Hi-
I read with pleasure Barbara Wilson-Clay's posting about baby birds.
Last week I rescued 2 baby bunnies from the clutches of my usually gentle
cat. The poor little things fit in the palm of my hand. I was about to let
them go when I noticed again how little they were. So I called my father, a
retired veterinarian. I was hoping he would tell me they would be fine, but
he responded, "If you let them go, they're goners. You know what to do." And
I did, having fed countless baby bunnies as a child after our collie spent
summers making "gifts" of them to us. After losing about 10 little bunnies
by experimenting with various recipes for artificial bunny milk, we had
talked with a colleague of dad's who had an interest in wildlife. Straight
condensed milk was the thing. So we fed, and I fed, these little critters
every 3 - 4 hours with a 5 cc syringe, carefully warming the milk, holding
the bunnies, experimenting with different techniques to get Fred bunny to
eat (Bonnie bunny ate just fine, but Fred bunny didn't get it at first. Fred
and I had some 45-minute feeding sessions. We will not discuss whether their
names were gender-accurate...my kids named them.) All the while I'm thinking
how much easier this would be if they were just with their mother, getting
bunny milk like they were supposed to! So anyway, after putting heart and
soul into these bunnies, letting my house go for a week, even finding a
"bunny sitter" for a day, I am happy to report that Fred and Bonnie bunny
successfully chewed their way out of their home and released themselves into
my home office. They were then re-released into the "wild." : )
So this story has a happy ending, but I couldn't help but think of
all that they were missing from only drinking condensed milk, etc. The
strange thing is, anyone who has ever worked with animals instinctively
knows that if you find a baby, you find its mother or find another mother so
it can have breastmilk. Anything else is a poor substitute, and the little
creatures who don't get breastmilk usually don't thrive, they survive, if
that. Why is it so hard for some to see that this applies to human babies
also? It was just an interesting thought to ponder while I watched my
laundry pile up during feeding sessions....
Good luck to you and the birds, Barbara!
-Diane
Diane Elliott, MS, RN,C, IBCLC
Maternal-Child Educator
Performance Improvement & Education
Centre Community Hospital
1800 East Park Ave. State College, PA 16803
814-231-7885, fax 814-231-7895
page 814-231-7000 #1276
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