Wildlife and Airgun Pellets

In addition to my full time career as a companion animal veterinarian, I have volunteered my time at a local wildlife rehabilitation centre for the past three years.  How wonderful it is to be involved with an organization that is run in large part by volunteers who are so passionate about relieving suffering and providing rehabilitation for an endless stream of injured and orphaned wildlife.  From the tiniest hatchling songbird to the cranky great horned owl to the frightened wide-eyed coyote, there is never a dull moment at the wildlife centre.  Volunteering there has forced me to dust off the cobwebs in my brain that shroud the knowledge I gained in vet school over ten years ago on the medicine and surgery of all creatures, great and small.

I can still vividly recall the panic that swept over me as I worked through the eight hour, 800-question final veterinary licensing exam and saw that there were questions on how to safely anesthetize polar bears.  Polar bears?  They never said anything about polar bears in anesthesiology!  Nor did they mention how to repair a wound on a porcupine’s shoulder.  Or how to do dentistry on a muskrat kit.  And the furthest thing from my overwhelmed mind in veterinary college was how to perform an ophthalmological exam on an American bittern, as it tries to gouge out my own eyes with its 12 inch beak that waves wildly on its long slender neck at everything within a three foot radius. 

Sadly, there is not sufficient time in an intensive four-year, triple-course-load program to teach us everything there is to know about all of these species.  Regardless, veterinarians are the only doctors that are called upon to know all there is to know about every species on earth with the exception of humans.  In order to overcome these challenges at the wildlife centre, I often extrapolate knowledge from similar species (and often not-so-similar ones).  It is not uncommon for me to say something along the lines of, “Well, I’m not exactly sure what drugs to anesthetize a beaver with.  But beavers are rodents and I know that we can use ketamine and xylazine in guinea pigs so let’s start with that.”  Or even, “Hmmm, I’ve never treated an eye infection in a snowy owl before, but if it was a cat, we’d use such-and-such.  Let’s try it.”  What an amazing learning opportunity!

Perhaps one of the most heartbreaking challenges that I see is that of the wild bird that has been shot with an airgun pellet.  Last summer I was presented with a crow that had sustained such an injury.  Although the bird had healed from the original wound, the airgun pellet was still lodged within his chest.  The bird was suffering a slow death from lead poisoning.  When I was called out to the centre to attend to the bird, I approached his cage to say hello.  He tipped his head to the side and regarded me with shiny little black eyes.  Crows, ravens, and jays belong to the family Corvidae.  Corvids are known for their superior intelligence, and I could see in his eyes that this guy was no exception. 

We x-rayed his chest and abdomen to find the location of the airgun pellet we suspected was the cause of his lead poisoning.  Sure enough, there it was, floating in his lower right abdomen.  To surgery we went.  It seemed as if it would be a straight forward enough procedure to open him up, spot the pellet, retrieve it, and move on.  But it wasn’t that simple.

A bird’s chest and abdomen are full of a seemingly random array of air sacs.  Puncture one, and the bird will have challenges breathing for a period of time until he can heal.  Puncture more than one, and the likelihood of his survival post-operatively is called into question.  The pellet could be in one of these air sacs, or it could be floating around behind his myriad organs.  It was nowhere to be found, and I had already punctured two air sacs.  It was time to close him up and scrub out.  We re-xrayed him post-operatively and found that the pellet had migrated up behind his heart.  The horrible thing was free-floating, and because birds do not have a diaphragm to separate their abdomen from their chest, it had moved north to a terrible location.

Shockingly, the bird survived the unsuccessful operation.  But he wasn’t going to survive for long until we found that pellet.  A second surgery was scheduled.  This time I explored his chest cavity with the tip of my pinky finger, feeling for the hard edge of the pellet.  His tiny little heart was rapidly beating against my finger as I sweat and cursed under my breath.  Why didn’t they teach us how to retrieve airgun pellets from behind crows’ hearts?  Because, I answered to myself, you’d still be in school if they taught you everything, and 23 years was long enough.  Some things you just have to learn on the job.  And then…I felt it!  With utmost care and precision, I was able to grasp it firmly with a hemostat and pull it slowly from the crow’s chest.  I instantly heard a deafening cheer and a round of applause.  I had been so focused on the task that I hadn’t realized that a crowd of caring volunteers and visitors had gathered around to watch.  There was a lump in my throat as I held up the pellet for everybody to see.  We closed up the patient and moved him to recovery.  And it was with a great feeling of pride that I drove the crow out into the country a few weeks later and released him.  Watching him fly away was bittersweet.  I still have the pellet, in a small container labeled, “That darned pellet, May 2011.”

Four weeks ago, a six-year old bald eagle arrived at the centre with lead poisoning.  The bird was found on the side of the highway, too weak to fly, to find food, or to even life her own head to look at us.  And then came another bald eagle.  And then a snow goose.  And then a Canada goose.  The horrible senselessness of these illnesses broke our hearts.  X-rays revealed that the birds had been shot with airgun pellets.  Sadly, they did not survive. 

Many people are surprised to hear that we go through such lengths to save “just a crow” or “just a hare” or “just a muskrat.”  I firmly believe that all life, right down to the lowliest earthworm, has value.  And so we at the wildlife centre will continue to work hard, often long into the night and on our days off, to save every life we can.  But our hands are full enough as it is. 

Please, Cochrane, please stop shooting birds with airgun pellets.