Week Eight – Movin' on up

After my marathon of a post last week I thought I’d take it easy and give you all some updates on my progress and how the animals are doing.

So I’ve now graduated to tubing. Most of the other interns were chomping at the bit to try it, but I was very reluctant to give it a try. I felt I was just getting comfortable with restraining and then I was to be tossed into something that involves a lot more risk to the animal. I had received some instruction from the seasonal girls and Elizabeth about how to insert the tube, what to look and listen for, and how to withdraw the tube, but I still couldn’t help but think of the “What ifs?” What if I went down the trachea instead of the esophagus? What if I heard stomach sounds but was actually in the lungs? What if I didn’t pull the tube out properly and he aspirates formula? And so on. Luckily for me we went over these worst case scenarios and what to do when they present themselves. My fears were abated slightly but I had that nagging feeling in the back of my head.

On my Monday Tim took Laura and I out back to condoville and gave us our tubing tutorial. He talked us through tubing our first animal and then sat back and supervised us as we tubed our second seal. I seemed to do everything correctly. The seal was still alive when I was through. It was a success? Of course my confidence grew the more I tubed. Michelle was there watching over my shoulder for the next few days as I practiced the basics Tim had taught us. After I had that all down the next thing to focus on was style. Just like with restraining I got the basics down that everyone must do correctly and then I worked on how I open the mouth, how I hold the head and how I keep the mouth open for the tuber. I took things I liked about the seasonal girls’ style and made them my own. I also avoided things that others did that made me uncomfortable. I liked it when the tuber talked to me and told me what they were doing every step along the way. As a restrainer I had to focus on the animal and not on what the tuber was doing so it was nice when I was told that meds were being administered, or that formula was coming, or that she was crimping off the tube and pulling out. So I talk my restrainer’s ear off when tubing. I also worked on where I would crimp the tube, how many times I crimped before I pulled the tube out. Again the more I tubed the more I was comfortable with how I was tubing.

Well I wasn’t the only one moving on to bigger and better things… Gasket moved into ODL 5. This was the big pre-release pool area. Once we were confident in knowing Gasket was eating dead herring on his own and that he had a clean bill of health he was moved into the big house. I would guesstimate that the pool is 20 ft in diameter and no more than 10 ft deep, which meant lots of room for Gasket to swim around in. This move also meant he was getting less human interaction. As the kids move from the totes in the inside hallway, to condoville, to the ODL’s they receive less and less contact with us. As soon as the seals are on fish we minimize our contact as much as possible. Only entering the ODL’s twice a day to spray off the decks and throwing their fish over the fence or using the fish cannon system. The fish cannons are used in the big pool to eject fish right into the pool for the seals to eat. It is a series of heavy duty water hoses hooked up to the salt water system where we can drop a fish into the hose and the water pressure pushes the fish along the length of hose into the pool. Essentially Gasket is fed fish where we want him to be fed without him even seeing us.

During this past week we saw a new addition to rehab come in. A female Harbour Seal came to us from Homer. We had gotten a call from a network member in Homer about a pup alone on a busy beach. The mom was seen hanging around nearby, but the amount of people in the area prevented her from reuniting with her pup. The decision was made to pick up and transport the pup to us. She came in relatively good health (9.5 kg). She had some lacerations on her hind flippers, but other than that she was in great shape. Since she seemed relatively healthy I decided to name her before anyone else got a chance. I chose Spark Plug and everyone else seemed pleased with my choice. We started swimming her in the shallow 50/50 mix a few days after her arrival. Day by day she progressed to a higher water level and a water mix with less and less warm water. She seemed to take to the water like Gasket did and was very active during her swims. Spark Plug wasn’t even here a week before she was eating fish. She joined the ranks of our fish eating seals: Gasket, Muffler, Diesel, Gear, Manifold and Clutch. This left us with only three seals to tube: Piston, Wiper and Spring. I felt as if we were going to tube these guys forever and there they were growing up on us. Now I understand what is meant when a parent would say, “They’re just growing up so fast.”