The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes Read Online Free PDF

ill or injured. Then they simply dump it somewhere, often to die. If the animal is lucky, it ends up at a wildlife center like ours. Even so, they need to know when to intervene and when to leave nature alone. I wanted to make sure the judge hearing the case was aware of these points.
    When the day came, I made certain to arrive at the court-house on time. The testimony proved quite entertaining. “I thought it would be pretty,” the woman explained to the court, referring to the earrings. “You can get a little kid's ears pierced. What's the difference between a person's ears and a baby deer's?” When a reporter from the James Madison University student newspaper took a picture of one of the defendants, she responded with an obscene gesture—a photo the newspaper was only too happy to publish on its front page.
    Ultimately, the cruelty charge was dropped when the women agreed to the illegal-possession-of-wildlife charge. They were fined the exact amount of money I calculated it cost us to house and treat Earring Boy until his release, which was then paid to the WCV in reimbursement. I'd been looking forward to offering my testimony, and when they cut the deal, I felt more than a little disappointed. The two women remained incredulous about the charges to the end.
    Earring Boy thrived. Early that fall, when he weighed about sixty pounds and had lost his baby spots, he was released in a remote wooded part of Augusta County not far from the West Virginia line, along with six other juvenile deer that we'd raised as a group. They bounded off into the piney woods together, white tails held high, a signal to each other but also a good-bye to us. The group would stay together for a while, to help each other watch for predators—and for women bearing earrings. But eventually, they would disperse and mature into adult deer.
    Watching the fawns disappear into the woods, I felt a mix of emotions. Veterinarians can't help but become attached to the animals they work with, be they companion animals like cats and dogs or zoo animals like lions and tigers. But wildlife rehabilitation work is a special field. The goal of veterinarians who choose to work in this setting is to release their patients back into the wild, never to see them again. These patients rarely say thank you. More often than not, they prefer to strike out with tooth, hoof, and talon in an effort to escape—without a backward glance.
    Wildlife rehabilitation veterinarians don't get many kisses from puppies. But that white tail held high, when a successfully rehabilitated deer bounds off into the woods on its way back to a life in the wild, is a pretty sweet reward in itself.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Ned Gentz received his doctor of veterinary medicine degree from Colorado State University in 1990 and completed an internship in zoo, wildlife, and exotic animal medicine at Kansas State University. Since 2000, he has been associate veterinarian and research coordinator at the Albuquerque Biological Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Previously he was director of veterinary services at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, where Animal Planet routinely filmed him at work for the television series
Wildlife Emergency.
He also served as a clinical instructor of zoo and wildlife medicine at Cornell University. Dr. Gentz is board certified by the American College of Zoological Medicine. In his current position, he volunteers his time as the consulting veterinarian for the Zuni tribe's Eagle Rescue Program. He finds this work especially inspiring.

Kachina's Bones
    by Becky Yates, MS, DVM
    M artine called me late on a Friday afternoon from her vacation house in Arizona.
    â€œBecky, my dear, I need you to come right away. Something is wrong with little Kachina.”
    Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do was drive five hours from California to Arizona to see a bear cub. I clicked my cell phone off and asked myself for the hundredth time, “Why do I work for