snuckols2005
Registered: December 2022 City/Town/Province: Danville Posts: 1
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Quack quack! In my backyard, I was surprised to find trespassers: a momma duck and ten ducklings. Unfortunately, my dog also noticed them. He sprints over barking and scares the momma duck leaving the ducklings scared and confused. The next morning, I checked the backyard and saw the momma duck, but only three ducklings. My heart sinks as I recall hearing an owl last night.
I was wracked with guilt. I hated myself for sleeping soundly while the owl snatched up the seven ducklings, but it was too late to save them. I searched for weeks for an internship that related to my love for biology. Finally, I found a wildlife rehabilitation internship. The perfect opportunity to pay my respect to the ducklings. Although the position was mainly for college students, I got accepted.
On my first day, I was incredibly nervous because I knew nothing about animals or rehabilitation care. Honestly, I was scared to handle the animals and possibly hurt them or myself. To curb my nerves, I attended weekly training classes for all the interns and took diligent notes on lessons from bird anatomy to animal history. Although my new knowledge proved difficult to implement, such as feeling for fractures in birds, my mentors helped me by kindly answering my questions and patiently guiding me.
I spent an average of 20 hours a week at the hospital and during each shift I learned something new about wildlife. Besides my weekly classes, I learned more about the local wildlife behavior as I spent more time with the animals. I learned that house finches are more vulnerable to cat attacks than any other accident. Sometimes I went beyond my internship and returned the fully rehabilitated animals back to where they were found. The first animal I delivered back was a western fence lizard, and when I let it out of the reptarium it crawled under my car and laid there for half an hour. Although that was annoying, I felt fulfilled knowing I completed the cycle of rehabilitation and brought the reptile back to the wild. After this, my love for animal care truly began and I started to seriously consider a career in veterinary or wildlife science.
At the hospital, there were many animals brought into care. The most common species we received included house finches, woodpeckers, morning doves, crows, opossums, and squirrels. My favorite animals of care are the opossums, especially babies (picture shown). We had exciting animals like a bald eagle, he was in care for several months. I watched some of the wildlife technicians perform surgery on an otter. They were not able to save the otter unfortunately, but they did their best. Working at the hospital is depressing some of the time because we frequently deal with terminal animals. I have learned though that trying to save them is the most that we can do for them rather than leaving them to suffer.
On my last shift, I challenged myself to complete the intake procedure on a house finch. I did a physical exam on the house finch brought in, administered subcutaneous fluids, did a trich swab, and successfully identified trichomonas through the microscope. While writing up my notes on the database, I glowed with the accomplishment that my autonomous work truly left a positive impact. I was sad to leave my mentors after working with them all summer, but happy that grew from the experience.
The unfortunate fate of the ducklings led me to a rewarding educational experience, and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with animals. The funny thing is when I was growing up I never had a passion for animals, I was more interested in nature and the environment. But with this internship I learned that nature and animals go hand in hand because while I help rehabilitate native animals I am also caring for the environment of the San Francisco Bay area. From all I have learned from this educational rewarding experience, I know I want to continue wildlife conservation whether it is through a career or by starting a volunteer club at my college. My desire to protect our wildlife will continue on, and also manifest into a desire to help those in distress.
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