When we don’t feel good, we can tell our parents or take ourselves to the doctor to get the opportunity to get better, but how do animals communicate that they don’t feel good?
Showing signs
Animals at Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge won’t be able to verbally communicate with us to let us know they don’t feel good. One of the ways our animal care staff can find out if our animals are sick is if they are eating their food and/or drinking water. Sometimes the weather will effect their eating as well, and our animal care staff is trained and has been around the animals to know the difference. Another way we can tell if our animals are not feeling well is if they are not as active. Even though they are normally more active at night, they might be moving around during the day, and that is when we can tell. When they are moving around, we might be able to tell if they are limping and would need more attention from the vet.
What do we do to help our animals?
Our vet will help take care of the animals by looking at them, either by observing their behavior or by sedating them and looking at them closer in the vet hospital. We can give the animals medicine to help them feel better.
How do we give the large predators, or even the small predators, their medicine?
In order to give the animals medicine, we can hide the medicine in their food or even in meatballs. Animal care staff will go around twice a day to make sure the animals take their medicine.
But how do they get to the vet hospital?
How do these animals get to the hospital for a check-up? With some animals, we are able to entice them into a rollie cart or into our medical van, but for most animals, we will have to sedate them and carry them out of their night houses to get into a rollie cart or into our medical van. Once they get their check-up finished, they go back into their night house the same way.
How can you help?
There are some ways you can help these animals. You can donate to the care of these animals, or you can sponsor an animal, which is a certain amount of money every 3 months that goes into the care, whether it is medical or food, for the entire year you sponsor the animal.