… And just as crazy and wonderfully as it began, my externship at the Wildlife Center has ended. It is hard for me to believe the vast amount of experience and knowledge I have gained in just eight short weeks.
I am very thankful to have been part of the rehabilitation externship program at the Wildlife Center of Virginia. Overall, my externship was everything I imagined and more.
My first experience with the Wildlife Center of Virginia was when I was in fifth-grade, and staff members from the WCV presented a program at Camp Albemarle. We were shown several animals from the Wildlife Center and we were told the stories of how they came to live at the Center. At the end of the presentation we were given an owl pellet for dissection. I was hooked.
I began my eight-week rehabilitation externship with the Wildlife Center of Virginia on May 16, and what a journey it has been! In just two months I have learned how to prepare songbird meals, exercise raptors, tube-feed opossums, and bottle-feed fawns. When asked to write this blog I had about a hundred ideas pop into my head. How can you choose just one?! Then on July 7, two fledgling Ospreys from Smith Mountain Lake State Park came through the Center’s doors.
When I first applied to the rehabilitation externship program at the Wildlife Center of Virginia I originally thought it would be a good opportunity to expand my wildlife knowledge.
I began my eight-week rehab externship on May 2, and I can’t believe how quickly it is coming to an end. When starting this blog post, I contemplated writing about a “typical day” as a rehab extern at the Wildlife Center of Virginia. However, one of the first things you learn when beginning work at the Center is that there is no such thing as a typical day. The routine changes on a daily basis, depending on what task you’ve been assigned for the morning.
How do you begin to tell someone about a two-month adventure, where you find yourself doing things that you think are amazing … things that others may not even know exist?
During my four weeks as a veterinary student extern at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, I have caught a Bald Eagle out of an enclosure, surgically removed the aural abscesses on an Eastern Box Turtle, and saw the release of a woodchuck that was “my” patient when he presented … and I do not know where the time has gone.
We live on several acres in Western Albemarle in an old-growth forest of massive oak trees, poplars and mountain laurel. We have always had large dogs and many years ago fenced in our property so that the dogs had plenty of freedom to run and explore in the woods without wandering away or chasing deer.
Earlier this month, Nikki, a veterinary student, and I had the chance to tag along with the Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries to help examine, band, and attach transmitters to Bald Eagle chicks.
See who is currently featured on the Center's Critter Cams!