Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society  

The famous comedic phrase that encapsulated my first 3 weeks at MARS was, “you’ll get some training one of these days”. Walking into the clinic on my first morning I was overwhelmed by an overflowing board, with patients even doubled or quadrupled (squirrelies!) on some lines. I was completely overwhelmed with the diversity of patients, treatments and diets. In sheer survival mode I desperately hung to the tails of two of the most amazing interns, Teela and Jenny. Although I had previous veterinary experience, in no way did I believe in just a few short weeks I would be working as fluently and confidently as these two were. The learning curve was steep and the days pushed 14 hours but together they taught me almost everything I would come to learn over the next few weeks. I’m pleased to say that in no time, I found myself to be absolutely comfortable with treatments, the endless cleaning lists and public interactions.

A few of my favorite cases were:

~The onslaught of eagles we incurred, 8 in just 3 weeks! All of whom I am happy to report are making great recoveries.  These birds were awe striking and majestic and completely captured my heart

 ~“Lucky” the fawn, who was hit by a truck and required surgery to fix a badly fractured hind leg. Getting him stable after his accident took a lot of dedicated hard work as he was in a cast for 5 weeks. He kept us all running throughout the day catering to his every beckon. Spoiled was an understatement for that little guy. He, however demanding, was beyond a doubt one of my most memorable success stories. Good luck little buddy!

 ~And how could anyone not fall in love with the seal pups. One of the most memorable pups was “Road Trip” who had Teela and me running up to Telegraph Cove at 10 o’clock at night to pick him up and bring him in.

 I don’t know if there are enough thank you’s in the world to extend out to the amazing volunteers and supporting veterinary teams for everything thing they did while I was there and still continue to do. You all do such great work and because of you success stories are possible. I want to thank Maj and Keith for this opportunity. It takes a very special kind of dedication to be able to wake up 365 days a year to such an extensive organization.

 I cannot stress enough that an internship dealing with wildlife rescue and rehabilitation is by no means a cake walk. The job is dirty, demanding, exhausting, frustrating, heartbreaking and at many times thankless. One needs to be prepared to be pushed beyond any of their preconceived physical, mental, emotional and interpersonal boundaries. However, I found that once my exhaustion wore off and I had time for reflection, it became apparent to me just how far myself and all of the other interns had come during our stay. Each of us walked in knowing little or nothing about wildlife rehabilitation but we all left having gained an extensive wealth of knowledge plus the complete confidence in our ability to assess and treat any case presented to us. Such an achievement is astounding to those outside the experience that I tell my stories to. They can’t believe what we were able to learn and accomplish in such a short period of time; looking back, I agree.

What excites me the most about completing this experience is that I now know in the future I will be able to deal with anything a rehab centre brings into me. Whether it is a squirrel or an owl in my mind it will be worth trying something because if I have learned anything during my time at MARS it is that if you don’t try then you will never know. Going out on a limb and trying new treatments is how medicine advances. It is this lesson that I am most thankful for.

 Amanda