Trying to save a bear cub's life
As soon as I push the
spoon under his nose, he turns away. It’s as if the spoon isn’t full of food,
but loaded instead with an invisible power that pushes bear’s head away. We’ve
been sitting like this for fifteen minutes already, the cat-sized bear cub and
I: me trying to get medicated food into him, and he studiously avoiding the
spoon.
The bear’s face looks
grotesque, his lower left jaw distended by what appears to be a huge black
blood clot. His tongue and lips have been pushed off to the side by the
horrible black thing in his mouth. My mind races through the options of giving
the bear the powdered antibiotics mixed into the high calorie paste on the
spoon: he won’t drink from the bowl; if I smear it on his paw so he licks it
off, I can’t be sure he actually swallows all the medication; smearing it on
the good side of his mouth with my finger also won’t guarantee he licks it off.
I’m at my wits’ end.
This cub won’t live if doesn’t take his antibiotics - and if he doesn’t eat
more. A visit to the vet two days before revealed that he has a partially
shattered lower jaw bone, which hadn’t been apparent when he came in twelve
days earlier and was first examined. The little one had been doing quite well
at Northern Lights Wildlife Shelter, feistily playing with his brother and eating
a lot until he suddenly seemed to feel sick.
When the vet showed us
the necrotizing gum tissue and exposed dead bone in his mouth, I realized that
I’m just beginning to understand how incredibly tough and resilient wild
animals are to pain and injuries. But that won’t help
this cub if he keeps wasting away because he won’t eat. I’m not getting
anywhere with my attempts of giving him the prescribed medication. Angelika
Langen and long-time volunteer Kim Gruijs succeed in removing the large bubble
of bloody fluid in his mouth by flushing it with a saline solution, but he
still needs more medical intervention.
The following morning
finds us at the vet again where the skinny little cub gets hooked up to IV
fluids. His jaw is healing well, but he is in poor general condition. If he
continues to refuse food, he will die. We are hoping that the fluids will make
him feel better and help his appetite.
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Receiving treatment at Babine Animal Hospital |
I have no luck giving
him milk that evening. He turns away his head. It is Kim who finally succeeds
in making him drink it: she squirts milk into his mouth with a syringe, forcing
him to swallows it. I hold my breath when after the few mouthfuls his milky
muzzle begins to look for the syringe, wanting more. It’s late at night, but
suddenly everything seems bright with hope.
Was it the IV fluids,
the syringe feeding, or the combined effort of all of us to save his life? In
the morning, the little cub sticks out his pale pink tongue and, looking back
and forth between the bowl and me, starts lapping up the milk. This is the
sweetest sound I’ve heard all week.
You and your colleagues are truly the best. The work you are doing is wonderful. I'm so glad the wee one is mending...well done. Congratulations. You are THE best!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jo-Anne. We are really just one part of large network of people all contributing to saving these little orphans. If it weren't for people calling in their sightings of this bear to the C.O., the C.O.'s effort to catch the cub, the supermarkets to donate their run-off produce, the money donations small and large to pay for the vet bills etc etc, this cub and all the others would never get their second chance. Every little bit that people are able to contribute in their own personal way to keep NLWS up and running is just as vital as the volunteers and staff at the shelter.
DeleteI am happy to report that the little one is doing extremely well now, eating solid food, steadily gaining weight, and playing like crazy with his brother :)