Animal Magic

Growing up, if you loved Bambi, Watership Down, Daktari, Skippy, Old Yeller, Animal Magic or Dr Dolittle, then prepare to be possessed by the green-eyed monster. A couple of weeks ago, Hubby and I ‘enjoyed’ (such an inadequate word sometimes) an afternoon at Tiggywinkles, “the world’s leading wildlife hospital.”

We were shown around by the Head Nurse, who wore blue scrubs. At first I thought the look was rather clinical and that maybe battle fatigues or camouflage dress would put her patients more at ease. I’ll come back to that later. She was accompanied by a volunteer helper – who had arranged this gig for us (eternally grateful). Her own blue outfit was splattered with bird poo, her job being to feed the baby birds, mainly swallows, which proliferate Tiggys at this time of year. Normally we hug; today I took a step back.

Being a very hot day, I’d donned my thinnest, floatiest, cheapest summer dress and open-toed sandals. I had planned to wear the same thing again to Windsor Castle in a couple of days’ time (she said nonchalantly) and was determined not to get it dirty. So when we ventured into the big-bird room – kites, buzzards and ravens amongst them – I was warned to watch where I trod. Put it this way, what had messed the volunteer’s scrubs was literally not a patch on what was gumming up the floor. To be honest, I wasn’t that bothered. I was too busy gawping at the size of the raven – he was humungous! I shuddered at the thought of him flying into my picture window, which crows do occasionally, or pecking at the west window to try and attack the life-size sculpture of a barn owl on the inside window ledge. It’s not for nothing that ravens guard the Tower of London.

I also couldn’t get over the fact that, when threatened, buzzards go on the attack but red kites play dead. Slipping on the floor, I decided their deposits would keep me on guard more readily than the threat of a nasty peck.

And then I handled a hedgehog. Two actually. I was in raptures. The babies epitomise the concept of ‘cute’. They don’t look real. They look like Beatrix Potter doodled them when she was stuck for an idea for a story. The adults, on the other hand, look like something out of Star Trek, and when they curl up into their balls, the phrase “Phasers to Ouch” comes to mind.

Moving on to the shrew, after his behaviour that afternoon (it was a ‘he’ as we found out shortly) he is now a legend in his own lunchbox – shrews need to eat 80-90% of their body weight every day to survive. Adult shrews are up to 8cm in length, plus a 4cm tail. This one was only a pup. Tiny tiny tiny. It begged the question, how did anyone see him in the first place? and how did anyone know he was sick or injured? and how did the vets/nurses treat it without tying him, or themselves, in knots. Nurse picked him up. He wrapped his tiny arms around her little finger so he could face me. His long snout twitched, his concave tail lifted, and the most uniform, hair-thin arch of projectile shrew-pee reached my dress. A fibre optic thread could not have been more precise.

The volunteer helper handed me wet wipe after wet wipe, trying not to laugh, at both me and also Hubby who was effing and blinding because he didn’t have his camera ready. To try and make amends, she thrust a bottle of warm milk into my hand (I’d rather have had tea) and took me to a darkened room that housed two baby deer – a roe and a fallow. If baby hedgehogs monopolise ‘cute’, then fawns never fail to bring on heart palpitations. I think it’s the large dark pools for eyes, noses ripe for lipstick, and knock knees. I crouched down and stretched as far as I could with the bottle of milk towards the fallow fawn. She sniffed at it, licked it, then turned up that kissable nose in disgust. The roe stayed seated, eyeing me suspiciously. 

“You’re wearing the wrong colour,” said Nurse, nodding at my white dress with green ferns. “They’re used to blue scrubs.”

I thought about asking to borrow a set of scrubs but, not wanting to be offered any that were splattered with poo, I cut my losses and snuck out into the daylight and the badger pen. Two pubescent badgers followed us as we walked round. It reminded me of a badger who tapped on my French window one evening (I think he was actually playing with his own reflection) looking a bit frazzled. I put some corn, nuts and a bowl of water on the patio, which he wolfed down, then he disappeared. He reappeared at the same time the next evening to show me how much healthier he looked. With a smile and a wave of thanks, he trotted down the drive and I never saw him again.

Back to Tiggywinkles, I got very excited when we were cooing (not twit-twooing) at the owls, and Nurse said that when they were recovered she could have them released into our owl box in our oak tree. Cometh the day, the chap from the Bucks Owl and Raptor Group arrived with a Land Rover full of owls, including two Tawnys for us. He grabbed the ladder and headed towards the oak tree. Just as he placed the ladder against the trunk, a stock dove (a pigeon by any other name) flew out of the owl box. Sure enough, when he lifted the cover off the box, a huge nest could be seen housing several week-old pigeon chicks. By law, he had to leave them alone. I went into whine-mode and asked if he could turf them out so I could have my owls.

“Certainly not,” he lectured. “They’re protected; they’re on the amber list.”

“But there’s thousands of ’em round here,” I protested. “One nest won’t be missed. I won’t look. I won’t tell.”

Unimpressed, he put the ladder back in the Land Rover and drove off with my Tawny Owls to see if the church down the road could accommodate them. I couldn’t help thinking about the American TV comedy Friends, and the one about Phoebe’s policeman-boyfriend who shot a cooing-pigeon while they were lying in bed one morning. She ditched him; I’d have cooked him ham and eggs for breakfast.

Fast-forward to today. I was getting lunch, and Hubby appeared in the kitchen, appalled that a bird had got caught in some netting in the paddock and seemed to be fatigued. I grabbed a towel, latex gloves and scissors and followed him to the bird, a recently fledged sparrow who seemed to be playing dead as if he were a red kite. As soon as I touched him to see how badly tangled he was, he shot me the evil eye as if he’d peck me to bits, à la buzzard. Making soft, soothing sounds, I gently began snipping the netting close to his feathers. Hubby got all excited and asked me in a sudden loud voice how I was getting on. The bird pooped all over my latex glove, and I shot Hubby my evil eye. Couple of seconds later, I snipped the last bit, and he was off into a nearby tree before I could check him over for any injuries.

“You’re welcome,” I yelled after him sarcastically.

Over cup of tea this afternoon, after I’d sent Hubby’s photos of my bird-rescue to the volunteer helper at Tiggys, asking if I might be offered a job, I read the latest issue of Geographical, the monthly mag from the Royal Geographical Society. One article seemed pretty apt: the annual harvest of young gannets on a remote Scottish Island. It’s a long-standing tradition that has caught the eye and the ire of so-called conservationists, which in turn has drawn polite accusations of ‘urban bullying’ from the locals.

As one ‘harvest-sympathiser’ said, “… there is a danger that the [agricultural] market fails, so who is to say we won’t need these [harvesting] skills in the future?”

Well said. While I love wildlife, including gannets but not so much pigeons, I also care for human beings, who’ve always killed animals for food, for a reason. Come Armageddon, when man’s existential survival (I think that’s a triple tautology) depends on these ancient hunting and harvesting traditions, I hope the hunters and harvesters remember who supported them, and who threatened them and their families, and distribute the food accordingly.

In the meantime, I need to perfect my pigeon-roasting skills.