Vet Day 2010- Avalanche October 22, 2010

Avalanche was the last ordeal of the day. A two year old white Bengal tiger, this big guy is one of my favorites. He always has something to say (have you ever heard a tiger whine?) and he always runs up to greet you with a big chuff. Chuffing is a very unique noise that tigers make, and is the equivalent of a friendly greeting. And Avalanche is always full of them.

All sutured up and ready for recovery

I do have pictures of the actual surgery being performed, but I am not going to post them, as they may be a bit too gruesome for some tastes. The finished product does look a little raw and bloody, but remember that this is a standard procedure that is very safe and is entirely for the benefit of the animal. Animals fixed at a young age will actually grow larger and have healthier coats then animals never fixed. This is because all of the bodie’s energy that would have needed to go into testosterone or estrogen production, or finding a mate, courting a mate, and breeding with that mate, can now go elsewhere. And this way, the Rescue will be able to prevent the birth of more tigers into captivity.

My, what big teeth you have!

The surgery went very well, and we were also able to get some really good paw print paintings from Avalanche. With his friendly demeanor and the way he woos all of our customers, I’m sure his paintings will be best-sellers.

After Avalanche’s surgery the day was complete, for the most part. The vet packed up and said goodbye, our extra helpers left, and it was just a few of us left shoveling a few buckets of gravel to be hauled down the hill. Sara and I left just after 5:00. It’s days like these that really affirm for me the career choices that I am making!

My hand, Avalanche's paw. We had just finished making the painting, as you can see.

Vet Day 2010- Beemer

At thirteen years old, Beemer is our second oldest cat at the rescue. If you go to Wikipedia and look up Atlas or Barbary lions, you’ll find Beemer’s name. That’s because there are only 300 or so of these mountain range lions left, and every single one of them lives in captivity.

Beemer was darted and moved right after Isis, before we moved Kenya. It didn’t take much to get the old guy out. He went down very uneventfully. We got him in the back of the truck and into his new cage without mishap.

Getting prints from Beemer

Because he was under so well we were able to get some really good paintings from him. The only unusual thing that Beemer did was with his tongue. It’s normal for animals, when they are under a tranquilizer or anaesthetic, to have a “response.” A reflex sort of action that continues even though they are asleep. This could be anything, from individual to individual. With Beemer, this just happened to be licking. And his head was on the ground. So he was licking up dirt. He’s going to wake up with a nice mouthful.

One of the last Atlas Lions

Beemer was moved into Isis’s old cage because previously he had been living by himself in a cage that was intended for three cats. Beemer did live with a female lion and female tiger, both fo them, sadly, passed away last year. The lioness developed cancer, the tiger developed a condition called twisted gut that is fatal to cats. Especially beause he’s old and prefers snoozing to frolicking, all that space was going to waste. So now he lives in a cage that was actually intended for a single cat. Don’t think he’s cramped though. The single cages here are much bigger than the vast majority of enclosures for multiple cats that you see in zoos. If you can be sure of one thing, it’s that the cats who live here are treated well. They are happy.

Vet Day 2010- Isis and Kenya

Isis is a seven year old white Bengal tiger, and Kenya is a six year old orange Bengal and Siberian hybrid. Today, we had some rearranging to do. After living in cages side by side for the last three years, Isis and Kenya are moving in together. We moved them into Beemer’s old cage today, and Beemer has gone to live in Isis’ previous residence.

Isis got the dart first. She went out easy enough, but when the boys went in there to drag her out, she was growling and snarling the whole time. Not anywhere near conscious enough to do damage, but they sure did get that move over with quick! They raced her into the truck and wasted no time getting her situated in the lockdown cage. And she never stopped letting us hear about her displeasure the whole time. But, mission accomplished, without incidence.

Immediately after we got her into the cage. Notice her head up and eyes open!

Kenya was a different kind of story. The first dart was knocking her out pretty good, but she jumped up onto her cement tube and passed out there. Of course, she slid off, and hit her side on the ground. This startled her awake, and she fought the tranquilizer hard after that. She stumbled around flinging herself into things for at least a good five minutes or more after that. The whole ordeal was really painful to watch. At one point she stumbled up to the fence only a couple feet from me. She was panting hard, pupils dilated almost to full capacity, and the poor girl had a big mouthful of grass because she kept smashing her face into the ground in her attempts to fight off the drug. The little lady broke my heart.

Four darts later, she finally went down. We got her into the truck and into her lockdown with no issues. We were able to spend some time with Kenya, getting pawprints and pictures.

Our poor girl, finally out

Needless to say, we got no pawprints or kitty paintings from Isis. She was definitely in outer space, but just as definitely awake. She kept a close eye on everybody too, I think she had had quite enough of people messing with her for one day.

She looks so out of it!

Both the girls are in lockdown cages. Isis was coming around pretty well by the time I left, but Kenya will most likely be out for quite some time. Kenya will be released from the lockdown first, Isis has a bit of a superiority complex, so we want Kenya to establish herself a little first, even if it’s only for a couple of hours. We’re all pretty confident that Isis is going to run the show, we just don’t want her to bully Kenya. We know that they’re very used to each other, they interact through their cages all the time. They’ve known each other for just over three years now, tomorrow they actually meet for the first time.

Most likely the closest I will ever be to Kenya

Vet Day 2010- BooBoo

Booboo's close up

Today was a big day for the Wisconsin Big Cat Rescue. The Lodi vet came out to perform two alterations, neutering in both cases, and help us move several cats. Pepper, a spotted leopard, was tranquilized first and left us for North Carolina. The old guy is twelve years old now, and the winters in Wisconsin are just torture for him with his arthritis. We are all going to miss him like crazy, but we can take comfort knowing that he isn’t going to have to suffer through another winter here.

After Pepper had been loaded up and driven off, Booboo, our older male black leopard, was put under so that he could be neutered and moved into a different cage. It took him almost no time to be out completely. We stretched him out on a tarp and the vet performed the surgery right there.

Surgery prep included shaving of the manly bits

The surgery, though simple, was the first one that I had ever actually observed. The area is isolated with a blue sheet to help keep things sanitary. One testicle is performed upon at a time. The scrotum is incised and the actual testicle inside is pulled out. The testicle is clamped to prevent excessive bleeding and is then cut off. Both internal and external stitches are necessary, and are sewn with a thread that can be absorbed into the body without harm.

The surgery complete. Those are Booboo's testicles. A bit gruesome, yes, but also something you expect to deal with going into this field.

After the surgery, Booboo was dragged over to Sierra’s cage, which she used to share with Pepper. Sierra is a female spotted leopard, and we believe that Booboo and Sierra will get along much better than Booboo and Magic have been. Magic is a female black spotted leopard that Booboo had been living with before they both arrived at the rescue. After rehabilitation, however, Magic has taken to beating Booboo up. She’s bigger than Booboo, and has really been bullying him. Hopefully Booboo and Sierra will get along better, and all three of them can have a happier life.

While Booboo was still out, Jenny got some pawprints from him. We are going to be selling the big cat “paintings” up at the booth, and have products from several different artists.

When I left the rescue around 5:30 this evening, Booboo was just beginning to wake up, and Sierra was quite intensely interested in him. He’s locked down in the feeding cage to keep Sierra away from him while he recovers from the anaesthetic, but she has been sniffing him through the cage for hours. She doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of aggression. They did have some interaction down in Texas before they were rescued, so if things go as expected, they’ll remember each other. Jeff and Jenny will have a close eye on them both for the next several days.

The She is a He! October 14, 2010

I took my little Ball Python to school with me yesterday to have her probed by my zoology professor. Probing is a simple procedure that is very safe as long as it is practiced by somebody who knows what they are doing. Probing determines the sex of a snake, how far the probing instrument will go into the vent opening tells you whether you have a male or a female. And… my little lady probed male.

So, Manasa is now Shesha. Shesha is the snake that Vishnu sleeps upon in Hindu mythology. Shesha also represents eternity. Otherwise, the little guy is the same. He never stops moving around! I don’t think there’s been a single time in the past few days that I’ve walked into our room and he hasn’t been exploring his cage. He’s very inquisitive, and will come right up to the glass to say hi whenever I walk past.

He’s eating one fuzzy every seven days now and growing REALLY fast. I’m graduating him to small mice once this box of fuzzies is gone. I don’t think he’ll have any problem eating them. He’s a male, so he won’t get quite as big as I had originally thought. Probably somewhere between three and four feet. But he is going to be a big boy,  I think, as far as males go. He’s put on quite a bit of weight rather quickly. It will be interesting to see how much he’s grown by the end of the year.

I buy Arctic Mice for Shesha from Petsmart. We're almost done with the fuzzies!

Cochin Bantam Imprinting October 5, 2010

Imprinting, most common in birds, is a behavior exhibited by a baby animal within a certain sensitive window of time after birth. Within this period, the baby will recognize any moving object as its mother. This process is called imprinting. Once imprinted upon something, the baby will follow and imitate that entity.

For our mid-term project in animal behavior, our class attempted to imprint several newly hatched Cochin Bantam chicks. My group succesfully imprinted our chick on a stuffed frog.

Only a few hours after the little guy had hatched, we put him in a cardboard box with the frog for five minutes. Before he had to go back to his heated enclosure, he was following the frog around peeping, trying to burrow underneath the stuffed animal anytime he got the chance. It was actually pretty cute!

The major downfall of imprinting is that a gosling, for example, will imprint upon anything, whether that anything be a mother goose or a cat. A gosling imprinted upon something other than a goose will not recognize itself as a goose.

The International Crane Foundation ran into this problem when they were initially attempting species restoration for the Whooping Crane. They moved several Whooping Crane eggs to the nests of Sandhill Cranes. The Whooping Cranes were hatched out and raised succesfully by their foster mothers, but they never reproduced. The Whooping Cranes believed that they were Sandhill Cranes, and so would only attempt to mate with the cranes that looked like their “mothers.” The Sandhill Cranes, of course, wanted nothing to do with these strange looking white cranes, and  so, unfortunately, the experiment was a flop.

The International Crane Foundation raises Whooping Cranes today via humans dressed up in ungainly Whooping Crane costumes. Go ahead and Google it, the pictures are great!

Manasa September 12, 2010

My girl Manasa

I love having animals around me, and have had pets ever since I can remember. However, this last year I have moved a ridiculous amount of times, had to get rid of my cat, and was not in a position to buy any more animals. However, now that I am living in my new apartment, I can finally make a few living purchases. Manasa is the first. We got her on Labor Day, September fifth. She is a juvenile Ball Python of normal morph, and I strongly suspect that she is female. I will have the opportunity to get her probed soon, so will know for sure in a while. She is probably about four months old, and only about fifteen inches long. I had known for some time that I was going to get a Ball Python, but Manasa herself was kind of an impulse buy while I was at Petsmart. I would eventually like to get a piebald Ball Python as well. (Look these guys up if you don’t know what they look like, VERY cool.) Perhaps one day down the road I’ll try to breed this girl, but she’s at least three years off from sexual maturity.

Just a tiny little thing.

I have her in a 40 gallon terrarium with three hides. I know a lot of people would say this is too big, but she’s apparently very confident, as every time I look toward the terrarium she is on some sort of adventure, climbing or just crawlin’ around all over the place.

She has an amazing personality, incredibly friendly. I can hold her, and she’ll still eat immediately afterword. For people not familiar with Ball Pythons, trust me, that isn’t incredibly common. She knows who I am at this point, and doesn’t hide when I walk into the room if she happens to be on an adventure. She’ll still take to her hollow log if somebody other than me or my boyfriend walks past.

The name comes from the Hindu pantheon, where Manasa is a snake goddess. There are many different takes on the goddess, some accounts saying she was a jealous deity, demanding worship, other accounts describe her as a goddess who would remove all adversity. All accounts agree, however, that Manasa was a powerful goddess, and that she is still worshipped today. I thought it was a suiting name for my little girl. She does have the potential to be longer than I am tall, after all.

 

 

 

August 24, 2010 August 24, 2010

Find beauty in the small things.

Meet Daytona! August 22, 2010

Daytona at a month and a half old

At three months old, it is time to introduce Daytona to the world! Up until this point in time we kept it from the public that we had a cub at the rescue, her young age made her very vulnerable to diseases that humans can carry either zoonotically or on their clothes and shoes. But Daytona, a female Bengal tiger, is now old enough to charm our visitors.

Daytona loving her pool

This is her first week in an outdoor enclosure, her first week in any real sort of enclosure, and she has been quick to let us know she would rather be back in the house. If there’s nobody in her cage with her or nobody immediately outside of her cage looking in, she squawks incessantly all day long. We can hear her up at the ticket booth, you would be amazed at how much noise comes from such a little tiger! Although, most of the time, she has plenty of fans. Hard to resist such an adorable little thing. But don’t let her looks fool you.

At only three months of age, Daytona is still capable of inflicting a great deal of damage. Tigers, even when babies, are not pets, and it’s the people who fail to realize this that necessitate the need for a big cat rescue. Daytona herself has a great deal of personality, and when playing, assumes that you have the same pain tolerance and endurance that a tiger sibling would have. Of course, this isn’t exactly the case.

Preaching aside, Daytona is an incredibly friendly, attractive little tiger. She does nothing but chuff* when anybody is anywhere near her little cage. She’s boisterous and always ready to have a good time, which is a miracle considering that when she was very young, we almost lost her.

When she about a month and a half old, Daytona stopped eating. When she did take her bottle, she could keep nothing down. There was one long night that Jeff and Jenny didn’t think she would see the end of, but out little girl was a trooper. The vet was there the next day and diagnosed her with hookworms. Since none of the other cats at the rescue had hookworms, this was most likely contracted from her mother while they were still together. Daytona is actually the daughter of a white Bengal tiger named Zeus that lived at Wisconsin Big Cat Rescue. Zeus was moved to a zoo further north because he proved to be quite fertile and at his age, neutering was not an option. Apparently, at the age of seventeen, the old guy is still reproducing.

Playing!

Daytona’s mother was a tiger that belonged to Mark Schoebel, the same guy that runs Timbavati wildlife park. If the cubs had been white, he was going to use them as models for picture taking (get your picture taken with the tiger for twenty bucks!! That sort of thing). However, none of the three offspring were white, so Daytona ended up here with us.

After being perscribed some medicines, Daytona was back on her feet and doing well once more. Jeff and Jenny were concerned that she would always be a little smaller than she could have been, since she had been sick during such a crucial growth period, but the resilient little tiger is right back on track. In a few months, she’ll weigh more than I do. In only four years, she’ll have reached her adult weight. And I’ll always remember her as the first cub that I watched grow up.

Getting ready for a nap

*Chuffing is a noise unique to tigers. It is a series of short, staccato exhales that constitute a friendly greeting.

A Sad Life for a Giraffe August 15, 2010

The two younger giraffes

TIMBAVATI Wildlife Park at Storybook Gardens

I pass by this excuse for a zoo in Wisconsin Dells six days a week and have been exponentially disgusted by the conditions in which he keeps his animals. After a month and a half of observing the conditions, I decided to bring my camera with me and snap a few pictures, hopefully (if I get really really lucky) I can help the animals by getting these photos out to the right people.

First, the cage. The enclosure houses three giraffes, an adult, a juvenile, and what is probably a yearling, all three male. The space is minimal, and I would definitely venture to call it quite inadequate for three animals of such a considerable size. Their housing  consists of absolutely nothing but a tall chain link fence, a bare dirt floor, and a small metal shed in the back. The complete lack of any sort of enrichment seems to me a bold message that the owner cares nothing for the happiness of his animals. On most days the dirt in the cage is littered with garbage. It is a featured attraction of the zoo that you can walk up onto a platform, purchase food, and feed the giraffes out of little plastic cups, an “up close and personal” encounter, if you will. However, most of the plastic cups find their way into the giraffe cage, where they are often left to sit for days. Another feature that the giraffe “habitat” has to boast is a sort of pothole that constantly retains water, as well as the algae, scum and mosquitoes that it has attracted.

Giraffe enclosure "pond"

However, what I personally find most distubing are the scars. Clearly evident on the back of the biggest giraffe (we fondly call him Jeffery) are several quite noticeable scars. This was what I was most interested in getting pictures of. Although giraffes, particularly three males, will fight amongst themselves, there is no possible way that another giraffe could have caused the kind of damage that these scars attest to. Though it has healed considerably by this point in the summer, earlier in the year Jeffery had an unsightly and very painful looking sore on his back left leg that very obviously went completely unattended by either a veterinarian or any other fashion of caretaker. The sore has healed clumsily and unaided, and still looks rather unpleasant.

The sore

So who would do something like this to these animals? Who do we hold accountable? The owner of Timbavati, and the owner of these animals, is a man named Mark Schoebel, the same Mark Schoebel cited thirteen times in the well known book “Animal Underworld,” the same Mark Schoebel that was convicted for slaughtering black bears and selling the torsos to China, the same Mark Schoebel that sold a group of tigers to be slaughtered in a warehouse in Chicago. And yet he is allowed to continue keeping animals. Hardly a surprise that this is the life they live.

The worst scar is near the top of the back

I intend, within the next couple of days, to actually go into the park and take pictures of the rest of the animals and their  enclosures. I know that he keeps tigers, cougars, hyenas and several kinds of monkeys, among other things, at this Timbavati park. This is a man that needs to be put out of business forever, it is entirely clear that he is never going to stop using animals for the money that they can make him, and he is never going to treat them with the respect that they deserve.