It’s time to look again on 2023! Test our weblog between Christmas and New Yr’s for quite a lot of tales and recollections of 2023 from the workers and volunteers of the Wildlife Heart of Virginia.
In the course of the time I’ve spent on the Wildlife Heart of Virginia, I’ve developed a keenness for all of my opossum sufferers. Each quickly turns into my favourite affected person to work with and they’re those I look ahead to seeing day by day. Opossums are extremely resilient creatures and tolerate the stresses of rehabilitation nicely, so we will perform extra advanced or intensive remedy plans for them in comparison with a number of the different species we see. This yr, I noticed quite a few opossums, every with their distinctive points. A few of my favourite opossum sufferers have been an opossum (#22-3694) trapped and mildly burnt in a grill on the finish of 2022, an enormous opossum (#22-3692) who was severely affected by lead, and a mom opossum (#23-0695) who was injured by a canine and was capable of increase her eight younger in captivity.
However my absolute favourite was opossum #23-2379, who was a big grownup male who was unintentionally trapped on the finder’s property in September. I assisted one in every of our entrance desk members, Lilly, with shifting him from the lure to a crate when he arrived. Once we noticed his face, we each checked out one another with concern as a result of severity and extent of the wound. My first concern was that the opossum’s eye could be ulcerated and never purposeful as a result of excessive pores and skin rigidity in that space. Later, after I accomplished his consumption examination, I discovered that the attention was intact and was immensely relieved as a result of I already beloved this huge opossum. He had a big wound over the left aspect of his face and each of his exterior ears have been lacking, so I suspected he was beforehand burnt. The wound on his face had been therapeutic by itself for a while, which prompted important contracture of the pores and skin on his face, stretching his left eye and shifting his ears to the highest of his head. He was not probably the most aesthetically pleasing opossum however was my favourite instantly. Our college students on the time have been skeptical however I used to be constructive that we might repair this poor man’s face.
The day following his admission, I carried out the primary surgical procedure to restore the wound over his face. Within the weeks following his admission, he ended up requiring a number of surgical procedures as a result of excessive rigidity and important scarring across the wound. We carried out each day wound care to encourage therapeutic and he was a stellar affected person. He grew to become very snug together with his life in rehabilitation and gained some weight and was typically noticed to be sleeping fairly deeply.
After almost two months in care, his wound lastly was utterly closed, and although his face was not like most different opossums, he was nonetheless fitted to launch. Once I went to take him to his launch website, I needed to moderately rudely rouse him from a really deep sleep, which he didn’t appear to understand. As soon as on the launch location, he took his time sniffing the air in his transport field. He spent possibly 5 minutes looking into the forest in entrance of him earlier than he caught a scent and meandered off into the undergrowth.
I’m all the time overjoyed after I get to take part in releases of sufferers whose therapies I’m closely concerned with and due to this fact fairly connected to. I’m grateful for each expertise I’ve right here, each good and dangerous as a result of I can study one thing from each one in every of my sufferers. I’ll proceed having fun with all the little glimmers of hope day by day and rooting for all the opossum sufferers!
– Dr. Olivia, Senior Veterinary Intern
