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You don't realise just how much you rely on accessing the internet until something goes wrong! Ours is now up and running again after nearly a week without it and it's been a nightmare. No emails - in a way that has been great as I haven't missed the 50+ junk emails I receive at Vale every day, but important emails have had to wait until I could get to another computer to read them; we use the internet a lot for looking up information about animals, their injuries, treatments etc; staff wages are paid via the internet; a lot of the food, disinfectants, medical supplies etc are ordered online. We have had to go back to the old fashioned telephone ordering days!! And of course, I haven't been able to write my Blog!
Well, I'm back now and have to tell you about the strange telephone call I had today - a man phoned saying that he wanted some advice on an injured bird he had found. Sounds straightforward enough? Firstly I asked him what he thought the problem was and he explained that it had crash-landed onto a building site where he was working, sustaining an injury to its wing. Ok, how serious did the injury look? It had what looked like just minor grazing to the 'elbow' joint of the wing, it was bleeding a little bit but had now stopped. The bird was holding the wing normally and seemed to be able to move it perfectly. It all sounded quite simple and nothing too serious.
'Do you know what sort of bird it is?' I asked.
'A pelican' came the reply!!
Ah, not a bird we deal with very often at Vale - in fact, not surprisingly, we have never had an injured pelican in. I started to wonder whether someone was playing a practical joke on me but as the conversation went on, I realised it was genuine.
How on earth did a pelican end up in the UK? It must be an escapee.
'Whereabouts are you?' I asked.
'Kazakhstan' the chap replied! Wow - I knew that we were fairly well known now, certainly throughout the UK and parts of Europe but Kazakhstan - I must admit I had to look on the world map to find out exactly where it was, I had a feeling it was somewhere near Russia, and it was!
It turns out the man is a British citizen, working on the building site over there and the pelican had tried to land on what it thought was water, but it wasn't and it had grazed its wing in the process. I explained that with such a bird and an injury which sounded so minor we would probably just clean it up, give it a long-acting antibiotic and release it straight away as the longer it was kept in captivity the more stress it was likely to suffer, causing even more damage to it. Unfortunately although there was a vet locally, he was unwilling to look at the pelican and so antibiotics were not an option. I explained that if we were put in that predicament we would probably just release the bird back out without antibiotic cover but not knowing whether pelicans should be in that area at this time of year I thought it would be best to put him on to a vet with knowledge of non-British species to make sure that the the pelican received the best treatment. I gave him the telephone number of the International Zoo Vets in Yorkshire who travel all over the world treating and advising on exotic species. They have been very helpful when we have contacted them for advice in the past so I am sure that they would have helped or found a contact number for an expert in that area who knew a bit more about pelicans than me - that wouldn't be hard!!!
Well, I'm back now and have to tell you about the strange telephone call I had today - a man phoned saying that he wanted some advice on an injured bird he had found. Sounds straightforward enough? Firstly I asked him what he thought the problem was and he explained that it had crash-landed onto a building site where he was working, sustaining an injury to its wing. Ok, how serious did the injury look? It had what looked like just minor grazing to the 'elbow' joint of the wing, it was bleeding a little bit but had now stopped. The bird was holding the wing normally and seemed to be able to move it perfectly. It all sounded quite simple and nothing too serious.
'Do you know what sort of bird it is?' I asked.
'A pelican' came the reply!!
Ah, not a bird we deal with very often at Vale - in fact, not surprisingly, we have never had an injured pelican in. I started to wonder whether someone was playing a practical joke on me but as the conversation went on, I realised it was genuine.
How on earth did a pelican end up in the UK? It must be an escapee.
'Whereabouts are you?' I asked.
'Kazakhstan' the chap replied! Wow - I knew that we were fairly well known now, certainly throughout the UK and parts of Europe but Kazakhstan - I must admit I had to look on the world map to find out exactly where it was, I had a feeling it was somewhere near Russia, and it was!
It turns out the man is a British citizen, working on the building site over there and the pelican had tried to land on what it thought was water, but it wasn't and it had grazed its wing in the process. I explained that with such a bird and an injury which sounded so minor we would probably just clean it up, give it a long-acting antibiotic and release it straight away as the longer it was kept in captivity the more stress it was likely to suffer, causing even more damage to it. Unfortunately although there was a vet locally, he was unwilling to look at the pelican and so antibiotics were not an option. I explained that if we were put in that predicament we would probably just release the bird back out without antibiotic cover but not knowing whether pelicans should be in that area at this time of year I thought it would be best to put him on to a vet with knowledge of non-British species to make sure that the the pelican received the best treatment. I gave him the telephone number of the International Zoo Vets in Yorkshire who travel all over the world treating and advising on exotic species. They have been very helpful when we have contacted them for advice in the past so I am sure that they would have helped or found a contact number for an expert in that area who knew a bit more about pelicans than me - that wouldn't be hard!!!
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