A personal plea from staff member, Tara
Yesterday Gina and a coworker brought in a crow from the Essentia West parking lot. They had thought that it had hit a window. It was shivering and making raspy gurgling noises. When birds hit windows, they can regurgitate and aspirate fluids. They can also burst air sacks in their respiratory system and have difficulty breathing.
As I was preparing the usual treatment for window strike trauma, he started having a seizure. The tremors that followed, the neurological symptoms, and discharge, changed our diagnosis to a possible poisoning. We immediately administered activated charcoal to see if we could counteract the poison. He was resting warm, quiet, and on pain meds, when another seizure struck. He did not survive it. We wish there would have been more we could have done to save him. Is there a possibility it wasn’t poison? Yes. It is an educated guess based on the presented symptoms. The possibility of poisoning is still enough reason for us to contemplate what we can do to prevent it.
I know we talk a lot about not using poisons. We have shown many examples of how these toxins travel up the food chain killing unintended species. We are preaching to the choir…most of you would never dream of using poisons in your own households.
WE NEED TO DO MORE! What I ask of you today is to investigate the “pest management” procedures at your places of work, where you shop, your school, your apartment complex… It is typically these places that hire out to “manage” rodent problems. Can we convince the people making these decisions to insist on a more humane, big picture approach to solving these issues? Often times, people don’t know there are other solutions, or they have not given much thought to the long reaching effects of poisons. PLEASE take the time to be an ambassador and speak on the behalf of our wild neighbors.
I can not express to you just how heartbreaking it is to see an animal die this way. Please help us in making sure this is not the fate of our beloved Northland creatures.
Thank you for reading and sharing.