Week 12: Overwhelming

I started this week looking forward to learning about how to care take for the birds of prey, but it was quickly over-shadowed by something I was not looking forward to. As a part of this program, and as a part of the animal world/business in general, it's a simple fact that some animals eat other animals. Heck, we do it. So, it should come at not too much of a surprise to anyone to find that some facilities kill these animals to be fed out. There are several sources you can procure pre-killed and frozen foods from like we do with our mice/rats and chicks. However, since some facilities will require you to do the killing yourself, the school here has decided that is something we should be prepared to deal with. They teach us a humane and approved way to euthanize food animals by hand, specifically pigeons. Any other animal we get live here is euthanized with gas. Just in case any of you are just down right disgusted with the idea of any of this, let me just give you a frame of reference we look through. We are getting these pigeons donated to us from a breeder. They are all perfectly fine and healthy. So now I hear you ask, "But why kill something that is fine?". The answer to that is that these are pigeons the breeder does not want for some reason of their own. If left to their own devices, they will just kill the pigeons en mass and discard the bodies into the trash. Therefore, these are pigeons destined for doom anyways. We take this opportunity to take these birds with no health problems/disease and kill them humanely, with little stress. We then utilize their bodies/wings/legs (pretty much everything) for our animals. Several primates enjoy getting a wing to groom continuously. The carnivores enjoy them for other, far more obvious, reasons. Believe you me, every last animal given one of these parts, truly, whole-heartedly, enjoys the heck out of these things. The humane technique we are taught is a cervical dislocation. Cervical refers to the vertebra in the neck region; dislocation refers to severing that articulation of the spinal cord. This creates a painless (that we know of) and instant death. To ensure that this dislocation is effectively done and we aren't left with ones that suffer for a few seconds when someone couldn't quite get it right, we are instructed to pull the head completely off of the body in one motion. Hopefully that little explanation puts any questioning minds at ease. At least rest assured of the fact that you don't have to do the killing yourself. I am not that lucky. On Monday afternoon, November third, in the year 2008, I took a life. In one swift motion, a tiny soul was snuffed out by my bare hands, which were then spattered with some blood. It is absolutely nothing I remotely enjoyed, and the only reason I got through it was by totally disconnecting myself emotionally and mentally from what was really happening. I never looked at what I did. Just got things situated, looked up, and pulled, then it was over. It was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be, and I'm a lot more emotionally OK with what happened than I thought I would be as well. That's not to say that I don't tear up and maybe shake a little bit when I really sit and consider my actions, but this is not something I anticipate doing much, if any, more of in my life. All the pigeons wore little numbered ankle bracelets, like so many birds are tagged with, and I have one that I will keep with me forever as some type of reminder/penance for what I did. The reminder part isn't necessarily all bad though; it is also a reminder of things myself and others are well capable of doing on multiple levels.
I promise, that's over, we'll just talk about happy or neutral things now! The rest of the week, I learned about reptiles! I am in the reptiles area this week and next week for projects, so their little scaly lives are in my hands. I'm not loving it, but it's not bad either. The one thing I can't get used to is the handling of all the bugs. We have crickets and Madagascar hissing cockroaches, and they both kinda creep me out. The cockroaches aren't too bad as long as I initiate the contact, but I just can't stand the crickets at all. I really would rather be out there working my butt off for animals that I understand and really do know how to take care of. In here, the tiniest little mistake could spell death for these guys. The birds of prey are pretty easy to take care of: they only need feeding once a day, in the PM, so the vervets are the ones that will actually keep me busy next week. I'll leave you with that. Hopefully that wasn't too much of a downer for you, next week will be cool with cool pictures!