Welcome to a new column, "Eli's Corner"! Eli is our sporadically-timed guest artist exploring nature on the West Coast, providing a fresh perspective on on all things art/ecology!
At the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center for the North Coast
“You have to cut them like this.” She handed me the scissors and let me give it a try. The cold, slimy fish almost slipped out of my gloved hand, as if it desired to return and mingle with its lifeless brethren in the sink in front of me. I gripped the capelin by its tail and methodically began snipping it into segments a centimeter long. The regular volunteer across the sink from me nodded her approval, but then stopped me as a reached for another fish.
“We only use the male capelin for cutting,” she said. “This one’s a female, see?” She pointed to the bulging egg-filled belly of the fish. “Cutting up a female just makes a mess. You can tell they’re a male if they have this big fin under their tail.” I picked up another fish, a male this time, and reduced him to finely processed bits. Then another, and another.
And so it began. I had decided to spend a day volunteering at Astoria’s Wildlife Rehabilitation Center for the North Coast, a small but respectable facility located about six miles southeast of Astoria, which takes in injured wildlife and tries to give it a fighting chance in the wild. Directed by Charnele Fee, who also has her home on the premises, the Center is run by a staff of mostly volunteers.
The exterior is surrounded by aviaries on one side and dense forest on the other. Within, the building houses several rows of large birdcages, and on a busy day it is filled with fish, feathers, and skittish seabirds. This isn’t to say that the place is a mess. Each day, volunteers check on the health of their patients, clean the floors, change the cushioning in the cages, and bathe and feed the birds. Which brings me back to where I fit into the story.
I was currently cutting capelin to be fed to a wide variety of seabirds, who had been brought in in the wake of a recent algal bloom crisis off the Oregon coast. Proteins produced by the algae had begun dissolving the protective oils on many birds’ feathers, and as a result many of them had contracted hypothermia. Now that the crisis was over, the staff at the Center were still working extra hard to catch up with lost time. I had come here to lend whatever help I could, and was currently booked as a sort of avian sushi chef. Bit by bit, the little plates were filled with cold gray fish, and washed with water. I periodically heard the eager cries of the invalids as the food was brought to their cages. Soon, there were no more male capelin left, and the females were prepared, to be swallowed whole by some of the larger birds.
I stepped out into the main room for a short breather, and had to alter my path to avoid treading on a quizzical-looking gull that was waddling about in the aisles. The room contained many cages, holding an assortment of gulls, fulmars, loons, grebes and murres. Many more birds stood on the floor, waiting for their cages to be cleaned. A few birds were having their turn in the sink to bathe themselves, and were splashing joyfully about.
Earlier in the day, when I first arrived, I was given the task of rounding up a group of about ten common murres, one by one, and put them in a water-filled sink. Murres are very social colonial birds, and when threatened, they cluster together. I have little to no experience handling wild animals, and so I was prepared for anything. Upon entering the large cage, I must have presented a fearsome sight to the murres, because they shrank against the back wall and squirmed over each other to get away from me. I picked my target and, resolutely, grimly, I descended upon the bird, grabbing it forcibly with one hand and gently but firmly holding behind its head to keep the pointy beak from coming back at me.
I rushed the murre quickly to the sink and deposited it with a big splash. The terror of the helpless bird quickly gave way to exultation, as once freed, it began to splash around in the sink, cleaning itself. I went back for more murres, picking them up one by one, much to their horror, and putting them with their companions in the sink, much to their delight.
This task was, perhaps, given to me as a sort of trial by fire. I had come in late morning, announced that I was “very much a greenhorn” when it came to handling wild animals, and was right away given a job that was up close and personal with struggling waterfowl.
The day progressed with seeming rapidity, with seldom a pause or a dull moment. I was given a tour of the grounds, and saw all the birds in the aviaries, who were close to being ready for reintroduction to the wild. Two deer were always present outside the Center, and the lady who took me and another volunteer on the tour explained why they were seemingly unafraid of humans.
"The older one was a fawn when Charnele received her. Her mother had been hit by a truck and died, and so she grew up in human care. Now she has a baby of her own!" she pointed to the other, younger deer. The two animals were somewhat skittish when approached, but aside from that did not mind the presence of humans at all. In fact, while cutting the fish earlier, I had seen the mother deer peering at me through a window that was a mere three feet away from me.
The deer weren't the only mammals that the Center had given aid to. Years before, a lynx was brought in who had snared her paw in a steel trap, and forced her way out, leaving behind most of the skin of her paw. She was held at the Center for enough time to recover, but not long enough to gain any trust for humans.
"She really hated us," my guide continued. "Every time one of us would walk past her cage, she would arch her back and hiss menacingly." Like many of the inmates, the big cat was released right on site, and might still be lurking in the woods there. Or she got out of there as quickly as possible.
The aviaries presented still more interesting sights. Some of them had large tubs of water, wherein dozens of murres and grebes paddled around, or clustered together on floating rafts.
Another aviary was 110 feet long, and was designed to help healthy birds strengthen their flight muscles.
A group of brown pelicans and double-crested cormorants was gathered at one end, while a peregrine falcon surveyed the scene from a perch at the other end.
In another aviary, two large owls stood sleepily beside each other. One, a barred owl, was a light beige, almost white color, while the other, a spotted owl, was brown with light spots. In the wild, the more aggressive barred owls are encroaching on the territory of their more docile cousins, the spotted owls, but in this cage, the two seemed to be getting along just fine.
Back inside the facility, I was again given an opportunity to do something I'd never done before. It was time to clean the cage of a large red-tailed hawk, and so, with some trepidation, I agreed to hold the enormous bird. I was given a pair of massive welder's gloves and waited while one of the other volunteers patiently advanced on the angry bird with a large blanket. The idea was to grab the bird from behind with the towel, and to pin her legs together with the glove. The hawk's beak is less of a danger than their cruel talons. Hawks are capable of causing severe lacerations and even broken bones with their powerful hind legs. The other volunteer carefully handed the hawk to me, and I held the big bird firmly against myself. As the other volunteer was cleaning the cage, I walked around a bit. The hawk would become upset whenever I walked away from her cage, and let out a high pitched squeaking sound which is the sound a frightened baby hawk makes. Finally I released her back into her cage. I was amazed by how light she was, scarcely any heavier than the murres I had handled earlier.
The day was nearing a close, and soon only I and the volunteer who I had helped wrangle the hawk remained. She and I set about our final task, which was to feed and warm a miserable and bedraggled short-eared owl. This owl had been found by fishermen 25 miles out to sea. It is not uncommon for land birds to be blown way off course, and this poor owl was no exception. They had found him near the beginning of their four day fishing trip out beyond the treacherous Columbia bar. The crew weren't about to turn their vessel around and come back right away, as they had fish to catch, so they sheltered the owl and tried to feed him bait fish. This was clearly not enough, as he now hunched in an almost delirious state before us.
Feeding an animal that is well advanced in the stages of starvation is a dangerous business. Food can become deadly if consumed too quickly, and so we set about creating a meal for the owl in liquid form. A small mouse was taken out of the freezer and cut up with scissors, then its meat and guts were mixed with water to make a kind of mouse puree. Then we held the owl gently in a blanket and used tweezers to force bits of the food into his beak. At first he didn't even respond, but soon he was eating small amounts of the food. Eventually, he was able to lean forward of his own accord and eat directly from the dish. After that, we placed him in a cushioned cage with a heat pad. He looked exhausted.
That was the final task in my day of work at the Wildlife Rehab Center for the North Coast. I was grateful to be given this opportunity to work with wild animals, something I haven't really been able to do before. It truly was an educational experience, and I hope others will follow my example and donate some of their time to help injured wildlife. There's always need for more help there.-Eli
