The Octagon - Exotic Animal Sanctuary (not the Mixed Martial Arts kind) - 10/6/12 - Post 1

I seem to have fallen off the face of the internet for the past few months.  There's nothing like an insanely busy Etsy season on top of a 10-hour-a-day day job.

But I'm on break now, so I can go back to editing the seemingly billions of shots I've had waiting around since at least last October.  So with no further ado...

The Octagon!  

The Octagon in Punta Gorda, Florida has nothing to do with MMA (Mixed Martial Arts).  They're an amazing Exotic Animal rescue.  They take in animals that your typical shelter can't handle... you know... lions, tigers, bears, monkeys,  lemurs and the like.  Most of these animals come from private zoos or individual owners who either discover that these large and typically wild animals can't be controlled as pets any more or who lose them when the state wildlife or law enforcement agencies discover that people who shouldn't have these animals do.

They take in animals who have been abused, starved and otherwise mistreated.  They are a no-kill, long-term operation where animals are cared for and given medical treatment and kept in a humane environment where their well-being is the primary concern.

To that end, they are less concerned with how well a certain enclosure allows for photographs.  They have visitors come to see the animals as a way to generate revenue, but they really aren't a *zoo*, so to speak.

I know exactly what they mean, but I get this mental image of some kids trying to break out the Scrabble board and get the lemurs to take a turn.  I think they'd spell "We Are Not Monkeys".

 So they warn you in many places that these are not domesticated animals.  They are not pets.  Do not try to touch or feed them.  And in case you missed it... YOU COULD LOSE A FINGER!

Speaking of lemurs...  

Like I said, this place isn't set up to be a Brookfield or Lowry Zoo.  The enclosures are for the safety and comfort of the animals.  Not photographers.  So I don't have a lot of pictures of the actual animals worth sharing.  It was incredibly hot the day I was there, so most of them were hiding in shade boxes or just sleeping somewhere in their space.  This lemur was interested in what was going on around him, but he was pretty much the only critter who was.

There's something just amazing about a tiger's eyes, isn't there?  This is Rajee.  She was abused by her former owner - hit with a garden hose.  Needless to say, she's not too keen on people now.  After hearing about someone doing something like that to an animal that depends on them, I'm not too keen on some people either. 

So this guy had no interest in people, but I had to get a picture of his coat.  I've never seen a tiger with anything other than black stripes.  I've seen white with black Siberian and orange with black Amur tigers, but this was very new to me.  How beautiful!

One of the things I found kind of funny about this trip was the amount of uncontained wildlife I was able to shoot there.  So in my next post I'll have dragonflies, a snake, some anoles and a few others that weren't *kept* there, but seemed to really like hanging out with the permanent residents!

And if you have a few extra bucks laying around (and if you're in the US and still looking to make a charitable donation for your 2012 taxes), the Octagon has a donation link on their website.  Please think of helping them out with this incredible mission they've undertaken.

Apparently this is the Spring of Me Rescuing Birds

So, last month there was the grebe that crash landed in the middle of a Chicago street that I rescued and got to a wildlife sanctuary where it was given medical treatment and rehabilitated.

Then this week there were the baby geese that were stuck behind the chicken wire.

So I'm chasing this little bird around (the guy on the fence post, not the geese in the background) when I notice... hey there's a pair of geese in the background!  And at this time of year, where there's a pair of geese, there's frequently baby geese.

And sure enough.  These particular parents had a set of triplets. Aren't they adorable?

But then I notice that this one is behind the chicken wire fence.  Now I know most of the chicken wire fence around the South Pond is to keep people on the paths and off the plants.  But right here, there's a goofy comma shaped section closed in between the path and the pond.

Two of the goslings had gotten into that comma shaped area.  Momma, Poppa and one of the babies were on the outside of it, with a clear path down to the water.

The ones to the right of the fence... I don't even know how they got in there.  About two feet across, at the back of the section, the fence is underwater.  I couldn't find a gap anywhere that would explain how birds that can't fly yet got into this space.

At this point I stopped taking pictures, in fact, I set all my gear down to figure out how to get all the geese back together.  Unlike a mother mammal, geese don't have the instinct to 'scruff' their young and move them.  All they can do is herd them and trust the small one's instinct to stay close to the parents.

In this case that was actively working against them.  As I got close the parents crowded up against the fence and began to hiss at me.  They never honked and they never flapped at me or tried to charge me. And believe me, Chicago geese are afraid of *nothing*.  Certainly not people.  I have to think they understood I was trying to help.

For about half an hour I tried to lift the fence (it was nailed down too well) or find the opening they'd used to get back there in the first place (I still don't know how they managed it.)  But when the goslings tried, repeatedly, to shove themselves through the chicken wire to get back to their parents, I knew I needed to do something.  They could get their heads and necks through the holes, but clearly couldn't get their tubby little behinds through a roughly one-inch diameter hole and they'd thrash when they got their heads stuck.

So I stepped over the fence, to the parents' great displeasure, and herded the goslings up to a corner of the space they were stuck in and one at a time picked them up and put them back down, right in front of mama.

Now, I know some people hold on to the old wives' tale that if you handle a baby bird, the parents will smell 'human' on it and reject it.  I've done enough reading to know, a bird's sense of smell is garbage and their need to take care of their young is very, very strong.  In my reading about song birds falling out of the nest, they said to pick it up and put it back in the nest if you can.  So in this case, picking them up for the three seconds it would take to get them back where they could rejoin their families was certainly not going to be an issue.

So I did.  I got them back over the fence...

... where Momma and Poppa herded everyone together and back down to the water...

Where they set off for the island in the pond where there's none of that pesky chicken wire to separate them.

So that puts my bird rescue total for the season at three.  Wonder what it'll be by the fall? :)

Grebe Expectations - Part 2 - Duck out of Water

So last Thursday I went out to check on the little rescued Grebe.  She (and I'm assigning a gender totally arbitrarily since grebes aren't gender dimorphic, and as the woman I interviewed explained, there was no medical reason to try and determine a gender to treat her) ended up at the Willowbrook Wildlife Center.

I called up to see if I could do a follow up on her and I was able to interview one of the rehabers named LuAnn.  Because they're a wildlife rescue and rehab first and foremost I wasn't able to see the grebe.  She's being treated, but they want her to have as little interaction with humans as possible to facilitate her re-release into the wild.

The vets did take a couple pictures which they were gracious enough to send to me.

I look at those back legs now and I completely understand why she couldn't get off the ground.  Those are not walking, let alone running, feet.  Those are clearly paddling feet.

(These two photos belong to the Center and are used with their gracious permission).

As I mentioned in the first post, she had a bit of a chunk taken out of her neck and required medical intervention, antibiotics and painkillers.

When I got out to DuPage County, LuAnn and I sat down to discuss the care this animal received and what people should do if they find an injured wild animal and a little bit about the Willowbrook Wildlife Center in general.

What did you do for the grebe?

The vet cleaned up his wounds, she gave him a check up this morning.  He's on pain meds and she put him on antibiotics.  A lot of what happens over the next few days is watching him, getting him to eat... we give him a variety of food in his water.  He has shallow water right now because of his wounds, so he can't go totally in water.

Can you tell what attacked him?

No.  We can't tell if he was attacked or if he got caught on something.  We don't usually know unless somebody sees what happened.

We found this bird flopping down the street and she obviously needed help, so we picked her up.  What ideally should people do when they find something like this?

She needed to get picked up, because she obviously had wounds and couldn't fly away.  I wouldn't have suggested anything different.  But the people need to be safe first.  She was in the road, so people need to be careful when trying to help.  A lot of times the first car can see what's going on, but then someone tries to get around the stopped car and doesn't realize what's happening.

Someone at the scene suggested we use a plastic bag, but I said that plastic wasn't a good idea because some animals may eat it, is that right?

We use paper bags a lot.  You could have a problem with suffocation with plastic.  The migration group uses paper bags.  They're inexpensive and if they put tissue on the bottom they can get some traction, if it stays clean then you can reuse it.

How common are grebes to this area?


Not all that common.  We might get two or three or four a year.  It's not like a mallard or something.

How many animals does your center treat?

It varies a lot.  We can get a couple hundred in one day during migration. Last year we had over 8000 for the year come in.

What percentage can be rehabbed?


Most centers will say about half - between 45 and 50 percent.  Though it depends on how they do their numbers. Some count the ones that are dead on arrival, others don't.  Most animals have so many strikes against them by the time someone can catch them...

Of that 50%, how many can you re-release into the wild?


Almost all of them.  We have about 90 or 95 permanent animals that stay here for education.  There are some that live on the grounds that people learn about them by seeing them, and some that go out for school programs - like a red-tailed hawk that has a wing injury and can't hunt.  We also have a relationship with Brookfield Zoo, the Shedd Aquarium and Lincoln Park Zoo and they have one with us as well.  Sometimes we can place animals in different places.  We have a reintroductory program for some animals where we collect and hatch the eggs to make sure raccoons and other animals don't get to them and then release the young animals when they can protect themselves.

What's the most exotic animal you've ever received?

We get in mink occasionally.  A couple years ago we had three young mink that we raised and released. There's a few animals where we only get a few in a year, and then we may not see them again for a couple of years. We rehab anything that's native to the area.  We don't do non-native species, we have referrals for those.  Sometimes we get a call that an animal has been confiscated at the airport and they need someone to take it.

Do you ever get maxed out?  Do you ever have to say, "I'm sorry, but we just don't have any more room?"

We have a limit on raccoons.  Our cage will only hold so many because they're territorial.  And there's a second breeding season later in the summer, so we'll start taking more then.  It's hard to say no, but if we take too many we risk introducing a lot of disease.



So after we talked, I walked through the permanent collection and then did a walk through the attached wild forest preserve.  I'll post about both of those under separate covers in the next day or two.

Grebe Expectations - Part 1 - Get the Duck Out of Here!

I was down in Lakeview last night.  Lakeview is a trendy, very busy, northside neighborhood that's busy with both pedestrian and auto traffic, pretty much 24/7.  There are a lot of dogs - to the point where many of the businesses on the main drag - Broadway - have doggy water bowls out in the summer and leash stations near the door.  Not a good place for wildlife to take a detour.


I got off the bus and was heading up the block when I see what I think is a small duck floundering right in the middle of very busy Broadway. A guy runs up and uses his dog to flush it on to the sidewalk, but by the way it was flying/floundering/waddling, I could tell it was either very young or pretty hurt. So I ran up to help. Or at least see if I could help.

By the time I got there it was across the sidewalk and flopping down a 6-step stairwell. Once it was down there a local guy got it cornered. Someone suggested getting a plastic bag to contain it in, but I said that might not be a good idea because some animals tend to eat plastic when it's 'offered.' I said a towel would be better.  All of a sudden I'm the wildlife expert on the block.

So another bystander, who I later learned was named Maggie got a small blanket from her car while I called 311 (non-emergency city help line). As I was waiting another bystander, named Meg, said she was also on hold with them. I got through first and asked for an animal control call. They took my details and said they'd dispatch someone. In the mean time it was becoming apparent that this bird was less than thrilled with the blanket being over its face, so I took it from the guy who had it and uncovered its face and held on to it.

We'd thought it was a duck. As I was talking to 311 I told them it wasn't a Mallard or a Wood and I didn't recognize it. Then it stuck its neck up and I was all, "Oh hi there. You are not a duck!" My initial thought with its neck shape and beak shape was that it was a very juvenile heron. The webbed feet weren't quite right for a heron, but I'm not exactly the heron-master, so, you know two out of three heron features...

So we had a crowd for a while, but after about 15 minutes of waiting for animal control most people moved on, which left me, Meg, her boyfriend Justin and Maggie. Eventually Maggie got her car so we could sit and wait, but our little avian friend wasn't entirely thrilled with the OMG!INSIDE! of it all. After half an hour Meg called 311 back and the person she got said, "Oh, we don't do bird calls," but she gave us the number for bird rescue. Bird rescue told us to put the bird in a box and drive it over to the Peggy Notebaert Museum, which was all of about 5 minutes away. Then they called over because it just so happened that one of their bird rescuers was teaching a class at the closed museum last night and let her know we were coming with a rescue. So Meg's on the phone with Bird Rescue and we're trying to give an update. "We think it's a young heron. She's been injured, but she's alert and calm, but not lethargic." I was waiting for them to ask us if we could take her pulse or something.

So, since I'd taken the bus, and was apparently in charge of bird control, Maggie drove us over to the museum where we delivered her to Annette of the bird rescue group here in Chicago. On the way over we named her. Gracie Barry.

Why? Because we found her on Barry Street and Broadway. And Gracie the Grebe (once we found out she wasn't a heron) sounded good.

So we brought her in, and gave the box to Annette. Since being put in the box she had buried herself in the blanket and was being very still. We were a little worried there for a while. But she looked in and went "OH you found a grebe!" at which time Gracie perked up like someone had called her name.

We showed Annette where Gracie had been injured by another animal - she had a chunk of feathers missing out of her neck and a patch on her back, but she didn't seem to be bleeding profusely or anything. Annette said she'd take care of her and bring her to the Willowbrook Wildlife Center for care and rehab.

We were so excited. We saved a grebe! It's not like they're uncommon animals or anything, but it was kind of exciting to do a hands on rescue of an injured animal.

While we were waiting for animal control, Justin took some shots with my phone camera.  I have to say, that for a phone camera, it does take some decent shots.

        

 
Today I went out to Willowbrook to do some follow up.  I'll have the whole write up tomorrow, but the short version is, she (we think 'she', but the truth is grebes don't have different color patterns or significant size differences between the genders, so we're mostly guessing) has been seen by a vet.  She did require a little surgery on the one wound and she's on pain killers and antibiotics.  She isn't eating yet, but that's to be expected.  They're hopeful she'll recover fully and be able to be released into the wild again.


But that's for tomorrow's post.