Laurens Wildlife Rescue

 
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…but no babies have been blown in with those chilly gusts, thank goodness!  Orphans will probably start arriving mid- to late-month.

In fact, LWR had just one intake since the Feb. 18 update, a HBC screech owl that came in this week. Based on size, he’s probably male—remember, male raptors are generally smaller than females. 

This little guy was very lucky: the driver of the truck that hit him wasn’t sure what had collided with his vehicle, so he stopped to investigate and found our little screech dazed and confused. By the time he got him to me, little Screech was still woozy and definitely concussed, but regaining some of his feistiness. A further exam when I got him home revealed that his left eye was sluggish in responding to light and the right eye didn’t respond at all. This isn’t uncommon with concussed birds, but Screech made a quick vet visit the next morning to make sure I hadn’t missed anything critical, like a detached retina.


 
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Peggy Hobby of Smalley’s Animal Hospital confirmed that Screech’s only injuries seemed to be his eyes, and she also confirmed that this could be from his nasty concussion. Of course, the treatment for concussions is quiet, dark and rest, which Screech had with me for a couple of days, along with mice to eat when his head stopped hurting enough for him to realize that he was hungry.

After his first day of recuperation, he was opening his eyes more and was able to find a white mouse on a white paper towel, so his vision was obviously not impaired. After conferring with Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends raptor rehab, I gave Screech another couple of days to recuperate fully and pack in the food before I released him. This winter’s been hard on wildlife and Screech, while healthy, was on the skinny side. I wanted to send him on his way with a little extra padding.

 
Returning to the subject of babies, LWR received a call just today about an “orphaned” baby cottontail. When I questioned the caller as to the rabbit’s size, I was told that he was about the size of an adult hand. Folks, for the record—and please commit this to memory and spread the gospel—any rabbit over 5 inches long is out of the nest and on its own. Unless it’s injured or ill, it does NOT need human intervention. In fact, human intervention could cause the poor thing to inflict serious bodily injury on itself in an attempt to escape: remember, if you will, that rabbits are uniquely gifted with the ability to snap their own spines when struggling with a predator—and in a wild rabbit’s eyes, a human is a predator!

 To wrap up this update and for your bi-weekly Zen, here’s a shot of a really pretty sunrise from near the end of last month.

 
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