Toco Toucan (Ramphastos toco) (by Lip Kee)
I’ve been seeing these guys everyday! I’ve been so bone tired coming home everyday, but am learning so much about avian health. Today I tried my first endoscopic sexing and failed, and I ended up killing my patient on the table.
This is sad, but the vet told me we all kill animals…sooner or later. Well, this is my number one. I straight up lanced its liver with the trochar. Luckily for me this patient was due to be euthanised, and because it was under anaesthesia, it died fairly peacefully and unconscious.
One of the biggest challenges for me has been learning all the bird names. The keepers are amazing at what they do.
Biggest excitement for me today was giving fluids subcutaneously to a king penguin. I couldn’t help thinking ‘Eeeeeee…’ the whole time. It waddled its way towards us and away from us. The keeper had to hug it too, to restrain it.
I also had an acute onset of pain on the lateral aspect of my knee today. Had to limp my way to work and ungracefully rush for a seat on the train so I could sit. I ended up looking it up and I think I have ilio-tibial band syndrome, also known as ITBS. So I grabbed some bandages and vetwrap from the hospital and tried to wrap my own knee below the patella…and it worked! Didn’t take all the pain away but certainly helped a great deal.
I paid for it though, when I had to strip the bandages off…
Going to ice it now and lie down and watched the season 7 finale of House MD.
