Category Archives: Anti-Cruelty Campaigns
If You Find a Baby Animal
In our part of the country we are still getting snow, but we are warming up slowly to Spring. Personally, it can’t come soon enough for me. I’m tired of being cold and I’m tired of being locked inside. In many parts of the country though, Spring is in the air and warm days are already arriving. The winter environment is coming alive with the wonders of Spring.
Spring means baby animals and it seems every year we either hear about a baby bird that has somehow fallen from the nest or we actually find one ourselves. We also seem to hear every spring about lost baby mammals. Then the question becomes, ‘what can I do to rescue this baby?’
Following is some very good advice thanks to a pet forum that I belong to;
What to do First:
The first priority if you have found a baby wild animal is to locate the nearest wildlife rehabilitator. Wildlife rehabbers are skilled in caring for wild babies (and injured adults) and returning them to the wild. They have veterinarians on-call, proper facilities for the babies to develop normally, and they don’t mind the lack of sleep. (Baby mammals, depending on size and age, will need to be fed every 2-4 hours around the clock. Baby birds usually need every-half-hour feedings from sunup until 10:00 pm, sometimes later.) Everyone should have a list of their local wildlife rescue places and vets who take in animals for them; it makes things easy when the need arises. You can usually get a list from your vet and sometimes these kind people are listed in the phone book.
Specifically for Baby Birds:
If you find a baby bird on the ground and can put it back in its nest, you should do so. The mom won’t smell you on the babies and abandon them, she’ll just be relieved that her chick is home. If an entire nest is destroyed, you can even make a nest in a basket and put the babies in that. (We did this when the wind blew a robin’s nest out of a tree. The babies grew up fine.) A baby bird who is fully feathered out and hopping around, almost flying, is a fledgling and should be left alone–just keep an eye out so cats don’t get it, and it’ll be flying very soon.
If you can’t put a baby bird back in the nest, put it in a small dark box (darkness reduces stress), keep it warm, and bring it to a wildlife center or an intake vet as soon as possible. Unless you’ve hand-fed birds before, don’t try to feed it. Birds’ airways are in an odd place (floor of the mouth, right behind the tongue) and it’s easy to miss the throat and accidentally drown/choke them. Don’t try to give a baby bird water, either: they get all their moisture from food, and they aren’t coordinated enough to drink liquids without choking yet.
Any bird that’s been in a cat’s mouth is in danger from bacteria, and must be brought to the rehabber for treatment, even if the nest is in reach.
Here is where you can find an avian vet; http://www.aav.org/vet-lookup / Your local avian vet will almost certainly know how to contact your local rehabilitators, for mammals as well as birds.
Specifically for Baby Mammals:
For baby mammals, the first thing to do is make sure it’s actually an orphan or abandoned. Some animals, like deer and rabbits, leave their babies alone while they go off to eat. If the animal’s in a den or a nest of grass and doesn’t look gaunt, chances are it’s not abandoned. If you *know* the animal is orphaned or in trouble (see a dead mother on the side of the road, your cat brings it in, whatever) carefully put the baby in a towel-lined, secure dark box and bring it to the rehabber or intake vet. If the animal is a baby raccoon, don’t handle it bare-handed! Raccoons can have a skin parasite that is deadly to humans; use gloves and towel it to pick it up. Again, don’t feed the baby critter, as tempting as it may be; many animals need somewhat specialized formulas, and opossums need extra-special formula because they can’t digest lactose. Regular human formula is too high in iron for baby wild mammals, and without a scale and growth charts and all that good stuff it’s hard to know if the baby is getting enough to eat.
Helpful Internet Sites:
Bunnies: http://www.webbedworks.com/messingerwoods/babybunny.htm
Birds: http://www.webbedworks.com/messingerwoods/babybirds.htm
Fawns; http://www.webbedworks.com/messingerwoods/fawn.htm
ACTION Wolf Kill in Canada
There is a vote tomorrow in the United States Congress over the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Stopping Keystone will also help prevent a wolf kill by poison in Canada. You can go here to find petitions to sign supporting the stop of the pipeline. The links to the petitions are on our sister site Luna canus.
It seems it is not only politicians in the U.S. that are in the pocket of and willing to lie for the big oil companies. The politicians north of the border in Canada seem to be just as money-grubbing as the ones here at home.
In Canada the problems are already presenting themselves from this dirty and environmentally destructive way to make the big oil firms a few more pieces of silver.
The process of removing the oil from the tar sands has had a major impact on the caribou population and sadly the process is not stopping there. Instead of reducing the environmental impact on the caribou habitat by Keystone XL, the Canadian government in all its wisdom has come up with a far cheaper solution.
So what action will Canada Oh! Canada, take to save the caribou from this environmental destruction? Why it is actually quite simple! They will poison the wolf population in the area! Yeah!! One big wolf kill, that should do the trick.
Obviously less wolves will mean more caribou and with more caribou Keystone can continue to rape the environment for their profit. The more profit Keystone makes then the more they pay off the politicians so that more animals and habitat can be destroyed and then they can make even more money and the dirty little wheel spins.
This is exactly the type of corporate greed and government compliance with business desires that has brought our entire world to the brink of environmental ruin.
While moronic tea bagger conservative Republicans like Louis Gohmert tell Americans that pipelines are good for our nation because they somehow give our wildlife a place to go on dates, we have other morons in Canada killing off every living thing they can think of.
Hey, it is a good thing for people though. After all, we can try to live in a desolate wasteland devoid of plants and animals because we can trust those who keep power through oil companies profits will provide for us. Right?
Sadly by the time it is all said and done, after the water is polluted, the land barren and the wildlife all dead the only thing left will be starving people and a massive cleanup project that will need to be paid for. Guess who will pay for that clean up? Not the oil companies or the politicians. No it will be our tax dollars that pay for that while the energy companies and their political minions go look for another habitat to destroy.
Look at what is happening in Canada.
Destroyed habitats. Wildlife die offs. Now the poisoning of the wolves.
Is this what we want imported into the United States?
You can read much more of what is happening in Canada and why the wolves are being poisoned by visiting The National Wildlife Federation.
Poisoning the wolves is a pathetic attempt to right things that have gone terribly wrong and placing the fault on wildlife not on interfering and stupid politicians.Wolves Desperately Need Our Help
This post is cross posted here from our sister site Bleeding Earth. Since the readers of Fluffyfeet are great fans of wolves, I thought it was important you get a chance to help them. Please note this petition is time sensitive.;
In the State of Idaho we are about to see another round of wolf hunting. It could start as soon as the next storm coming in now has cleared the area. This time they will use the radio collars humans put on the wolves to locate them. Unfair advantage, yes. But no matter they say, let the wolf hunting begin!
Once the snow falls then the hunters from the USDA in their helicopters will take to the air. They will use the radio collars that the wolves wear to zero in on the location of the packs. Then while the wolves are bogged down in the snow they can shoot them from the air.
Like the hunting of the grizzly bear in Alaska this is supposedly to stem predation on a natural prey animal. In this case it is elk.
Of course, man blames the wolf for elk losses, not himself.No one in Idaho is asking if habitat change or over hunting by man could be the source of dwindling elk in the area. Maybe instead of executing the wolf we could call a halt to the elk hunting season for a few years?
Time is short on this issue if it is to be halted. You can learn more and sign a petition to halt this action by visiting our friends at The Center for Biological Diversity.
Thanks in advance for your time and support.
