On a typical 7:00 am morning, only a few cars can be seen in the parking lot after entering the opened gate, since the visitors, part of the staff members, and volunteers will not arrive until around one hour later. PAWS wildlife center at Lynwood is built on the same campus as the PAWS companion animal shelter. Facing the entering road, to our left is the companion animal shelter and to our right, passing through a paved pathway surrounded by berry bushes and trees, is the wildlife center.
The wildlife center is a double-floored house painted in a light warm-yellowish color with a large cat patio on its side for demonstration and cat sculpture. The first floor contains the lobby, exam room, staff offices, vet office, small mammal nursery, ward, surgery room, radiology room, storage closets, lab, kitchen, a restroom, and a door toward runs. The basement is divided into the laundry room, waterfowl nursery, basement pool pads, room of requirement, pop-tops, and baby bird nursery (BBN). Most of the animal enclosures are built outside of the facility due to species’ diverse requirements of space and health concerns. Other than the pool pads, for waterfowl, and runs, for staff only animals such as bears, coyotes, and bobcats, which are located right outside of the building, all other animals that are out of the nurseries and ward are located up hill.
I spend most of my time in the baby bird nursery (BBN) as an intern in the juvenile songbird program taking care of baby birds. The morning shift and night shift only differ in the tasks covered in the period. Among all the duties as an intern downstairs, the most crucial and most time and effort-consuming task is feeding birds at the right time within the reasonable time limit according to the BBN feeding board. The fluid therapy, morning shift cage cleaning, diet preparation, and medication start at 7 am. A new day’s feeding starts at 8 in the morning from stage 1 birds to stage 5 birds of which the process may take up to 50 minutes to 1 hour on a fairly busy day. Fortunately, volunteers begin to flow in around 8:20, therefore, increasing the speed of the first feed.
Every stage has 30 minutes longer feeding interval than the previous stage except for stage 0 (15min). Though we have stage 0 on the board, the possibility of intaking a patient that young are rare. The most rapid feed we have for the most time is stage 1 with 30 minutes intervals. And due to the rapidity, the amount of time used for feeding stage 1, and stage 2 which has 1 hr intervals, is strictly limited. A typical time one should spend on one group of stage 1 birds is 3 minutes.
From 8 and onward, the feed circles interchange between food A and B until 8 pm in the evening, when all feeding ends. Closing checklist and rest of the evening chores are done in the next 2 hr from 8 to 10. Usually, the center is closed to the public at 7 in the evening, but some occasional late-night patients arrive around 8 or even 9.
At night, the gate is finally locked by rehabbers after the volunteer, interns, and seasonals gradually leave after 10 pm. And thus ends the whole day in BBN.
Experiences like Yizhen Zhao’s are made possible by the Whitman Internship Grant, which provides funding for students to participate in unpaid internships at nonprofit, some for-profit, and government organizations. We are happy to be sharing blog posts from students who were supported by either a summer, fall, spring, or year-long grants at organizations, businesses, and research labs all around the world. To learn how you could secure a Whitman Internship Grant or host a Whitman intern at your organization, contact us at ccec_info@whitman.edu.