Oh, Deer

Amputation of a leg means one thing for an injured deer: It can never be returned to the wild. Yet this was the fate that loomed for the little white-tailed deer fawn in Joanna Fitzgerald’s care as manager of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida Wildlife Clinic.

The clinic was rehabilitating two fawns in a large outdoor recovery enclosure. After a night of terrible thunderstorms, the staff arrived early to feed the fawns. One, spooked by the thunder, apparently tried to bolt and fractured its leg. 

Fitzgerald consulted a veterinarian, and then got a second opinion. Both vets were hesitant to attempt surgery to stabilize the leg. Both felt that the fawn would be too active for the leg to heal properly. They recommended amputation.Fitzgerald felt strongly that this was not an option. “Release is the goal for all our patients,” she says. “Amputation would end any hope of releasing this fawn.” 

She couldn’t give up. She understood that a completely wild fawn would not have tolerated such a procedure. But, she told the vets, this youngster had already been in rehab for several weeks and was accustomed to being in an enclosure.

“Thankfully,” Fitzgerald says, “we have amazing vets who are willing to take our information and thoughts into account and work together in the best interest of each animal. They agreed to do the surgery, and, as we hoped, it stayed quiet for several weeks while its leg healed. This was one of the first cases I handled on my own as the manager of the clinic, so it caused me a tremendous amount of pressure and worry. It was a joyful day for me when our little fawn was finally released.”

 

Fitzgerald shares this poignant story as we start my whirlwind tour in the tiny kitchen of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. Volunteer Bob Schultheis looks up with a smile, but he has no time to chat. It’s lunchtime for the patients, and Schultheis, along with intern Lydia Leone and wildlife rehabilitation specialist Ana Sosa, are the chefs of the hour. Their artistic platters look like gourmet antipastos worthy of fancy restaurants, except for the writhing of golden waxworms among the fresh greens. There’s also —among other things—“carpaccio of mouse,” “croutons” of dog kibble, and “ceviche” of various fish parts and assorted tropical fruits. 

Yummy. At least for the birds, reptiles and mammals, that is. They need this nutritious diet in order to survive. Every creature gets a different diet. “Each one,” Fitzgerald explains, “is prescribed by our veterinarians and formulated based on the animal’s age, the nature of its illness or injury, and its ability to feed itself. The youngest ones must be fed every half-hour from dawn to dusk.”

I’m getting this very rare tour of the clinic because it is soon to be replaced by the new, 4,500-square-foot, state-of-the-art von Arx Wildlife Clinic. From the kitchen in this rickety old wooden building, which feels more like a rustic camp bunkhouse than a hospital, I see the examining room. There’s barely space to move around the table. On a narrow counter are medical charts, and on the wall is a dry-marker board listing all patients, with detailed medication, care and feeding schedules. The room is so cramped that X-rays are done in the education building. “Babies” are fed in Fitzgerald’s office, which also often serves as a temporary nursery. Space is so tight that ducks and other small water birds get their “water therapy” treatments in the bathtub. 

There’s no place for an operating table. “For surgeries,” says Barbara Wilson, the Conservancy’s marketing and communications director, “we rely on generous donations of time and facilities from vets at St. Francis Animal Clinic and Sabal Palm Animal Hospital.” 

But there’s excitement afoot. The Conservancy of Southwest Florida was established in the mid-’60s with a grassroots effort to stop a road through Rookery Bay. On Sanibel Island, CROW (Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife) also was established in the mid-’60s. It started with the rescue of a single royal tern. CROW opened its new, 4,800-square-foot, state-of-the-art veterinary hospital and education center in 2009. The Conservancy’s new clinic is slated to open by the end of this year and become fully operational in 2012. 

Besides a spacious new examining room, records room and intensive care unit, the von Arx Wildlife Clinic will have a real operating room, separate recovery rooms for mammals and reptiles, a pelican pool and a flight recovery aviary. There will also be a wildlife drop-off lobby, classrooms and public viewing areas.

No Health Insurance

Try to imagine nearly 7,000 patients a year showing up at a hospital with critical injuries and not a nickel’s worth of health insurance. That’s exactly what’s happening here in Southwest Florida. More than 2,400 patients were admitted to the Conservancy’s clinic last year. Almost twice that many—4,100 representing 200 species—were brought to CROW. Combined, they may have rescued, rehabilitated and returned to nature as many as 100,000 creatures of land, air and sea. 

Who are they? A great blue heron hit by a golf ball. A raccoon killed by a car, carrying full-term, healthy babies that needed to be born. A pelican with a fishhook stuck in its throat. A baby fawn singed in a fire. A cardinal attacked by a cat. A barn owl that fell out of its nest. Panthers, loggerhead turtles and gopher tortoises, ospreys, bald eagles, fox squirrels, river otters, roseate spoonbills … and the list goes on.