Wildlife Rescue Series!

Tube-feeding an Oiled Canada Goose

Originally uploaded by Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series

They’re black.

In some cases, I could distinguish some of the markings on their feathers, tell breast feathers (normally white) from wings. But most of the 15 Canada Geese currently in care after Burnaby’s oil spill of July 24 are — beaks to tailfeathers — the colour of crude.

I arrived at Shellburn Refinery just after 4pm yesterday, right behind Crystal. My enormous relief at running into someone I know and love told me how scared I’d been about starting my first-ever shift at an oiled animal rescue site. I should have known better by now; my own trepidation couldn’t hold a candle to the fear experienced by the animals in care.

Crystal led me through the parking lot, which was filled with oil spill response trailers and waterfowl pools, and into the animal care station. We stepped from a sunny summer afternoon into a hospital.

A large, white, windowed room. A tense hush. Worktables surrounding animal pens, staff and volunteers moving quietly and calmly, but with purpose.

From the 15 geese, not a sound.

Crystal got me suited up in white Tyvex while Vanessa explained that I’d be taking the suit off and putting it back on all afternoon, as I moved from the Cold Zone into the Hot Zone and back again. The threat of contamination with crude oil is huge; the safety procedures are strict.

As Vanessa prepped medications at the exam station, Brenda and Crystal and I worked our way around the five pens, adding layers of blankets to their floors. After only a few days in care, some of the geese were already developing Bumblefoot, sores that appear on the feet of birds used to being on soft grass or sand, in the water, or airborne. It was a swift reminder of the many complications that can arise in animals caught in an oil spill — captivity stress; anemia; sores; toxic poisoning; emaciation; aspergillosis. These are the things that most people never hear about, the stuff that doesn’t make headlines. This is the suffering that happens after the PR ends.

The other factor that hit me hard as I made the rounds was the secondary pollution brought about by an oil spill. As if the oil itself weren’t enough, there’s the water, chemicals, pads and booms used in the cleanup process. Ever wonder where it all goes when the cleaning crew goes home?

In the animal rescue arena, there’s the water used for washing the animals, and the endless laundry which, in the case of a crude spill, doesn’t get washed but gets incinerated.

And for those cynics who think it might be easier all around just to euthanize the affected animals rather than try to rehabilitate them, consider what’s to be done with the poor, toxic bodies. The real pollution count of an oil spill begins to look immeasurable.

After shoring up the padding on the pen floors, we made the rounds once more to check on diets, cleaning feces out of food dishes, topping up duck salad (a mixture of chopped lettuce and water) and refilling water bowls. By then, Crystal was off duty (she’d been there all day) and Vanessa, Brenda and I were left to prep the animals for the night ahead.

At Vanessa’s instructions, I entered various pens to collect specific animals, one at a time, so that she could sample blood, take temperatures, check weights, and give food and fluids. These were the weaker ones, the smaller ones, or the ones most heavily oiled.

Canada Geese are big, strong birds, and smart ones. Chris of Focus Wildlife told me that when they first sent the team out to collect oiled birds from the spill site, the team had little problem rounding up birds, But the second time, and ever after, collection became a race, and then a joke. The birds recognized their vehicles, knew their collection techniques, saw them coming, and simply took off. These animals are wild; to them, we’re predators, and captivity is anathema.

In my experience with the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC, getting a Canada Goose out of a pen, wrapping it in a towel and keeping it secured for weighing and medication is a significant challenge. Stress levels (mine and the bird’s), vocalizing, thrashing and wing strength combine to make the restraint of a Canada Goose no small feat.

So I think what hit me hardest yesterday afternoon was feeling these birds capitulate, one by one, in my arms. Don’t get me wrong; they still moved away when they saw me coming, still hissed and vocalized, still struggled. But they were weaker, quieter, feebler than I knew they should be.

Another pungent memory is the smell. Volunteering weekly in a wildlife hospital has not only accustomed me to the various and sundry smells of wild animals and their feces; it has also trained me to recognize one scent from another, and to notice when something is wrong. I’ll be blunt; goose poo smells strong. The grains and grass in a goose’s diet make sure of that. But I would have given anything for that to be the predominant smell in that room yesterday. Instead, it was oil. The rescue centre smelled like a gas station.

I would like to point fingers at this point, rant and rave — and I’m not the only one. Kinder Morgan and B. Cusano Contracting are waiting on tenterhooks, I’m sure, for the results of the investigation into this spill. Were the maps right? Were they off by 9 metres? Whose fault was this?

But the line between “villain” and “hero” is blurred. Kinder Morgan called Focus Wildlife and Burrard Clean immediately, and are covering cleanup and rescue costs at least until the investigation is complete. Shell Oil provided an animal rescue station and the electricity and water to run it — and this spill had nothing whatsoever to do with Shell. And CN Rail, responsible for the Wabamun Lake spill of 2005, donated to Focus Wildlife all of the leftover cleanup and rescue materials, many of which have been deployed in the aftermath of this spill.

Since the spill that got me involved with wildlife rescue work, and since writing Flight or Fight, the battle lines seem to have shifted, sworn enemies are breaking bread, and the battle is becoming less “us against them” and just a little more “we’re all in this together.”

I hope we’re not too late.

Just after 7:30pm, Vanessa and I checked the ventilation in each pen, and then closed up the rescue centre. The geese will have two more days to stabilize and get their strength up, and then the washing will begin. I will go back, to see who makes it, to help if I can. I’ll let you know how it goes.

To see more photos, click on Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series beneath the photo at the top of this post. 

I am exceedingly cranky these days. Okay, these weeks. Surly, unsmiling, frustrated, resistant. Lost. Scared. There’s a book inside, wanting out. More than one, actually. But the unwritten books keep getting shoved to the bottom of the priorities pile. And every time I promise myself a chunk of time to get started on one of the books, and then break my promise (which I have been doing consistently these past weeks), I get a little tiny bit crankier.

I think I’m getting close to being 100% cranky.

Something else that’s fallen to the bottom of the laundry list is keeping myself fed artistically. Now THERE’S a prissy, pretentious, self-indulgent-sounding sentence. But I ask you: have you ever tried to drive your car when the gas tank was empty?
All you Artist’s Way fans out there will remember Julia Cameron insisting on weekly artist dates, and on keeping yourself “fed.” Skip breakfast, crap out by 11 am. Skimp on inspiring input, crap on everything within arm’s reach. Trust me, this is true. My Crap-o-Matic ™ is working overtime.

And trust Julia Cameron to bail me out once again. I was in Victoria (Vancouver Island) this past weekend for my cousin’s wedding, and on Sunday had time to visit Munro’s Books on Government Street for half an hour before heading over to the Ray house for a post-nuptial Mediterranean feast. Munro’s (if the name rings a bell, then know that yes, Alice Munro was once connected to this venerable establishment) has some of the best sale tables of any bookstore I’ve ever visited. And there, lying like a treasure half buried in the detritus, was a slim volume entitled Letters to a Young Artist: Building a Life in Art.

I don’t know if I qualify as young, but I think “newly hatched” would be fair to say. Certainly I’m finding myself in her responses to an imagined correspondent — my fears and anxieties, my ego and pretenses. Best of all, though, I’m finding food in her words. Here are a few:

“Creativity is like electricity. Throw the switch and it is there. But the switch is willingness, not mood.”

“Many artists quit the first time they hit a ‘bad’ spell. If we think we always have to make ‘good’ art, then when we hit a hard patch we don’t work through it. We skid to a halt. We think, ‘What’s this about? Maybe I don’t really have a vocation. Maybe I was just deluded, having visions of grandiosity. I’m no real artist ….’”

“You complain of being blocked, but a block is really just the ego’s resistance to working ‘badly.’”

“Making art takes guts. Choosing to be vulnerable and exposed rather than safely blocked is a risky venture.”

“You may exhaust yourself and your vitality by worrying too much if what you are making is ‘real’ art of ’serious’ art. Just make it. To quote the great movie director Martin Ritt, ‘I don’t have much respect for talent. It’s what you do with it that counts.’”

“Anything you do can be done artfully.”

“Artists have a lot of energy, and if that energy doesn’t go into art, it will go into other things. All sorts of petty things will seem important–and you’ll want to get them all ‘handled’ before getting back to your art. People spend whole lives waiting to get back to their art.”

“Unmade art will always pain and distract you. Maybe all you can do about world peace today is make some art and improve your own goddamn mood. What do you think?”

Ahem. I think she’s right. I think I have to submit my Quarter 2 GST report tomorrow, too, but I think she’s right. I can make art first.

The call came this morning, and I missed it. I  got back just last night from my cousin’s wedding in Victoria, and had turned my phone off to get some catch-up done today. I discovered J’s message about half an hour ago: “We need volunteers, starting today.”

Focus Wildlife has 14 oiled Canada Geese in care at Shellburn Refinery in Burnaby–birds caught in last week’s spill of 236,000 litres of crude oil — and teams are still out on the water trying to capture more oiled animals. They don’t show up at the wash station voluntarily, you see.

Today and tomorrow, volunteers will be suited up head to toe in Tyvex to protect against toxic contamination (mmm … full-body Tyvex in summer) and holding/restraining birds as per our rehabilitation training so that experienced rehabilitators can examine, sample blood from, medicate and/or tube-feed the animal patients.

Oiled birds are tube fed in order to protect their feathering from further contamination by food oils, as well as to protect the birds themselves from ingesting any of the toxic substances that coat their bodies.

J estimated that the washing would begin Wednesday or Thursday, once teams have collected as many oiled animals as possible, and once the birds in care are stabilized and strong enough to undergo the wash process.

When I visit schools, I tell kids that an oil spill bath is the likely the worst stress an animal will ever undergo in its entire life. Even death by a predator is over more quickly. The oil spill bath can take 30 minutes or more — that’s 30 minutes of being held captive by a “predator,” restrained indoors, and manipulated and manhandled from beak tip to tailfeathers — and many animals are known to die during the process. Many more can die during the rinse, which involves holding the bird upside down, wings spread, over a basin sink and turning the hose on it pretty much full force.

Did I mention my usual caveat? Do not try this at home.

The wash process is designed to remove every last hint of oil from a bird’s feathers; even a patch the size of your little fingernail can spread again and destroy a bird’s ability to insulate itself and maintain its buoyancy. The rinse is designed to remove every last trace of soap; its residues can cause almost as much trouble as the oil itself.

I’m going to eat now, and get ready to go. I’m nervous. Scared, actually. I feel it every week, before the start of my shift at the wildlife hospital. The knowledge that I’m walking into a life-or-death struggle for many animals, that I have the power to help — and that a mistake can cost a life. That feeling is stronger right now, by far; I’ve never been part of an oil spill response team, and I’m not sure what will be expected of me. It feels like a lot of responsibility.

Part of me wanted to say no, to refuse to go. But I’ve got no reason to, other than fear. Yeah, there were other things I’d planned to do today. But I have the chance to help save some lives. I’m scared, but I’m going.

Wish me luck …

The volunteer oil spill response team for the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC (WRA) had an email from J, head of animal care, yesterday to put us on red alert.

There was a land-based crude oil spill Tuesday on Inlet Drive between Burnaby and Port Moody, and the oil is running into Burrard Inlet. As of yesterday afternoon, one oiled Canada Goose had been brought into the wildlife hospital, and several more had been spotted. Emergency containment procedures have been put in place at the spill site, both by the companies involved in the spill and by Burrard Clean, but it was a big spill, and it hit the shoreline, which means animals are automatically in the line of fire.

Focus Wildlife, a California-based company that headed up the animal rescue efforts at Wabamun Lake in 2005, has been brought in to coordinate animal rescue and rehabilitation, and as always, WRA and its volunteers will play a key role in that operation.
If you’ve read my book Flight or Fight, you’ll know a lot about how an oil spill can impact animals in the wild, and how it contaminate whole ecosystems and future generations of animals for years to come. I wrote about a canola oil spill, which you’d intuitively think was less harmful than a crude spill. Crude is highly toxic, true, and can cause burns and other external injuries to the animals it affects. But cooking oil is hardly innocent; believe it or not, it is even harder to wash off a bird (and the wash process is so stressful to a wild animal that it can be deadly), and has been known to linger in an affected ecosystem for as long as forty years.

Click here to read a news story about this latest spill. Meanwhile, I’m headed to the wildlife hospital this morning for my regular Thursday morning shift, and to get the latest news on the spill, which I’ll pass along to you.

Until then …

Yesterday, I visited the BC SPCA Kids’ Camp at Maywood Elementary School in Burnaby. What a warm welcome — thank you! I told the kids — about 15 in all — a few things about myself as an author, read some passages from my books, and led the group in a medicine animal journey which, despite the surprise cell phone interruption, proved very fruitful for everyone. The kids told stories about animals they’d seen or heard about, and asked some excellent questions about caring for or rescuing wild animals in trouble.

Every summer, the BC SPCA holds week-long camps in various regions and neighbourhoods, from June through August. Kids learn about responsible pet care, wildlife, farm animals, animal welfare issues and the environment. And for about an hour each day, campers spend time with companion animals!

If you’re interested in checking out the camps, or know someone who might be, click on the link above — maybe I’ll see you there!

The Delta Kappa Gamma Society International (DKG) is a group of several thousand key women educators from all over Canada, the United States and Europe. This weekend, the Northwest Region held its annual conference at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, with about 400 women in attendance.

After presenting to a couple of the local chapters back in February, I was encouraged to create a workshop for the conference. I applied and was accepted (see workshop outline below, or click on Educators in the right nav bar) and since then have been stuffing ideas into a file. I pulled the file out two weeks ago, and spent a good thirty to forty hours crafting my presentation, keen to make a powerful impression on these women who have so much influence with so many other educators and students all over the continent.

Five women attended my workshop.

Five. Six, if you count my mom.
As I stood in the hallway outside the conference room, checking my watch and wondering if maybe the rest of my participants were just in line for the washroom and would be arriving any minute now, I steeled myself for the truth by thinking of Anton Chekhov.

Or rather, of a play of his called The Three Sisters in which I played the role of Olga back in 1996. It was an execrable, two-hour-long amateur production, but the theatre company itself had a strong following, so we blamed the weather that one night when, by curtain time, only 10 kind souls had purchased tickets. The show must go on, we decided, and buoyed, I think, by the faith of our teeny tiny audience, we gave our best performance. As the curtain came down, we received a 10-person standing ovation.

My five stalwart DKG-ers — six, if you count my mom — took chairs along the center aisle, and we began. I was speaking of the heroism of children and the burden they all carry knowingly now, of the need to save the world. Children don’t have the same freedom we did, to play at being SuperHeroes. This generation is all too aware that the planet really needs them, needs all they have to give, as soon as they can give it. I spoke of the myth of the hero — elucidated so clearly by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With A Thousand Faces — and how this myth is born inside all of us to tell, and to live. And I showed the participants some simple ways to help children get in touch with the heroic part of themselves; to bring their unique gifts into awareness; and to use those gifts to take meaningful action.

If you’re a DKG member reading this, and you’re wishing you’d made it to workshop, write me at janeraybooks@gmail.com. I’d love to give this presentation again; it’s got lots more mileage in it!

And if you’re one of the five who did attend, thank you … for choosing to spend your time with me Friday afternoon, for having the courage to experiment with some new ideas, and for your support of my books.

Special thanks to Oregon for your enthusiasm to bring me down to tour; I hope we can work that out! And to Ohio, a writer herself who is teaching others to write: may your daughter’s delivery be safe, swift and joyful.
Oh, and thank you, Anton.

Dear Harry,

Big party tonight — I can’t wait! Now, stop worrying … it’s your birthday tomorrow. What kind of author kill would her brainchild on his birthday? Relax, Harry. You’ll be fine.

On the other hand, given the rumours, a “happy” birthday might be too much to ask. But I’ll wish it for you anyway: Happy Birthday, Harry Potter.

Yours truly,

D. Haynes

I just wanna wriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite!

The End.

This story is dedicated to Teenie Turner, who just landed a part as one of the Pointer Sisters in a local production of Annie Get Your Gun.

I am giving a presentation tomorrow afternoon, and it’s all I can think about, all I’ll think about til it’s over.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about it — simultaneously anticipating and dreading it — since February, when I was first booked as a speaker. See, I’m a Pisces with Leo rising; that is to say, a naturally introverted, shy, private person … with the secret heart of a Las Vegas showgirl. I spend hours, days, weeks planning and preparing these things, infusing my presentations with drama and mystery, assembling colorful displays, cobbling together slide shows and multi-media bling, creating gifts and take-aways for my participants … and wishing all the while that it was going to be anyone but me standing up there in the end.
In other words, I’m a writer.

I’d have to say the biggest surprise I’ve had with respect to becoming a published author is how little writing is involved; or rather, how much schlepping and hawking is involved.
Eden Robinson puts it this way, in a hilarious essay called, “The Author Reading That Made Me A Woman,” in Writing Life:

“I love writing. I love daydreaming for a living. But writing is barely half of an emerging writer’s career. The other half is hustle, or more politely, promotion. Any chance you get, you hump your work through schools, libraries, literary festivals, bookstores — anywhere that will give you a podium and an audience. I was drawn to the solitude of writing, but forced by the job description to perform publicly on a regular basis. I did my duty but I didn’t enjoy it and, judging from the way my tour buddies were trying to coach me, no one else was enjoying it much either.”

But you’re an actor! my friends always protest when I dare to whine a little about these promotional ventures. Yes, I reply, but as an actor, I get to rehearse, I have company on stage, and I’m speaking someone else’s words.

I’ve been resenting the time I’ve spent preparing for these presentations, having anticipated that I’d be writing by now, submitting proposals, plotting out the next book in Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series, entering contests, trying my hand at some adult (as opposed to young adult) fiction (and yes I was planning to do all of that this summer, thank you).

But I’ve realized in the process of sorting through my thoughts for this workshop (about creativity and self-expression as a heroic act) that I’m learning. A lot. And that part of what I signed on for when I became a writer was just that; lifelong learning. I remember selling shoes as a teenager to put myself through school, and looking around at all my buddies in the store who spent their coffee breaks complaining about their jobs and their nights and weekends spending their paycheques, and thinking, Please, God, don’t let me get stuck here.

The workshop prep requires me to read. To think. To write, and cross out, and write again. To marshall my thoughts on huge topics and corral them into 45-minute slots, customized for a very particular audience. It’s a discpline unto itself.

I’ve had a lot of jobs — ice cream scooper, shoe clerk, government hack, technical editor, author escort (that’s a publicity job, not a Red Light District operative), marketing, distribution, sales, display … it’s a long list. And through the years, I often wondered why. Why, why, why, when all I really wanted to do was write?
But when I published my first book, I knew why. As well as rich fodder for fiction, my checkered work experiences had all converged to provide everything I needed in order to be able to give my little books a public life. The performing, the high school public speaking and debating (oh, that admission’s going to come back to haunt me, I can feel it), the sales and marketing, the distribution, the magazine launches, the event planning, and yes, the author escorting.

It’s part of the job, I remind myself. The job I always wanted. So suck it up. Maybe even learn to like it a little.

I’m working on my presentation for this international educators’ conference coming up Friday, and the topic I promised them was, “Pen or Sword? The Student Writer as SuperHero.”

So far, I’ve got enough material to fill a 6-credit university course. Problem is, they’ve only given me 45 minutes. Apparently I’m going to have to pare down.

I did some reading last night that reminded me why the question is so important in the first place. Lummy gave me a book for my birthday called Writing Life: Celebrated Canadian and International Authors on Writing and Life. It’s edited by Constance Rooke, and proceeds go to PEN Canada. I’ve found the essays I’ve read so far to be hilarious, moving, insightful, reassuring, comforting, daunting, revealing and astonishingly good reads. I particularly enjoyed Alice Munro’s “Writing, Or, Giving Up Writing” about the distractions inherent in the writing process (many days, there are more distractions than there is writing) and the pleasure and relief she anticipates upon retiring. Lynn Coady’s “On Behaving Badly” about the persona of the author, particularly on tour. Howard Engel’s “Stroking the Writer,” about reclaiming his writing life after a stroke that leaves him unable to read.

Last night, though, I happened to read some of Constance Rooke’s own introduction to the book itself. Her words spoke to the thoughts and feelings I’d been trying to express all day as I worked on my conference presentation, and will, I hope, inform its final shape.

I hope I do not call down upon myself a stampede of lawyers by quoting a few sections from Ms. Rooke’s intro:

“PEN Canada is one of the most active of the 141 centres of International PEN operating around the world. We are a human rights organization of writers and other supporters of free speech, and our mission is to defend ‘freedom of opinion and the peaceable expression of such opinion.’ Enshrined both in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that is vital to the protection of all other human rights.

We see this every day in the work for which PEN is best known: our struggle on behalf of writers in prison around the world. Overwhelmingly, these are people living under oppressive regimes who have chosen to speak out about abuses in their own countries. Jail is intended to silence them and hide them away.”

Toward the end of the piece, she says, “We are all in varying ways and degrees in exile or in prison; we are all in varying measure stifled in the expression of what is in our hearts. But sometimes there are words that pass through prison walls, words that by connecting us can help to free us.”

These are the words I want to talk about on Friday–the words that can free us. I want to talk with educators about showing kids ways to bring those words to the surface, to use them to pass through prison walls–walls made of fear, of shame, of convention, of peer pressure, of stereotyping and racism, of sexism and patriarchy, of expectations, of abuse.

We are born to be free, and we know it. And if we do not find the words, or the ways, to express ourselves, to let ourselves out of prison, we will pick up our swords and try to cut our way out. We will instinctively oppose whatever–or whoever–tries to keep us locked away, and we will use whatever tools lie at our disposal.
May they be music, dance, art … not guns. May they be words, not blades. The pen is mightier than the sword, not because of what it can do to your opponent, but because of what it can do for you: connect you to your heart and your soul; release your voice; illuminate your path; keep you out of trouble. Set you free.
And if somebody makes finger guns and exploding noises with their mouth and says to you, “Yeah, whatever, gimme Live Free or Die Hard any day,” you can answer,

“Somebody wrote that.”