G.G. Behind Bars
G.G. the cat was in the wrong place at the wrong time on a recent Saturday night.
Now he's doing time in the lock up at his vet's office.
G.G. was in the yard of his own home on Ashland Drive when a raccoon wandered onto the property around dusk.
The raccoon, which was small, appeared listless. A woman who was walking a dog in the neighborhood called animal control. Officers captured the raccoon and sent it to a state lab where it was euthanized and its brain tissue tested for rabies. On Tuesday, the test came back positive.
Meanwhile, G.G. was nabbed for guilt by association.
Because he was in the yard with the raccoon, he had to have a rabies booster shot. And he was sentenced to 10 days in quarantine and 25 days under house arrest.
G.G. is the beloved pet of one of my co-workers. She believes strongly that pets should be spayed or neutered and their shots kept up to date.
Lucky for G.G. If he hadn't had his rabies shot, he would either have to be euthanized or put in quarantine for six months, which would cost thousands of dollars. Compared to that option, 10 days isn't so bad.

Geese at Country Park in Greensboro

Crying Fowl

The waterfowl pond at the rehab center is dry now. I no longer hear the geese honking as I walk past to feed the barred owls in the big flight cage across the footbridge. The silence on a humid, August afternoon is bearable only because I know they’ve returned to the wild. And, I hope, won’t need our help ever again.
It’s the ones you can’t help that haunt you.
In May we had a call from a man in Greensboro who had a gosling that had been hit by a car.
It was a glorious Sunday afternoon: blue skies, sunshine, the smell of fresh-mown grass in the air. Traffic had stopped on Battleground Avenue to allow three adult geese and about a dozen goslings cross the street near Wal-Mart. When the goslings were in the middle of the road, a teenager behind the wheel of a car gunned the engine and plowed into them. Several goslings were killed outright. The man saw this one was injured, but alive
Usually we don’t go out to pick up injured animals at the rehab center. We don’t have the resources. But the man who called couldn’t get it to us. You see, he’s homeless, living with his wife in a wooded area along Battleground.
He had made four other phone calls trying to get help for the gosling before he called the rehab center. When I arrived to pick it up, the gosling was in a cardboard box and his wife was fussing over it, making soft cooing sounds as though talking to a baby.
“If I had a gun,” the man said, “I would have shot them for what they done. Those geese never hurt anybody.”
I doubt he would have shot anyone. He’d already shown more humanity than the teens in the car.
The gosling was alert. Occasionally it waggled its tail and made a hissing sound. The black marks of the tire were visible across its back. Still, I held out hope, just maybe, it would survive.
Its injuries were too severe. It was euthanized the next morning. Sometimes that’s the only gift we have to give a suffering animal.
Walking past the waterfowl pond, I think, too, of all the geese that made it this season, that survived man’s cruelty: the gunshot wounds, the broken wings, the poisoning from the pollutants we put in the water.
I like to think of them gliding across a pond somewhere, their honking like laughter ringing through the air.

On a wing and a Prayer
We’re sitting in a parking lot on Elm Street waiting for dusk because that’s when the chimney swifts will begin to appear. In the plastic container next to us, are five chimney swifts raised from babies at the rehab center. They cling to a towel and occasionally beg for the meal worms I’ve brought along, as we wait and watch.
The “scouts” appear first, flying in wide circles above a building downtown. Then at 8 p.m., just as the sun sinks behind the trees, others join them, coming out of the chimney two and three at a time.
By 8:15 dozens are flying above us feeding on insects.
I take the lid off the container and within minutes four of the chimney swifts are gone, flying in gradually higher circles. The fifth, however, is having trouble. It flies low to the ground and twice ends up on the pavement. Each time I pick it up, and it flaps its wings and tries again.
As I watch it fly another circle, barely clearing the few cars parked in the lot, a group of five or six chimney swifts sweep under it and appear to lift it into the group circling the chimney.
And as they do, I feel joyous, the way I suppose some people feel in church on Sunday morning, as though my heart has been touched by something unseen.

A Practical Cat

She came charging out of the darkness more than a year ago. It was about 1:30 in the morning. My boyfriend and I were sitting on the front porch relaxing after work when we heard her. She had a meow that sounded harsh and complaining. I had never seen such a scrawny cat. Her hip bones jutted out; her back felt boney, like a skeleton covered with fur. She might have been a different species from the 15-pound cats inside the house.
I went inside, got her a can of food and watched as she ate. When she finished, she paused long enough to hiss at me, then went running off into the night.
Neighbors in Sunset Hills tell me she’s been around for six years, a sort of neighborhood stray, a cat-about-town. But in the last year she hasn’t strayed far from my porch. She’s been vaccinated for rabies, leukemia and distemper. In May, the vet removed four teeth that were decaying. Fortunately, whoever took care of her before had her spayed.
But many strays aren’t so lucky.
In North Carolina last year, 284,402 cats and dogs ended up at shelters. About 42,000 of them found new homes. The other 219,311 were euthanized, according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Resources.
In six years, one female dog and her offspring theoretically can produce 67,000 dogs. In seven years, one female cat and her offspring can produce 420,000 cats. Most of them will end up at shelters. Most of them will be euthanized.

Gypsy, I call her. A neighbor calls her Singer because she’s so vocal. She answers happily to both names.
She reminds me of Mehitabel, a character created by Don Marquis in a newspaper column he wrote in 1916. Mehitabel claims to be a reincarnation of Cleopatra. Her story is told by Archie, a cockroach who writes his column by jumping on the keys of a typewriter. He writes in lowercase because he can’t use the shift key for capitals.
This is Mehitabel’s song:

i have had my ups and downs
but wotthehell wotthehell
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today I herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell
i wake the world from sleep
as I caper and sing and leap
when I sing my wild free tune
wotthehell wotthehell

When I get home from work at night, I listen for Gypsy’s wild free tune telling me she's hungry. Any worries I’ve brought home vanish when she runs to greet me, purring, stretching out on the pavement in front of me to have her head scratched.
Wotthehell.

What's killing the ducks?
The sick ducks started showing up in Swansboro at the end of July. Police found ten dead ducks and ten sick ones July 26 in a downtown shopping area. The ducks were weak; some of them couldn’t walk, others had respiratory problems. All of them were weak.
The ducks are Muscovies – a breed of white-and-white waterfowl originating in Brazil. What sets them apart is the bright red crest around their eyes and above their beak.
Some people fear the ducks have been poisoned because there have been complaints about them recently, especially about the mess they make on downtown sidewalks. There are actually people who prefer their encounters with nature to be sanitized. Happily, nature refuses to comply.
The state Department of Agriculture has collected tissue samples from the dead ducks and is running tests to try to determine what’s killing them.
One possibility is that the ducks have avian botulism, an ailment common in areas where there are large numbers of waterfowl, especially in warm weather with little rainfall when oxygen levels in water are low.
This is what happens:
An animal dies, and flies lay eggs on its carcass. The botulism toxin is concentrated in the maggots that feed on the dead animals. More ducks eat the maggots and become ill and die, producing more carcasses for maggots.
Until they know what’s making the birds ill, wildlife rehabilitators are doing what they can to help them.
Toni O’Neil, who operates Possumwood Acres Wildlife Sanctuary in Hubert, received three adults and 24 ducklings on Sunday. Four ducklings had to be euthanized.
“I think having to put down the baby ducks is one of the hardest things I ever have to do,” O’Neil said.
All you can do is tell yourself that at least they’re not suffering.