Intakes

     People can be crazy sometimes. Honestly, I don't think it really matters what profession you're in; if you deal with people, you deal with crazy. Often growing up we hear the phrase, "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say it." At the clinic this phrase can be adapted to, "If you are shocked into silence by what the hell someone just said, remaining silent with a pained smile is still okay." Most importantly because you must remember that everyone comes into the clinic with good intentions. For example, there was one woman who, bringing in a baby opossum, told me that last night to feed it before bringing it to us she fed it human breast milk. Then she showed me a video of the opossum lapping it from a syringe. I smiled weakly and had her fill out the intake form. Later when the assistant came in and looked at the paperwork she asked me, "I'm sorry does this for say she fed it human breast milk?" I stared at her with all seriousness, replying yes and she walked away muttering under her breath.

     Another notable intake was a juvenile opossum from a very elderly couple who had found it orphaned and had raised it like a pet. The man came in with it on his arm and told us the story of how his wife and he had become attached to the now very tame and friendly opossum. They felt bad taking him for the wild and were debating turning her in when 'a sign from the universe came.' This sign happened when the three of them (man, wife, opossum) were chilling on their porch and the opossum bolted across, caught a frog, ripped off its head and ate it. Fun fact: opossums are omnivores with thumbs just like us. They can also swim. We then told them that the opossum would be fine with us and if she was too friendly to release back into the wild that she would join our educational program opossums in the zoo. The man then wanted to go take his pet opossum on his arm on a tour of the zoo and we told him that would be a bad idea.

      

      Apparently, over the phone, a lot of people make huge species identification mistakes. For example, one person called in saying they found a bald eagle chick when it was really a tuxedo colored pidgin. A few times a year we get people calling saying they found injured golden eagles when in fact they have been either a red-tailed hawk or a chicken. So when I was there for the next golden eagle call, my supervisor rolled his eyes and said, "Just make sure it's not a duck."

      Overall, Most people come in caring very deeply for these animals that they have found and leave it in our care. I don't mean to seem condescending in this post, usually, it really is a great pick me up to know just how much some people are concerned for something so small.