Remember the news from November of last year, about a man in southern California who hoarded over 2,000 rats? (He was featured on the season 3 finale of A&E's Hoarders.) And you may recall that the rats were rescued and brought up to be housed at Andy's Pet Shop in San Jose. Well, there are still 300 of those rats available for adoption at Andy's and one of my instructors arranged for some of them to be fixed at Foothill. Ms. Gregory is a major rodent lover and has many connections in the rodent world. So she persuaded a couple of vets to donate their services and North Star Rescue (the guys who were the main force behind the rescue and have a wealth of information about the rats on their site) brought several of the rats to the lab yesterday to be neutered or spayed.
Ms. G asked for student volunteers to help with checking the rats in (which included putting together medical charts, weighing the rats, drawing up and administering premedications), surgical prep (clipping, cleaning, setting up monitoring equipment), assisting during surgery (monitoring heart rate, respiration rate, etc.), and assisting the rats during recovery (keeping them warm, administering pain meds, antibiotics and subcutaneous fluids). It was a rare opportunity to be involved in such an endeavor so I signed up; I wound up working from 9-1:30 yesterday. It was amazing! We were put into pairs and given a rat, which we followed from the start of the process through recovery. I found it all incredibly interesting (and, of course, a bit stressful - I definitely didn't want to make any mistakes!) and made sure to take some pictures. Only two of the following photos are of anything "gross" - I took them during the actual surgery - so you should feel safe while clicking through them. :o) I honestly would consider bringing one home if I didn't already house two gregarious and mental animals already... I know most of you aren't rat people but the rats are super friendly and good with people; if you know anyone who's interested, you should pass the info along and send'em to Andy's to scoop one (or two!) up.
My partner, Manda, named our girl rat "Skunky" because of her unique facial markings. We were the second group to go so we were both very nervous about making a mistake but everything went smoothly (whew!). Skunky is an older female (about 1 1/2 or so) but she was very friendly and frisky - she was hard to anesthetize! I was so glad her surgery went well; she's a sweet girl and had who knows how many litters in that house. I hope she finds a good home to live out the rest of her life.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment