Toucan Treatments and Raw Cat Food

This last week has been marked by the planning of animal diets both at the aviary and home. Every animal, including yourself, has an optimal diet that will keep them running smoothly well into their twilight years. Our job is to find out what that ideal diet is and strive for it.



For Gracie, The National Aviary’s elderly Swainson’s toucan, finding the perfect diet is a little tricky. As you may remember from earlier posts, Gracie has Iron Storage Disease. This disease is common for captive Ramphastids, and though keepers and zoo veterinarians have been treating birds for this disease for many years, theories on the disease’s cause and treatment are numerous.



Taking these theories and weaving them into a treatment regimen is the task that Dr. Fish has charged the interns. This assignment has required us to delve into the latest research available on Iron Storage Disease and tailor a treatment that will keep Gracie happy and healthy through the remainder of her retirement.



Toucans are fruit eaters and the obvious first step is to identify fruits that are low in iron. There are many such fruits and all the fruits that she is currently fed are relatively low in iron. Mission accomplished? Not by a long shot. Iron content is not the only factor in iron absorption: vitamins C and A greatly facilitate the absorption of iron, so foods low in those vitamins are essential.

When you create a chart that displays the milligrams of these nutrients per gram of food you can start to get an idea of the ideal diet for Gracie but this is where the easy part ends. First, to assume that pears are the perfect food for Gracie because it is low in all the “bad” nutrients doesn’t take into account that pears are low in just about everything. What good will pears do Gracie if they merely don’t do damage; the ideal foods should also provide her with “good” nutrients. What are those? Vitamin E for one; Gracie needs her tocopherals to protect her cell membranes from oxidation. Going back over the list of foods low in the “bad” nutrients we get a couple hits: papaya and mango are great sources of vitamin E. The next problem to solve: will she eat it? It turns out that she loves papaya, a fruit that is usually a staple for most captive toucans, but she won’t touch the mango. Is it because the mango that we have been forcing on her is not perfectly ripe and gooey sweet? To answer this question we have determined to begin ripening the fruit ourselves in the aviary hospital.



Fruit ripening is a topic that I am not ready to talk about. It will require equipment- bins, bags, and a refrigerator- and a lot of research and refinement. I am both looking forward to ripening fruit and dreading it. More on this subject later.

So Gracie is closer to eating her perfect foods and I am closer to understanding the process of research and treatment of animal requirements.



On the subject of optimizing the diets of animals under ones care, I have begun feeding our two cats at home a raw diet. Like most cats, Che and Wendell have lived their entire lives (7.5 and 3 years respectively) on a diet of dry commercial cat food. A little research confirmed what I already suspected: cats are obligate carnivores and as such, are built to eat meat and only meat. Take a quick look at the ingredients on a commercial bag of dry cat food. Hopefully meat is the first ingredient, but corn is usually a major component along with other grains and vegetables. These cheap fillers work a frightful number on a cat’s digestive system. They were not meant to eat these needless ingredients and consequently will live much longer, healthier lives without such things.



It is important that when feeding a raw diet to cats one doesn’t just throw them a slab of meat and call that a meal. Cats require other nutrients that they cannot get from just animal flesh. In the wild a cat will also eat some of the organs to glean essential nutrients that they couldn’t get otherwise. The kidneys and heart of an animal contain many vitamins and minerals that a cat needs to survive. Taurine, one of the few known naturally occurring sulfonic acids, is extremely important for a cat’s health; without it a cat will go blind and eventually experience heart failure.



For Che and Wendell’s food I took two plucked and gutted free-range hens from a local Amish farm and ground them, bones, skin, and liver included, into a nice paste. This was difficult at first but I soon learned to only put a small piece into the grinder at a time. To the resulting eight pounds of raw chicken burger I mixed water, eggs, taurine powder, vitamin E powder, vitamin B-complex, salmon oil, and iodized salt. Most of it went into the freezer for later, but a small tub of it went into the refrigerator for the week’s rations.



I expected that Wendell would gobble it up and that Che would be skeptical, but it was just the opposite. Che took a few tentative sniffs before diving right in, but Wendell didn’t even regard it as food. I had anticipated a little trouble at first; anyone would balk at such a radically different diet if it was introduced all at once. I solved this problem by mixing pureed baby food meat in with their chicken. I found that Wendell would eat the mixture with little trepidation at a ratio of 1/1 on the first feeding. The second feeding I was able to reduce the baby food by about 10% with no obvious effect in his acceptance. This radical diet change is going to be a little hard on their systems at first but tremendously salubrious in the long term.



I have greatly enjoyed these projects as they have taught me much the importance of recognizing the very specific nutritional needs and tastes of different species and individuals. Hopefully both the cats and Gracie, the toucan, will live long, healthy, and inexpensive lives

Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist who is considered the father of modern taxonomy. In my younger years I wondered why anyone would bother to give things Latin names at all; it seemed that scientists often felt the need to make things more complicated than they had to be. Why not call a squirrel a squirrel and leave it at that? Why should I call it a Tamiasciurus hudsonicus? I cannot even pronounce it!



Well, for most people the term “squirrel” is more than adequate (some people don’t care to even be that specific or accurate), but with about 280 species of squirrel worldwide, a scientist or anyone with an vested interest in the particulars of a specific species would want to be at least that specific and possibly more so. True, you could just call a Tamiasciurus hudsonicus by its common name, American red squirrel, and save your self from a tongue cramp, but what if you were discussing the animal to a person from another country?



To illustrate this point I will use the Opiliones. They are an order of arachnids commonly known as harvestmen, but when I was growing up in Wasilla, Alaska, we knew them as daddy longlegs. Bug observation and collection was a huge part of my childhood and I could often be found gathering specimens for temporary display in mason jars. Daddy longlegs were common catches, and if I had decided on a whim to call someone from the UK to share the particulars of my discovery, I would have experienced a terminology barrier (and a spanking from my dad for calling another country). A daddy longlegs to a Brit is a crane fly which I only knew as a mosquito-eater. It would have been a bloody confusing conversation that may have ended with the British listener given a peculiar and erroneous portrayal of Alaskan Arthropoda. Furthermore, with over 6,400 species of known harvestmen, a scientist would be lost without Latin names when attempting to discuss the subject with peers.



Now that I have communicated the importance of Linnaean taxonomy I feel compelled to quickly enlighten you on a few little known facts about harvestmen.

1) They are called harvestmen because they are usually most active during the fall.
2) An urban legend claims that the harvestman is the most venomous animal in the world, but possesses fangs too short or a mouth too round and small to bite a human and therefore is not dangerous (the same myth applies to Pholcus phalangioides and the cranefly, which are both also called a 'daddy longlegs'). This is untrue on several counts. None of the known species of harvestmen has venom glands; their chelicerae are not hollowed fangs but grasping claws that are typically very small and definitely not strong enough to break human skin.
3) Harvestmen are not spiders; they are a separate order of arachnid.
4) Some species of harvestmen are indistinguishable from other species unless they are dissected to see which direction the hairs on their internal genitals face.

Anyway, because scientists and zoo keepers often work together or are one and the same, it is important that I understand taxonomy a great deal better than I currently do. To this end I have been researching family names.

Surely there is an online resource for this sort of study but I have yet to find it. I have been forced to learn about my animal families from an old book called Zoo & Wild Animal Medicine (second edition) edited by Murray E. Fowler. According to Dr. Fish, this book is an old standard for people in her line of work and should be enlightening and instructive. The problem with book learning is that the information that I am particularly interested in is hidden throughout the text in such a way that compels me to read the entire tome. Internet learning is much more to the point if you can find a page that focuses on the subject in which you are interested.



One third of the way through the book has taught me that memorizing all the families in the animal kingdom will be next to impossible; I don’t know how many families there are in total, but I just found out that there are about 200 families in the class, Aves (birds). I think that I am going to back up a step and memorize the Latin names for the different classes and decide were to go from there.

Okay, here are the classes:

1) Mammalia: of which there are 26 orders, 137 families, 1142 genera, and 4785 species.
2) Aves: of which there are 29 orders, 194 families, 2161 genera, and 9721 species.
3) Fish (which aren’t actually a class. Fowler’s book doesn’t cover fish but the internet resources that I have found have varied considerably in their itemization of the fish classes: it appears that there are either 3 or 12 classes of fish): of which there are 62 orders, 504 families, and 25777 species.
4) Reptilia: of which there are 4 orders, 60 families, 1012 genera, and 8163 species.
5) Amphibia: of which there are 3 orders, 44 families, 434 genera, and 5400 species.
6) Invertebrates (once again- not a class, nor is it a group that I will spend much time examining right now): of which there are 370 orders, and roughly 1.3 million species.



So for my purposes, excluding the fish and invertebrates, I now have 62 orders to memorize. This will not be an easy task but if I learn the orders from one class at a time, I should do fine. I will start with the 29 orders of Aves because it will be the hardest and will have the most immediate benefit since I am currently working in an aviary.

I will not continue to bore you with this list of 29 bird orders for the present but instead I will introduce you to a few more birds with which I am working.



Gracie is an old Swainson’s toucan that lives in a cage in the veterinary hospital office. She is the sweetest toucan that you could hope to meet. I am led to understand that most toucans are happy to crush your fingers if given the chance, but if Gracie was the only toucan you had ever met you might be hard pressed to believe such tales. She suffers from asper (a fungal respiratory disease), iron storage disease (an incurable disease that toucans are susceptible to in which iron accumulates in the tissues), and depression. For the asper we periodically shut her into a little glass-doored closet called a nebulizer. Humans use the little portable nebulizers for asthma control, but birds have difficulty using such devices. For her iron storage disease we give her only foods that are low in iron and black tea steeped in distilled water as her only beverage. Her depression is occasioned by the lack of toucan friends but we try to enrich her life as much as we can by giving her toys that she enjoys like a rubber snake or a ball. I try to find time in the day to give her neck a good scratching but if I forget she will remind me with a plaintive squawk. When I begin to scratch her neck she will lean into it and emit a low grumbling purr while I sing Ben Folds' song "Gracie" to her.



Smiley is a white-tailed trogan that reminds me of a mix between a Skeksis from the Dark Crystal and an American Robin (Turdus migratorius). He is slow moving, shy, and sweet. He obviously enjoys visitors but he doesn’t want to be a bother so he just quietly waits for them (unlike Gracie or Hermie). When I do find the time to spend a moment with Smiley, he puffs his feathers out in delight and cocks his head toward me as if interested in what I have to say. I cannot scratch Smiley because he suffers from liver disease, poor feather and skin condition, and feather cysts. In fact, only technicians are allowed to touch him and when it is time to clean his cage, we have to get a tech to move him to another specially prepared cage before we begin. Vet techs are so busy that sometimes Smiley gets left in his small temporary cage for a long time and I have to gently but continually pester them to not forget the little guy. It is easy to forget the fellow because he just sits there not wanting to be an inconvenience to anyone.



Heidi is a runner duck that probably lives the most pampered life that almost any duck has ever known. True, she doesn’t get to run free like many ducks but that is for her own protection. You see, Heidi has only one wing. Just a month before I came to the aviary Heidi had her wing amputated when Dr. Fish decided that it was the only way to save her life from the cancerous tumor that had taken over her left wing. Every day I give Heidi a warm water bath with worms to dunk for. Her drinking water requires changing every two hours and her food needs freshening up nearly as often. Every day she gets a bin full of dried leaves sprinkled with worms to hunt after and a heat pad under a nest of towels. All day I do load after load of laundry, and Heidi is a major contributor to these loads. As much of a pain she is we all love Heidi a great deal, even if she is just a regular old duck.

I have now been interning at The National Aviary for three full weeks. There is so much to learn here at the aviary and I feel that during my time here I have just barely scratched the surface.

As you may already know, I am interning in the aviary hospital, caring for the sick, injured, invalid, and geriatric birds. In the main hospital building we currently have eighteen birds for whom we are responsible. My main purpose from 7am to 4pm is to make these birds’ lives as clean, comfortable, and interesting as I can.



To ensure a sanitary environment for these birds, I am required change my latex gloves and wash my hands countless times throughout the day. Not only do we not want to spread infections from one bird to another, but the fish eating birds have a bacteria in their digestive system that a fruit eating bird cannot handle. I have not counted how many gloves I burn through in a day, but I would wager that the number would shock you.

Each bird has its own unique needs. Some require vitamin supplements added to their food that would poison another bird, so it is important to be durn sure that you know who gets what. Why don’t I introduce you to a couple of our infirmary friends?



Stevie is a very old boat-billed heron that requires hand feeding due to his blindness. Cleaning his cage is an adventure because he will snap viciously at anything within striking distance. Getting mauled by a savage heron is a bit distressing at first but soon becomes tolerable when you learn that it doesn’t hurt and become adept at avoiding his blind strikes.



We have a little stilt named Skippy that is now in his mid-twenties. An ordinary wild stilt would count itself lucky to reach the ripe old age of twelve, but through the wonders of modern veterinary medicine Skippy has reached an extraordinary age in excellent health. Skippy came to live in the hospital a number of years ago after his wife of many years died of age-related complications. Skippy was utterly distraught with his loss. Becoming inconsolable and refusing to eat, his concerned keeper brought Skippy to the hospital for evaluation. A battery of tests were performed with inconclusive results; it appeared that poor Skippy was suffering from a broken heart. The hospital staff decided that Skippy should stay in sickbay rather than waste away in the public area and made him a more permanent and comfortable enclosure against one of the walls with a short gate to fence him in. Against that particular wall was a recently painted mural illustrating a number of lifelike birds, including a depiction of Skippy’s late wife. When Skippy saw the likeness of his beloved, he squeaked with joy and hastened to her side. Skippy spent the rest of the day strutting around the painting of his wife with obvious happiness. Immediately he began eating again and was brought back to health within a few days. Soon afterward the staff decided that his full recovery warranted a return to the general population. This however triggered a relapse into his depression and he was returned to the hospital and the image of his wife - this time for good.



Perhaps the most lively member of our gimpy menagerie is a blackbird hybrid named Hermie. There is nothing wrong with Hermie in the veterinary sense. He was the accidental spawn of forbidden interspecies love and grew up in the general population as a half-breed. Life was tough for Hermie with neither species accepting him as family. Routine brutalization led to his being removed from the exhibit and into the hospital where he made new friends, one of which is me. Being a young crow-like animal provides Hermie with enough curiosity to kill countless cats and because of this he requires plenty of enrichment. Today I threaded a paper towel through a Chinese finger-trap and secured one end through the bars of his cage with a zip-tie. I was pleased to see that Hermie found this simple contrivance the source of hours of puzzlement and activity. In the morning we usually let Hermie out of his cage to fly about and peer out the windows though he often gets stuffed back into his cage by noon because he is inclined to hide important articles and raid Skippy’s food dish (Skippy doesn’t hesitate to tattle shrilly when this happens).



To introduce every bird in the hospital in one blog would be a daunting undertaking so in subsequent writings I will continue to acquaint you with birds that I have come to know.

The supervising veterinarian at the aviary is a distinguished zoo vet named Dr. Pilar Fish. After a series of conversations designed to discover my interests and goals, Dr. Fish gave me several reading assignments and charged me with memorizing the animal families. This is something that I have meant to do for a long time but lacked the motivation that Pilar now gave me by lending me her expensive and rare zoo books to study. I will report more on this subject in the future.



As I continue this internship I am constantly reminded that I have much to learn in the coming years as a zoo keeper. One of the things that I love about working with wild animals is that you cannot learn all there is to know about them in a lifetime of learning. It has been, and will continue to be, a rewarding journey.

Goodbye Pittsburgh Zoo, Hello National Aviary

Wednesday was my last day as a gorilla keeper intern, though I will continue to volunteer one day a week until January 2nd. January 2nd is the day I begin my new internship at the National Aviary. It will not be a general husbandry internship as before. No, it will be a husbandry internship in the aviary's veterinary hospital.

Taking care of the aviary's sick and injured birds will not just entail cleaning after and feeding them; it will require physical therapy, close observation, extensive handling, and veterinary assistance. I am very pleased to have been selected for the internship within the veterinary hospital instead of out in the aviary's healthy population for this very reason. Also, everyone at the Pittsburgh Zoo tells me that my supervisor at the aviary, Dr. Pilar Fish, is a really great woman that will make my internship enjoyable and instructive.

One thing that I found fascinating when boning up on bird veterinary care is the mending of broken beaks.

Chips and breaks to the beak are a common injury in birds. In the wild, a damaged beak can mean that a bird will be unable to eat or hunt, but a quick response from the medical team means that in short order the injured bird is not only eating comfortably, but also looking good in front of his friends.

Beak repairs are made using a specialized process that incorporates the same dental acrylics used for human teeth. Many aviaries go a step further by mixing pigments with the acrylic to match the color of the beak so that the repaired area is not obvious. If the damage is too severe to be corrected with acrylic, then bridges or even prosthetic beaks are made.

The Mystery of the Sick Sparrows

One great thing about the gorillas’ outdoor exhibit at the Pittsburgh Zoo is that it attracts loads of birds. The babbling stream, the clean pool, and extensive lawn are what bring them. Mostly it’s sparrows, but I have also seen starlings, robins, blue jays, indigo buntings, grackles, cardinals, mourning doves, red-winged blackbirds, and the occasional peregrine falcon flyby.



One morning, after letting the gorillas into their outdoor exhibit, I noticed a ragged looking sparrow hopping around the yard looking unable to fly. I assumed that one of the gorillas had injured it and it was suffering from a broken wing. This assumption has precedent: about ten years ago Mimbo, Mrithi’s father (five years dead, R.I.P.) caught a peafowl that had strayed into their exhibit and had broken its wing. After conferring with Roseann, we decided to leave it be and hope for the best. The next day we found it dead in the moat. That was the end of that, or so we thought.



A few days later we saw another sparrow, ragged and damaged. The following day we found another dead bird. Were the gorillas maiming the birds for sport? No; it soon became obvious that the malady had nothing to do with gorillas at all. We began to notice sickly sparrows all around the zoo; hopping around but unable to fly. I had a real mystery on my hands: The Mystery of the Sick Sparrows.



I mentioned my concerns to one of the veterinarians. She said that she heard that West Nile Virus was experiencing a surge in the Pittsburgh area.



West Nile Virus was first identified in Uganda in 1937 and in the U.S. in 1999. Since its introduction to America it has spread quickly. How does it spread? In a word: mosquitoes. Mosquitoes carry the highest amounts of virus in the early fall, which is why the rate of the disease increases in late August to early September. The risk of disease decreases as the weather becomes colder and mosquitoes die off. Although many people are bitten by mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus, most do not know they've been exposed. Few people develop severe disease or even notice any symptoms at all. In fact, approximately 90% of West Nile Virus infections in humans are without any symptoms at all.



Let’s not put all the blame on the infamous mosquito though; birds hold their share of the blame. Though mosquitoes spread the disease, birds make it all possible. The birds are amplifying hosts, developing sufficient viral levels to transmit the infection to other biting mosquitoes which go on to infect other birds.



By now, with the cold weather settling in around Pittsburgh, I have seen many less sick birds. By the beginning of October I estimated that the West Nile Virus had infected about 20% of the sparrows around the zoo; now it is probably less than 1%.



Case closed.

Stink Bugs and Coprophagia

So, life goes on as a zookeeper-in-training. It is difficult to come up with something to write about every week. I learn new things every day but it is hard to write a cohesive essay about them without it feeling disjointed.



I’ve learned that colobus monkey’s burps smell singular and peculiarly foul. I have learned that a hose coils much easier when the pressure is released. I have learned that I have no problem hosing mice out of the gorilla enclosures. How can an animal lover happily spray a mouse around the cement floor, you ask? My answer is that if I was charged to clean the zoo’s mouse enclosure I would be sure to hose any skulking gorillas away with identical zest.



Speaking of spraying the gorillas: I have learned that our 12 year old female gorilla, Kiazi despises getting splashed with water. Despite this, she stands in the pool while we toss lunch down from the roof. Inevitably she gets splashed when a kiwi or an apple lands next to her. She shields her face in annoyance and glares at us as if to say, “Watch it, I’m standing here!”



I’ve learned through my research on palm oil that it is particularly difficult to find a good margarine without palm oil. I have also learned that one can make their own margarine with olive oil, milk, and soy lecithin in a blender. Add seasonings to taste.



I’ve learned that zoo animals can develop strange aberrant behaviors such as regurgitating and re-eating. I’ve seen Kiazi eat the same grape about four times; it was too good to eat but once. Another one is called coprophagia, and it means the consumption of feces. I’ve learned that a gorilla named Betty that used to live at the Pittsburgh Zoo would combine these two aberrant behaviors to form one really gross behavior. Super-coprophagalistic-expialadocious!



At any rate, writing about the zoo every week is unrealistic for me. However, I find the world of animals fascinating enough to research, and subsequently write about, every day. Today I decided to find out about stink bugs. Pittsburgh has been inundated with them this year and I have found them on my person more than once in the last few weeks; one flew in my mouth recently. When I was a kid, I called them apple bugs; I don’t know why. Perhaps it is because they are known to eat apples. Or maybe I just made the name up because they were an apple red and green color.



The variety that has taken over Pittsburgh is brown and is called the brown marmorated stink bug. Native to eastern Asia, they were accidentally introduced to Pennsylvania about 12 years ago and have been the bane of fruit farmers ever since.



Wondering why they were called stink bugs I asked a friend at the zoo who seemed to be somewhat knowledgeable on the subject. “Because they smell terrible when you squish them,” was the answer. To the question, “What do they smell like?“ I got the answer, “Like a stink bug.“ I fully intend to squash one to experience the stink bug aroma but I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to smash such a cute little bug. After some additional research I discovered that they can also release their vile smell purposefully through holes in their abdomen when they are frightened. The smell is actually a chemical called trans-2-decenal and trans-2-Octenal.



I caught one the other day and found a small dot on its head that I thought could be a mite hitching a ride. I picked at it for a short while but was unable to break it free. One would think that this disturbing encounter would be enough to set its off its stink but I smelled nothing.



2010 has seen a marked increase in the brown marmorated stink bug and has wreaked havoc on fruit plantations across the state. Stink bugs typically have four generations per growing season in their natural east Asian habitat, but in the U.S. they usually have just one. This year, due to the unusually early and warm spring and summer, they have been allowed to produce a second generation and this extra generation means that the state is seeing more bugs in more places than in previous seasons. Adults are living longer, depositing eggs longer and maturing more generations to lay even more eggs.



When stink bugs eat an apple they pierce the fruit’s outer surface and suck out juices while injecting saliva. The suction and saliva create a dimpling in the fruit’s surface, and rotting and corking in the flesh underneath. The fruit is fine to eat but is rendered completely disfigured and unfit to sell.



Fear not Pittsburghers, the scourge is soon to end; outside at least. Towards the end of fall they begin to search for places to hibernate. Often that place happens to be in our homes, though this can be fun towards the middle of winter. I love it when a confused bug wakes up in my house, clumsily bumping around the light fixtures. The cats love it too.

Job Interview and Botany

Well, I had my first interview the other day with Wild Things Animal Rentals Inc. in Salinas, California, the hometown of John Steinbeck. This job would be really great to have for many reasons. First, Wild Things features an incredible selection of animals including my favorites, tapirs and capybaras. In fact, the animals at this company are so wonderful that all the pictures in today’s web log feature a specimen found in their facilities. Second, they provide animals for movies, television, commercials, and music videos throughout the U.S. This is cool because besides animal keeping, movie making as a career was another dream I had as a child. Third, the location is pretty great; right off the coast of Monterrey Bay and just south of Santa Cruz and San Francisco. It is a beautiful area with a nice mild climate.



Despite being kind of nervous and rambling a bit, I think the interview went pretty well. Now I just need to hope that, though I am just one of many applicants and have only one month of exotic animal experience, my passion and confidence in my abilities was evident through the receiver.



I am sure to be giving more interviews in the future; I send out at least one resume each day. Yesterday I applied to a zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, and today I applied to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Nobody is advertising for a keeper with one month of exotic animal experience but I am applying anyway.



Yesterday at the Pittsburgh Zoo the zoo horticulturist taught a class about the zoo's various trees and shrubs to a selection of interns and keepers. We learned what plants are okay to feed the animals and which ones to avoid. Being from Alaska I was the only one present unable to identify poison ivy; until yesterday I ran the risk of ignorantly trudging through a thicket of the stuff.



While I did learn a lot about toxic and non-toxic plants during the lecture, I also was able to confirm a depressing fact. As much as I would love to be an avid botanist, plants bore the hell out of me. I wish I was the type of person that could get excited about shrubbery. If I could react the same way to a flower or a tree as I do to a squirrel or toad, the world would be a veritable wonderland.