Wildlife Rescue Series!

Molly

Originally uploaded by Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series

Meet Molly. She’s a grey speckled pony who was abandoned by her owners when Hurricane Katrina hit southern Louisiana.

She spent weeks on her own before finally being rescued and taken
to a farm where abandoned animals were stockpiled. While there, she was attacked by a pit bull terrier and almost died. Her gnawed right front leg became infected, and her vet went to LSU for help, but LSU was overwhelmed, and this pony was a welfare case.

But after surgeon Rustin Moore met Molly, he changed his mind. He saw how the pony was careful to lie down on different sides so she didn’t seem to get sores, and how she allowed people to handle her. She protected her injured leg. She constantly shifted her weight and didn’t overload her good leg. She was a smart pony with a serious
survival ethic.

Moore agreed to remove her leg below the knee, and a temporary artificial limb was built. Molly walked out of the clinic and her story really begins there.

‘This was the right horse and the right owner,’ Moore insists. Molly happened to be a one-in-a-million patient. She’s tough as nails,
but sweet, and she was willing to cope with pain. She made it obvious she understood that she was in trouble. The other important factor, according to Moore , is having a truly committed and compliant
owner who is dedicated to providing the daily care required over the lifetime of the horse.

Molly’s story turns into a parable for life in post-Katrina Louisiana . The little pony gained weight, and her mane finally felt a comb. A human prosthesis designer built her a leg. The prosthetic has given Molly a whole new life, Allison Barca DVM, Molly’s regular vet, reports.

And she asks for it. She will put her little limb out, and come to you and let you know that she wants you to put it on. Sometimes she wants you to take it off too. And sometimes, Molly gets away from
Barca. ‘It can be pretty bad when you can’t catch a three-legged horse,’ she laughs.

Most important of all, Molly has a job now. Kay, the rescue farm owner, started taking Molly to shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, and rehabilitation centers. Anywhere she thought that people needed
hope. Wherever Molly went, she showed people her pluck. She inspired people, and she had a good time doing it.

‘It’s obvious to me that Molly had a bigger role to play in life,” Moore said. ‘She survived the hurricane, she survived a horrible injury, and now she is giving hope to others.’ Barca concluded, ‘She’s not back to normal, but she’s going to be better. To me, she could be a symbol
for New Orleans itself.’

Molly’s most recent prosthesis has a smiley face embossed in it. Wherever Molly goes, she leaves a smiley hoof print behind.

[This post is taken word for word from an email circulating worldwide.]

Black-headed Grosbeak

Originally uploaded by Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series

Zugunruhe: Animals heed the call to move on
Diane Haynes, Special to the Burnaby NOW
Published: Wednesday, September 24, 2008
[Click here to read the full version.]

It’s that time again. Back to school, back to work, turning leaves, turning corners.

We all feel it, that restlessness to shed a little of the past as we delve headlong into an unknown future.

The feeling has a name: “zugunruhe.” Zugunruhe is the restlessness an animal feels when it’s time to move on. Like any good modern word, zugunruhe itself migrated from the Indian “ruowa” to the Middle High German “unruowe” and into the common parlance of wildlife experts around the world.

It tells of cooler mornings and shorter days, dwindling food, the gathering together of flocks and telltale V-formations arching like arrows through dusky skies. It’s about change.

The interesting thing about zugunruhe is that it affects not only birds and animals in the wild but also those in cages - even tame ones - who cannot respond to its call.

[Read the full story in the Burnaby NOW online!]

Nyac Says Goodbye

Originally uploaded by Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series

Nyac, one of eight otters rescued from the Exxon Valdez oil spill and brought to the Vancouver Aquarium, died yesterday. She was 20 years old.

By July, Nyac was suffering from limited energy, tremors and some facial paralysis — symptoms of what turned out to be leukemia. The Vancouver Aquarium’s staff veterinarian Dr. Martin Haulena said, “Leukemia and some other cancers have been linked to exposure to petroleum products and hydrocarbons.” A 20-year-old oil spill is still wreaking its havoc.

Like apparently 11 million other people, I was completely captivated by the YouTube video of Nyac holding hands with her pen mate Milo. CTV also offers a gallery of photos of the sweet and social little creature (including the one shown here).

My first personal experience with an oil spill was in 2000, when a North Vancouver canola oil shipping plant allowed 400,000 litres of the substance to leak into Burrard Inlet one Sunday morning in February. Friends and I rescued a surf scoter that was being repeatedly smashed up against the seawall, and took it to the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC (WRA), where volunteers had been working round the clock to try to save the hundreds of animals that had been caught in the spill.

A bird coated in canola can’t thermoregulate; can’t therefore dive for food and becomes anaemic and malnourished; can’t lift its wings from the water and fly; can’t escape from predators.

If that bird is “lucky” enough to be rescued, the rehabilitator will have a harder time removing the canola oil than if it were crude. On the other hand, crude oil is far more immediately destructive — toxic on the inside and caustic on the outside.

Next, the “lucky” animal will undergo the most stressful experience of its life: a minimum of 30 minutes of handling by humans (natural predators), being held partially immersed in a tub of hot water, soaped up, rinsed off, again and again, until the water comes clean. Then held up, down, backwards and forwards, neck and wings extended, while the rinsing takes place.

If it survives the stress, it might stand a chance at making it back to the wild.

If, however, the rehabilitator leaves even a drop of oil the size of a baby fingernail on that bird, the oil will disperse through the feathers, destroying feathering and bouyancy and insulation once more, and requiring yet another session of washing. With each wash, the animal’s chances for recovery become slimmer.

Nyac was one of those odd “success” stories — and I put “success” in quotes, because Nyac wouldn’t have survived without rescue. Couldn’t be left in her natural environment. Spent the whole of her life in captivity. Lived longer, perhaps, than her wild counterparts, and then died of complications from the man-made disaster that overtook her just a month after she was born.

But she lived, and she learned and played and (to anthropomorphize … maybe), she loved. And she touched and taught over 11 million of us — more than any other wild otter might have done.

It’s up to us now to ensure that her unique life and legacy are carried forward. So the green refrain continues: consume less, walk more, know as much as you can about offshore drilling and northern pipeline projects, seek alternatives, be part of the answer.

And play. And hold hands.

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables remains to this day one of my favourite books of all time. It is the story of a sensitive, spirited orphan adopted by a stern, elderly brother and sister on Prince Edward Island, and of how the three shape each other’s lives through love. It is also the story of how a thoughtful, perceptive and sensitive child may become a writer.

As a young reader, I found myself in Anne, as so many young girls still do, and began to accept my own passions and preferences and quirks and oddities by loving hers.

As a girl, I didn’t think much about the writer behind the character. But as I’ve grown into my own life as a writer, I’ve often wondered what she was like and what circumstances led her to write the stories she did.

Toronto’s Globe & Mail recently ran a series on mental illness in an attempt to bring awareness to the issue and further dispel the stigma that still surrounds it. The series inspired Lucy Maud Montgomery’s granddaughter to come forward with a story about her famous and beloved grandmother.

As someone who has struggled with depression myself, and as someone who has researched the subject extensively and knows the extent to which it can affect the lives of so many (and a seemingly disproportionate number of writers and artists), this revelation came as a sad sort of “Ah-ha, of course.”

And of course, as so many writers (and artists — healers, all) have done, L.M. transformed her own pain into joy — for her character, and for all the millions who’ve loved her.

Read her granddaughter’s story here.

Authors Pam Withers and James McCann, both of the Children’s Writers and Illustrators of BC (CWILL), weighed in thoughtfully on the subject of self-promotion for authors this morning. I’d like to share their ideas with you (N.B. James was a bookseller with Vancouer Kidsbooks for many years):

From Pam Withers:

Recent discussions around facebook, myspace, blogs, etc. have inspired me to
share this great quote with those who write fiction. Publicity is good, but in
the end, we should put most of our effort into our writing.

from Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas (Writer’s Digest Books):

“Two thirds of all fiction purchases are made because the consumer is already
familiar with the author… The next biggest reason folks buy fiction is that it
has been personally recommended to them by a friend, family member or bookstore
employee… Reviews? Few see them. Awards and nominations? Most folks are
oblivious to them. Covers?.. only wrapping. In reality, there is one reason, and
one reason only, that readers get excited about a novel: great storytelling.”

Pam Withers

From James McCann in response:

Pets in rental housing in BC? Think again. If you have cats, you’re going to have to think outside the litterbox if you want to find a place to live that doesn’t require you to give up your animal companions. And if you have a dog, well, you’re barking up the wrong tree in BC!
The BC SPCA and other animal shelters end up with thousands of animals every year that have been handed over by distraught guardians who have been forced to choose between their love for their animals and shelter for themselves.

I was lucky–I had a place to stay that welcomed both me and my cats until I could find a home of our own. But I looked for MONTHS for an apartment or suite that would allow me to have Sadie and Frances, with me, and that didn’t cost over $1,000 a month … and this is in the suburbs!

Back in Ontario, when I was there in 2006, literally every apartment I checked out allowed pets.

The difference?

The laws.

If you’re interested in seeing the laws change governing the allowance of pets in rental housing in BC, click here and sign the petition. It reads as follows: