out, so I decide to feed them on the back step. I figure the fresh air and direct sunlight might be a more appropriate location for squirrel feeding. I was immediately proven wrong.

Emma the Intrepid refuses the nipple resolutely, jaw and body tight. I stop harassing her with the nipple and release her for the moment. I feel for her — she knows that nothing is right about a person holding her and putting a rubber nipple and reconstituted powdered formula into her mouth. She is waiting and hoping for her mother to return. I love her for her loyalty, but it starvation is not an option. Not on my watch.

Emma spends a good several minutes sniffing the air and heads resolutely away from my lap into the great unseen unknown. Surely her mother must be around here somewhere, I feel her thinking.

I let her explore but keep bringing her back to my lap. Eventually, I am rewarded for my patience. After a good ten minutes of exploration and corralling, Emma finally accepts the nipple into her mouth and starts to chew awkwardly. (I still have to squirt the formula in her mouth.)

She takes 4 cc’s. Only half of what she’s supposed to get, but better than nothing. And more importantly, we have come to a detente.

I coax a few drips out of her before moving onto…

Rufus. Still nothing coming out of him, but after taking a good one-eyed look at his surroundings, he sucks down 5 cc’s. I wonder if snack time was a mistake and decide to wait the full 4 hours before trying to feed them again.

Zelda. In the dictionary under the word voracious, you should find our girl. Despite the shining sun, bird chirps and light breeze, her couple of steps on my lap were clearly just a search for the nipple. I couldn’t get it into her mouth fast enough. She takes the full 8 and then pees like a racehorse. She is a champ. And, I am happy to report, no neurological ticks in sight.

We all survived our first morning together.

(Stay tuned for more squirrel adventures….)

The Squirrel Diaries: A Prologue

I have, in my possession, three squirrels in a box. It is a small box, roughly eight inches by six inches and six inches tall. The sides of the box angle up so you can close them together into a handle. When closed, it looks like a house.

It is a box in which one can carry small creatures. And I have three — three baby squirrels….

How did the bird lover end up with three squirrels, I hear you wondering. First, let me say that I am a fan of all creatures great and small. But the real answer is — it is baby squirrel season, part deux, at the Peninsula SPCA where I volunteer.

Ends up, squirrels have two mating seasons: One in early spring, which occurred before I started volunteering in the wildlife department, and one in late summer. So here we are.

It is perfect timing, because I was on the verge of empty-nest syndrome…. all of the baby birds who had chirped and fluttered their way into my heart were grown and released. Just as I was getting melancholy about that, the squirrels appeared — lots and lots of squirrels, several at a time.

I tried not to think too hard about their poor, hardworking mothers who were taken by predators or poisoned by humans aiming for rats. Instead, I focused on learning what I needed to know about helping their babies grow big and strong.

After a couple shifts of learning how to feed the squirrels, I was finally sent home with three. They were young and would do better with 24 hour care: 5 feedings a day, 8 cc’s of formula each time.

I had powdered formula and the syringes and nipples I needed to feed them, extra towels and heating pads to keep them warm, and three baby squirrels in a box.

They had already had their last feed, so when I got them home I moved them into a larger box and watched them root around and settle in for the night.

I was nervous about being a bad foster mom, and maybe having to bring them back to the SPCA in defeat. But I loved them already and could not believe that I had three squirrels in a box.

After watching over them a while, I went to the kitchen to make their first batch of formula then I put myself to bed. Tomorrow, I would see how good a squirrel-momma I could be…

Let the adventures begin!

The Wild Parrots of the Inner Sunset

The parrots have arrived!

The colorful, sociable parrot is considered one of the most intelligent birds around, up there with crows, ravens, and jays. They originate from tropical and sub-tropical territories, but their conspicuousness and sociability made them easy targets for capture and export for centuries.

According to one website, a pet parrot first appeared in European literature in 397 B.C. (1) In the 1900s, parrots became such popular pets worldwide, that despite new conservation laws, they constitute 30% of the birds on the endangered species list. (2)

Some of those that were captured, exported to the San Francisco, and enslaved for our amusement, eventually found an open window and escaped — starting a local flock in the late eighties. An unemployed (and apparently unemployable) musician, Mark Bittner befriended the parrots and logged their travails for years. His resulting book and documentary, “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill,” catapulted the birds into fame.

My (eminently employable) Mark and I watched the movie a couple years ago, and he has since reported seeing them in Pacific Heights. But the Cherry-Headed Conures, a.k.a. the Red-Masked Parakeets, have apparently tired of the staid exclusivity of the mansions…. For the second year in a row, they have arrived in the Inner Sunset!

While slumming it, these redheads have found delicious snacks in my neighbor’s tree. They seem to show up for only a couple weeks each year — well-timed, I suspect, with the ripening of the fruit or nuts on that mystery tree.

You hear a parrot long before you see one. Now that I recognize the sound, I had my camera handy….

Note, the hardy beak used to crack a tough nut also makes them expert gymnasts!

Parrots are raucous, flocking birds by nature. I offer this video so you can imagine the racket they create around the $30 million dollar mansions in Pacific Heights!

On a final note, if you’d like to keep a parrot or parakeet, please take in an abandoned bird from a shelter or rescue organization. Do not encourage the illegal parrot trade that stocks pet stores. They are destroying the remaining wild parrot population in Mexico and around the world.

Power to the Parrots!

References:
1. Fun history.
2. Enslavement and the extinction of a species.

General parrot information:
Wikipedia

Adopting a parrot:
General information
Rescue/adoption organizations by state

New Beginnings

I have been accused of making people cry with my last post, so I wracked my brain for something wonderful enough to make amends. I’m sorry it has taken me this long, but gathering my source materials was a bit tricky….

I should start off by saying that I have been volunteering at a nearby humane society. The Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA has a wildlife department that takes in injured wildlife all year. In the spring and summer, they become innundated with baby birds.  So for the last two months, I’ve been volunteering on Wednesday afternoons to help feed and care for these birds. It is the very best part of my week.

I have been too busy running from the incubators to the baskets to the outdoor wire cages (for babies, to fledgelings, to almost-ready-to-be released birds, respectively) to ask the wildlife vets all the stats. e.g. How these birds make their way here, how many survive, and where they will be released. I hope to fill you in some other time. But for now, I give you a small window into the joy I experience every Wednesday from 4 – 8 pm.

First, the baby birds. They are kept in incubators at the appropriate temperature. We feed them during the day every 15 or 30 minutes, depending on the species, and we try to keep them clean. (Some species make a point of backing up and shooting their business out of the nest, some are used to momma bird carrying their business away — we do our best, but it doesn’t always look that great!)

Some babies take some time to adjust to the fact that momma bird has become extremely large and funny looking, so I occasionally have to hold one in my hand and carefully pry her little beak open to get food into her, but after a while, she adjusts and turn into this…

As they get older, we move them into laundry-type baskets, feed them once an hour and start leaving food so they can learn to eat on their own. What I love is how similar and different birds can be. For example, Western Scrub-Jays are bold and noisy, but as you will see here, some are more personable than others. (And, strangely, their cousins the Stellar’s Jays were silent and standoffish.) I didn’t catch the best version of it, but what I love about these jays is how they actually gurgle and sing as they swallow. When you are eye-to-eye with them, it’s a joyful sound.

Notice, the video begins with me feeding goop to a barn swallow. The next shot is the same swallow a week later with adult feathers and eating adult fare.

And later, there’s a brief snippit of a woodpecker (through the side of the basket) who was getting a mealworm. He’s the only one we got this summer. And that day when I was washing the dishes for the night, I heard the funniest thing — the quiet tap tap tap of beak against plastic!

Basket birds graduate to outdoor cages. We check on cage birds every two hours to feed the few stragglers who still want to be fed. But cage birds are usually eating on their own, mastering flight, and getting ready to go. Finches will never admit that they are full, but some are just a little more fearful than others. I fed the fellow in this first bit from incubator to basket to cage, and he did his neck-contortions the whole time! The Scrub-Jays, sadly, no longer needed me. I was disappointed they wouldn’t gurgle-sing for me any more, but they were ready to go back into the world — which is really what this is all about…

A brief note about my last post and an apology: Mark thought it was amazing that I was trying to save the hummingbird. And he stood by my side on the porch as the little guy zipped away. If I made him sound heartless in any way, please understand that it was purely accidental — just me trying to condense the story and move the story along.

– Sorry Mark! Be glad I don’t write about us for a living! And please know I would have never have made it this far without you…

While I’m at it, another apology to my beloved Maggie who is really sick of my ignoring her for the sake of the crazy screeching birds trapped in my computer!