Things That Cross the Road

May's such a banquet, such an overstuffed portmanteau of good things, that the writer in me sputters and fusses, trying to find a theme in it all.

Perhaps "Things I See Crossing the Road" is as good as any. 

After a travel-enforced break this spring, I've rediscovered running. Totally ignoring my wise friend Hodge's admonition that "More is the enemy of good," I now feel like I'm slacking if I don't clock 4.5 miles a day. There's just so much to see and hear and smell and discover. It all pulls me along and down the dirt roads. The weather has been incredible. I'm brown as a berry and feeling more fit. Kind of a human red eft, looking for new water to swim in.

The tiniest red eft I've ever seen. Red efts are the juvenile dispersal unit of the red-spotted newt. Red efts are how newts get their DNA to new wetlands. They have thick, dessication-resistant granular skin with loads of toxins in it. That's aposematic, or warning coloration there. Don't eat me. I'm on my way.

I couldn't imagine where this little fellow had come from, crossing our driveway. The nearest pond is 1.3 miles away. How does something like this make its way through a gigantic thick hayfield? Well, he had to have. Underfoot, unseen, tiny creatures are making incredible journeys that we cannot even imagine. Everybody has a journey, whether we see it or not.

So tiny, so determined, going I know not where. Headed in this direction, he

 would hit our stream eventually. I suspect he knows that. Perhaps downhill=water?

The next morning I found another eft, but this one much older, darker, nearing adult coloration. I checked--skin still thick and grainy, but thinning, moister. When this animal hits a suitable body of water, he'll stay there for good. His skin will become membranous and thin, and he'll hang suspended, his legs dangling, just beneath the surface, watching for a mate. I think I can see the beginnings of his manparts at the base of his tail.

I picked him up and carried him across. Good luck with that hayfield, my friend. Navigating that would have to be like me making my way through a canebrake or a bamboo jungle. I guess part of how I look at wild things is putting myself in their bodies for the time that I observe them, thinking about how the world looks and feels to them. But I don't presume to make a judgement and take them to "better" habitat. This eft was headed away from the only pond in the area, headed who knows where. He's an eft. He knows. Who am I to short-circuit his plan? Lemme go!! I got places to go, people to see.

She's a box turtle. She knows, too.

But she is definitely getting a lift in the direction she's headed. When she saw me she turned around quickly and tried to go back, but I carried her in the direction she was originally heading, knowing she'd attempt her journey again when the coast was clear. Chetty saw her first, sprinted to her, gave her a quick tap with his nose, and kept going. Wanted to make sure I noticed her. 

What a beautiful jewelbox she was, with those amazing golden peacocks displaying all down her back. She also had slug guts smeared all over her beak and throat. Nice breakfast. No car would get her this time.

Speaking of slugs, I lost my beloved rehab box turtle Sluggo this winter. He had been injured by a lawnmower in August 2011, and I was waiting, years it turned out, to see if he'd ever really walk again. My best guess is that he overheated in his hibernation tank when the January sun slammed into it. I had set a bat tank atop it and had them both in the basement by the glass door because it was too bitterly cold to keep them in the garage. Well, the sun came out and the 2" airspace I'd left wasn't sufficient to keep the lower tank cool. He couldn't really bury himself in the deep moist medium, and he cooked.  It was a cruel lesson, to lose him that way. I reminded myself that Sluggo was going into his third year of rehab after his spinal injury, and still hadn't regained any meaningful use of his hind legs. He couldn't right himself when he turned over, could only drag himself with his front legs, couldn't dig, and would in all likelihood never be releasable. I didn't want to keep him until I was too old to care for him, and saw that coming down the pike. Sadly, that's probably what would have wound up happening. He'd have outlived me, but he never could have been a wild turtle again.

That didn't keep us from loving him.

Such is rehab. You win some, you lose some. My heart sinks and breaks a little every time someone calls me with a broken turtle. It's always such a long and often sad road. I remember a young hippie couple who drove all the way from Athens to bring me one who was literally in about six separate pieces.

 "We got all the pieces!" they said hopefully.
 I looked at them and nodded. I guess they thought I could wave a magic wand and put her back together, like Humpty Dumpty.

On to happier things. I helped this giant leopard moth caterpillar across the road the same day I found the elder eft. This one looked as if it were about to pupate, and was perhaps on walkabout looking for the perfect spot. I see gobs and gobs of these big bristly black cats in fall.

And I'd always wondered why I never see the adult moths. People who've tried to raise them report that a tachinid fly parasitizes them, such that few ever make it to pupate.

This fellow looked healthy and clean to me. I wished him well and set him down on the other side.

Just the night before, I'd found an adult giant leopard moth under my porch light! What a piece of kismetic coinkydink is that? 

It was so beautiful, with these awesome false eyes on the pronotum. A big, clumsy, sort of friendly moth, not so different from the caterpillar to handle. A bit pinchy in the leg department. Less ooky, though. 

Maybe I'd helped him across the road last fall. 

Like our Rain Crows' song "Little Soldiers" says,  Pick him up, carry him across.  

Give it a listen.

CD's with free song samples in the right sidebar of this blog.

What's Become of Sluggo?

Wildlife rehabilitation is often a long road. Especially with box turtles. Sluggo is a longterm client. You may remember that he was hit in the spine by a lawnmower blade last summer. I couldn't do anything for the injury with its jumbled pieces of shell bone, so I gave him shots of Baytril, a strong antibiotic, to prevent infection, then just fed him and supported him in the ensuing year. 

He won't use his back legs. He has feeling in them, and he pulls them strongly into his shell when you try to pull them out, but he doesn't use them to locomote. He drags himself with his strong orange front legs.

Lisa Fosco of Ohio Wildlife Center in Columbus believes that that's because it hurts to use them. Will that get better? We can't say. But like anyone who has a loved one who's suffering, you cling to hope. 

He's a strong, beautiful gentleman with great color and a nice personality.

I took him in for evaluation at OWC. Lisa immediately set to picking and chipping at the dead shell and bone  around Sluggo's injury. 

The black part looks yuckky but it's actually a sign of healing. It's good, it's what you want. 

Lisa cleaned him up really nicely using her fingers and a forceps. I was wincing but Sluggo couldn't feel it as the bone she was removing was long dead. She pointed to a deeper triangular divot at the bottom of the wound and said she thought that was probably what was keeping him from using his hind legs. Sigh. He's not done yet. The hard part is not knowing if he'll ever be releasable.

To be honest, I thought I'd be leaving him in the care of someone who knows more than I do about such injuries, but Lisa wanted me to hang onto him. She made a good point, that he'd do better with individual attention such as I can give him (when I'm around, that is...) than as one of a bunch of patients in a rehab setting. So she sent him back home with me.

I took him out to see how he was doing.

He was tired of being in a cardboard box, that's for sure. I set him on the concrete and he peed in excitement. And then one hind leg came out.

He was making for the spiderwort tangle, and he really, really wanted to get there. And the other hind leg came out, the one I never get to see.

Truly, he more just dragged them than anything, but they were out and moving, and that's a huge start.

I thought that going forward I should try to get him to walk on concrete, because the second he got into the soft mulch he tucked them back in and dragged himself with his front legs.

Lisa showed me how to massage his legs, how to stroke his feet "so he knows he still has feet, knows that they're still there." 

I hope he comes to trust me enough to let me massage him every day. Right now he remembers getting injections there and he pulls his legs in when I go to touch them. 

I never visit the Ohio Wildlife Center without marveling at the job these good people face. Over 4,000 animals are admitted every year, the vast majority coming in right now through July. Rehabbers call it baby season. There were bunnies everywhere, little blind ones and ones that were big enough to nibble on dandelion greens and clean their faces with quick paws.

And there were baby ducks, standing in their food, dreaming of their mamas.

If you've any extra resources, please think of OWC. The people I saw hurrying around the clinic were so tired they were reeling and punchy, warmly accepting box after box of rabbits and thanking the kind folks who had brought them in. I left, resolved to keep working with my one little case, and in awe of the volunteer network the Ohio Wildlife Center maintains. And wishing I had a few lotto millions to shunt their way.

Feeding Sluggo

I am delighted to say that after taking his first two slugs on June 26,  Sluggo has expanded his dietary horizons from slugs to fresh cantaloupe, 

strawberries, blueberries, bananas, black raspberries, peaches and Repto-Min turtle sticks (the green things in this photo).

 I encourage him by soaking the Repto-Min in cantaloupe juice, or by pushing the dry sticks into fresh cantaloupe, where he can't help but devour them. Repto-Min is a wonderful complete food, that raises some mighty nicely shelled baby box turtles for me. Every day I put more Repto-Min in his fruit. He cleans it up!

Sluggo's housed in a 20 gallon long aquarium, with moist peat and sphagnum moss and some groovy shallow rock-like dishes just for reptiles. He's right under a south window, which gives him sun for basking. It's important to have water always available. Hurt box turtles often soak all day and night. It makes them feel better. You really have to stay on top of them, though, and keep that water clean, because they like to poopify their water. Choosing to poop in their water actually makes caring for box turtles easier, if a bit disgusting. Overall, it keeps their limited artificial environment a lot cleaner. About twice a day I'm taking sloshy poopified water outside to throw it off the deck. Ick. Worth it, though.

More than a month after finishing his injections, Sluggo's still not using his hind legs much. That's all right. They seem to work, in that he can extend and retract them. He'll get around to it eventually, and I'm not going to rush him. He's had a rough summer. And he still doesn't trust me to mess with his hinders. It takes box turtles a long time to trust someone who's once hurt them (with Baytril injections) but he'll get there. Every day he's a little more outgoing, and he'll eat from my fingers now.

 He can stay here as long as he needs to. I'll take care of him. If that means a year or two, that's fine with me. But we all look forward to the day when I can call the folks who brought him to me and tell them he's ready to come home. He'll be released right where he was found. Minus the lawnmower.

Many thanks to those who chipped in on Sluggo's treatment costs. I wasn't expecting that. Y'all paid for his Baytril, his Repto-min, his Tegaderm, his Silvodine cream and some very nice cantaloupe, and for that I thank you sincerely. You always surprise me, in the nicest ways, and fill my heart.

Sluggo, You Have to Eat!

One of the scary things about reptiles, at least to me, is that they can go a very long time without eating. And they do. It's never good when a patient won't eat. For someone like me, who loves her charges and her babies, her friends and family with food, it's doubly upsetting.

Every day for two weeks I put tempting food right in front of that turtle. Twice a day. He'd look at it, sometimes even crane his neck, but he stolidly refused to take a bite. I tried bananas, peaches, watermelon, mealworms, earthworms, black raspberries, blueberries and slugs. Slugs are like candy to box turtles.

I went out with my headlamp, breathing the clouds of midges and gnats who were attracted to it, and hunted slugs at night. I put melon rinds out as bait and gathered them, keeping them in a little slug farm in the living room. You have one, don't you? I feed mine lettuce and spent daylily flowers.

These are Arion subfuscus, an imported European slug. Don't ask me why we have imported slugs here. We just do. Not surprisingly, they vastly outnumber our old gray slugs. 

And the turkle would look at them and let them crawl right by. Until the day when I offered two slugs on a nice piece of bark from the forest floor, which was covered with fresh earthy-smelling loam. The turtle's head shot out and he craned his neck and bam! he grabbed a slug. And then a second.

I was so excited I took these photos from across the room with my 300 mm. lens, just to document this Gandhi of turtles, digging in. He was so skittish I couldn't let him see me.

After that magic moment, no slug was safe around Sluggo. My theory is that the scent of fresh loam reminded him of home, and stimulated his appetite. 

Goo-byeeeee!

I was one relieved turtle nurse when Sluggo finally lived up to his name.

Meet Sluggo

I have kind of an unusual Ohio wildlife rehabilitator's permit. It's for songbirds, bats and reptiles, specifically box turtles. Boxies get on the wrong end of our machines more often than I'd like to see. Cars, well, they usually don't survive an argument with a wheel. Lawnmowers are bad, too. Turtles' shells often save them, but lawnmowers can inflict some truly grievous injuries.

This handsome older gentleman came to me in late June 2011 from a wooded yard in Athens, Ohio, where the caller had accidentally hit him with a rider mower. I hate getting turtle calls because it's so hard to gauge how badly hurt the animal is from a verbal description. Is he bright? Crawling? How big is the wound? Where is it? Any limbs missing? That kind of thing. I still shudder when I remember the female boxy a couple of sweet young hippies brought me. They were very vague on the phone. Her shell was in pieces, apparently. "Yes, all the pieces are there." What they neglected to tell me, because they wanted so badly for me to somehow wave my wand and magically fix this hurt animal, was that the pieces were no longer connected to the turtle. They were rattling around in the shoebox with her. 

I could instantly see that this turtle had a better prognosis. Hey, he had a prognosis. What you're seeing here is not exposed flesh but pink shell bone, crushed and compressed, with the colored scutes knocked off. Oh, it had to hurt. The callers had done just the right thing--cleaned him up with some disinfectant and put Band-aids over the wound until they could bring him to Marietta. I took the Band-aids off and soaked a paper towel in Betadine, and let him crawl around  while the disinfectant soaked the grass and dirt loose.

Part of the protocol for turtles with bad shell wounds is eight days of Baytril (antibiotic) injections, at about $10 a day. Ouch for turtle and rehabber. These are administered in the back legs, one every other day, with a very fine needle. Still, it hurts, and the turtle purely hates it. This is the second boxy I've had who learned within a day to keep his hinders tucked and to crawl away from me using only his front legs.  That's what he's doing in the photo above--booking with his hind legs tucked.

I picked all the grass and dirt off, washed him, disinfected him again, and let him dry. I couldn't even budge the smashed-in shell pieces so I decided to let them heal as they were. He still had control over his back legs, though they and his tail were quite bruised, and I thought I could probably do more harm than good by messing about with the shell. 

Time for some spackle.

The white Crisco-like substance is Silvodine cream, an antibiotic cream for burns and deep wounds. I packed the wound with cream and got some Tegaderm, which is a surgical membrane that acts a bit like skin. Silvodine, unfortunately, needs a prescription, but Chet's veterinarian, Dr. Lutz, was happy to help with that and the Baytril, too.

Peeling off the white backing and laying the clear Tegaderm over the cream. It's adhesive.

Smoothing the Tegaderm.

Better. Not all better, but on the road to recovery without risk of infection.

Next: Sluggo, you HAVE to eat something.