ours goes to eleven

[boxofdelights]

The saddest turkey vulture I have ever seen came in to the raptor center last week. They tried twice to do a blood test for lead poisoning, but the machine just said ERROR. So they took another sample and sent it over to CSU. Their machine said, even for a turkey vulture, that is a lethal lead level. For a bald eagle, 0.2 ppm of lead in the blood is toxic, 1 ppm is lethal. Turkey vultures are tougher, but this bird's blood had 11.8 ppm of lead.

For lead poisoning, we do chelation. It takes I think seven weeks. For a level that high, we're definitely going to have to do it more than once. While that's going on, we have to try to keep the bird's organs from shutting down.

As long as the bird keeps telling us I ATEN'T DEAD YET we'll keep working.

Comments

[lilysea]

That sounds emotionally hard! :(

You people are doing good work! ^_^ <3

[boxofdelights]

It is hard, and there have been times in my life that I didn't have the emotional stamina. But there's nothing to compare with the feeling of returning a bird to the wild, knowing "I made a difference to that one."

[muninnhuginn]

I do hope it pulls through: such lovely birds.

[boxofdelights]

Thanks! It has a long way to go, but it is still trying.

[loligo]

Good luck! A little town next door to us has a Vulture Festival each year during their migration season. When I lived in Michigan, vultures were a rare sighting, but they are everywhere around here and I will regularly pass flocks of 5-10 of them eating roadkill along the highway on my way to work.

[boxofdelights]

Thanks! Eating roadkill might get you hit by a car, but it is still safer than eating game that was shot with lead pellets.

[twistedchick]

I hope that your vulture pulls through this and isn't so distressed that it starts barfing its food (which they do when they feel upset or threatened.) Where it's being treated, it's probably getting something like wet dog food, right? Has to be on an equivalent level with gourmet roadkill.

*thinking good thoughts for a large feathered dinosaur descendant*

[boxofdelights]

The lead poisoning makes its digestive tract stop processing, so the rehabbers had to put a tube into its crop and suck out the putrefying food in there, which smelled as bad as you might imagine. Right now it's getting "liquid carnivore diet", straight into the stomach (bypassing the crop). It still smells pretty bad.

[replyhazy]

Poor bird. Good luck.

[boxofdelights]

Thank you.

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for helping a vulture out

(For reasons unknown to me, I live near a t.v. Vortex. It's common to look out my front door and see 3 to 6 of them cruising overhead in wide ovals.)

[boxofdelights]

I used to live next to big cottonwood that a lot of vultures returned to every year! After I got over that cartoon-induced feeling of "Am I doomed?" I saw them as a reliable sign of spring.

[seascribble]

I am only familiar with lead levels in toddlers (for obvious job related reasons). How does a bird get such a high lead level? Through eating lots of dead rodents who've ingested it? I hope he pulls through.

[boxofdelights]

Usually by eating something that was killed with lead shot. Bald eagles and ospreys might get lead poisoning from abandoned lead sinkers, but turkey vultures do not go fishing.

Raptors and hunters both have territories; I think this one's territory must overlap with a hunter who isn't interested in eating his kill.

[seascribble]

Oh. That seems like the kind of thing that would be easily preventable. :(

[brigantine]

Poor vultchy! We get a lot of them soaring around here, checking out the beach for dead fish. I hope your efforts at restoration will triumph!

Where on earth would the poor dude/dudette get so much lead, anyway? Maybe eating something that had buckshot in it? :P

[boxofdelights]

Thank you! Yes, most likely from eating things that someone shot but didn't take away; maybe all the buckshot ended up in the gutpile, or maybe the hunter wounded an animal but lost it.

[eeyorerin]

Oh, birdpal. Hang in there, buddy.

[boxofdelights]

It is looking much better this week! Which is still a long hard way from good. But better!

[sasha_feather]

Wow!

[boxofdelights]

It is looking better this week! Holding its head higher than its body even!