Wednesday, June 21, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Tales from a
Sisters
Naturalist
by Jim Anderson
Win a few,
lose a few
You gotta try. Even
though the chances are
sometimes stacked against
success, you just gotta try.
That’s what goes through
your mind when you bring
an electrocuted hawk to the
vet for repairs.
The hawk was found in
Christmas Valley, struggling
through the sagebrush and
grass beneath a line of power
poles alongside an irrigated
hay field. I was with my
sons and grandchildren on
our way to see how many
golden eagle babies there
were for us to band in a nest
out east of Christmas Valley
when suddenly my grandson
Joseph shouted,”Stop, there’s
a hawk on the ground along-
side the road!”
My son Dean and another
grandson, Tom, bailed out
and sure enough, right there
alongside the road was a
bedraggled first-year red-tail,
struggling to escape us.
“It’s been shot,” my
granddaughter Mary-
Catherine whispered, as she
noticed the hawk dragging
a wing as it struggled to get
away. Dean, having been
through this routine many,
many times, ever since he
was old enough to care about
raptors, gently dropped his
jacket over the panicked bird
and we had him.
As all the grandchildren,
parents and grandparents
looked on, one fact became
obvious: it probably wasn’t
shot, but had tangled up with
the high-powered power line
overhead, as the left wing
was badly burned.
Over 12,000 volts of
high-powered energy are
flowing through the over-
head wires, and all it takes is
a millisecond of contact with
two of those wires and most
times, the victim is toast.
Hawks, owls and eagles are
always on the lookout for
ground squirrels that live in
the irrigated hay fields, and
use the poles supporting the
wires for lookout stations.
It’s risky business watch-
ing for prey while perched on
a pole supporting wires that
carry such high voltage, and
each year hundreds of rap-
tors are electrocuted all over
the western U.S. from acci-
dentally coming into contact
with that awesome amount of
electrical energy.
Most times raptors die
instantly, but occasionally
the contact is so brief that
the birds are burned at the
contact surface to the point
where muscles, blood vessels
and nerves are badly injured
but not destroyed, and that’s
where raptor rehabbers like
Gary Landers of Sisters enter
the picture.
When we walked into
Gary’s receiving lab with
the red-tail, which by then
Joseph had named “Ambulo”
(Latin for “to go on foot”),
we all had hopes the hawk
would live, but the look on
Gary’s face suggested oth-
erwise. He’s been there,
seen that kind of damage too
many times…
He treated the bird for
dehydration and injected
medicine to get its diges-
tive system going again,
as the hawk was just
skin-and-bones.
“I’ll take it to Broken Top
Veterinarian Clinic tomor-
row,” he said, “and see if
cold laser therapy will bring
some life into that burned
wing.”
Then he asked Joseph to
place his finger on the inured
part of the hawk’s wing, and
as a comparison, on the unin-
jured part.
“It’s so cold on that area
where it’s burned, but so
warm on the other side,”
Joseph noted.
Gary, knowing how seri-
ous the damage was to the
hawk, agreed, and carefully
placed the bird in a carry-
ing case for transport to Dr.
Little Liedblad’s Broken Top
Clinic.
T h e n e x t d a y D r.
Cassandra Lodge of Broken
Top and her helper, vet tech-
nician Dani Phillipson, fired
up the cold laser therapy
equipment and began treat-
ing the damaged wing in an
effort to begin as much repair
as possible to the cells burned
by the electrical contact.
Cold laser uses a beam of
light to stimulate damaged
cells to produce more energy.
The overall cellular function
is increased, allowing for
rapid absorption of nutrients,
elimination of wastes, and
reproduction of new cells.
The new cellular activity aids
in:
• Alleviating chronic or
acute pain.
• Reducing inflammation.
• Reducing swelling.
• Increasing circulation.
• Speeding up healing and
recovery.
• Release of endorphins,
the body’s natural pain
reliever.
Under the best of cir-
cumstance, cold laser is suc-
cessful in stimulating cell
21
PHOTO BY JIM ANDERSON
Cold laser therapy being performed on an electrocuted red-tailed hawk
by veterinarian Dr. Cassandra Lodge and technician Dani Phillipson.
repairs and blood circulation,
bringing comfort, health
and relief to the damaged
area — but this time it didn’t
work. When Gary brought
the hawk back to his facili-
ties and started feeding it
the next morning, new dam-
aged spots began to appear,
showing where the wing and
body had come into contact
with the high voltage several
times.
It’s tough to finally have
to make the decision that the
patient you’re doing the best
to save is doomed, but that’s
the way it was with the hawk;
its contact with 12,000 volts
of electricity was just too
severe for the bird to handle.
Joseph was agonized to
hear the cold laser treatment
failed to perform the miracle
he was hoping for; none of
us who work with wildlife
enjoy it when we fail. Cassey
and her crew at Broken Top
didn’t enjoy it either.
But it’s not all doom-
and-gloom. Many a story
has appeared in The Nugget
Newspaper of raptors
who went back to the wild
through the use of Broken
Tops’s talented technicians
and their cold laser to repair
damage caused by all sorts
of injuries. And they’ll do it
again tomorrow.
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at
SPRD
UK Soccer - June 26-30 and August 14-18
Tennis Camp - July 24-26 and July 31 - August 2
Youth Summer Camps – June 19 - August 11
Great Northwest Running Camp – June 25-30
Car Show - July 15
Basketball Camp w/Steve Pearl –
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549 2091
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