Teaching the World

If I could describe the Wildlife Center of Virginia in one word, it would be “education”. Everyone who works at the Center is willing to lend their knowledge to teach someone something they didn’t know before walking through the doors. From the tour groups on open-house days that learn about everything that goes into running the Center, to the volunteers, high-school apprentices, community service helpers, interns, and externs who learn the ins and outs of rehabilitation or veterinary medicine – everyone has something to learn and someone to teach them. I have even had the pleasure of learning from an anonymous donor who stopped by the Center and ended up teaching the externs a little something about Bald Eagles in Virginia.

The extern program, as a whole, is very education-based as well. When an extern starts their eight-week program, they are assigned to a senior extern who has been there for four weeks or more. The new extern then learns everything he or she can from their “big sister/brother”. This is a great way for externs to learn from their peers and it also helps the extern gain confidence in doing daily tasks by doing them first with someone who has already successfully completed the task many times. When new vet students come in for their rotations, they have two days when they join the externs and learn as much as they can about the rehabilitation process. Also, for two days during an extern’s eight weeks, we have “vet days” where we learn how the veterinary side of the Center works. The exchange of knowledge from both the rehabilitation side and the veterinary side is amazing; no one is hesitant to ask a question or to answer it.

As an extern, I knew I would be learning every detail of how a “regular” day works at the Center, but what I enjoyed the most was how much effort the rehabbers [Amber Dedrick and Kelli Knight] put into teaching me and the other externs other beneficial wildlife knowledge. I was lucky enough to participate in the extern program during a slower time of the year and was able to gain more knowledge from the rehabbers than I might have during a busier time. Some days we would be finished with our daily tasks so early that Kelli and Amber would find educational articles for us to read and discuss or we would go on field trips to the HawkWatch. Amber and Kelli would find something for us to do that would help us learn outside of the every day, hands-on experience of the Center.

The lessons we would learn during our down-time would relate to something that had happened that week. Near the beginning of my externship, someone asked why the Center did not rehab raccoons, so Kelli gave each of us a parasite or bacteria to research. After we each discussed our selected parasite, we found a common theme, which was that animals who were hosts to these parasites or bacteria did not show any type of symptoms, but were carriers that transmitted the nasty parasites/bacteria.

When baby squirrel season was in full-swing, the preparation of their formula and proper feeding techniques became very important. Amber found articles on how to properly feed a squirrel without aspiration and the precise way to make the squirrels’ formula. These articles were extremely beneficial because they had certain techniques for us to use while feeding squirrels and the article about formula had tables and charts that proved that there was only one best way to make the formula. These articles helped me keep the squirrels alive and healthy.

When raptor season started, we read an article about the reasons for admittance in raptors to rehab centers. This article proved to be very interesting, as one of the main causes was due to toxicity or poisoning. I asked about this and was informed that hunters who use lead-based bullets may inadvertently end up giving raptors lead poisoning because the scavenging raptors eat the dead animals that contain fragments of lead bullets. This proved to be useful later in my externship during one of my vet days when we discussed one of the latest raptors that was admitted to Center due to lead poisoning.

Throughout my externship, I have learned how to cut a blue surgical drape for an aquarium liner, how to make meals for various types of animals, how to properly capture and restraint many different animals, how to most efficiently clean a bear pen, how to sort produce, and so much more. These skills are very beneficial during the externship, but the knowledge I collected during “down-time” is what will stay with me forever. That knowledge is what I will be able to repeat back to people who are curious about what turtles eat or how to identify a bird by its silhouette. The Center has an incredible way of spreading their knowledge to anyone who will listen, and those people who learn even just a little bit from coming to the Center will be better for it.

--Jennifer Roberts
WCV Class of 2013

  

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