Starting work at Mallydams

Right, I know you’ve wanted to read this! Battleaxe has been to the RSPCA Wildlife Centre at Mallydams twice now, so am just about beginning to get the hang of things – I think it is going to suit me fine. I’ll be there on Tuesday mornings. So, what have I been doing, and what is it like? So far, it has been seals, swans and an assortment of other birds. It’s an excellent way to get rid of stress, worries and overthinking, and the first thing you let go of is any concern about one’s appearance. The selfie below shows me in my mask, which you are expected to wear when working with birds – they can catch things from us, and we can catch things from them. You’ll see I also have a plastic apron…

The mask fitting was far more thorough than I imagined – you have to put the mask on and a hood is put over your head, into which is pumped smelly gas, to make sure you can’t smell or taste it. You can see it is the sort of serious sealed-on-your-face mask with a built-in respirator – none of those nimby pimby ones we wore during Covid, which probably didn’t keep out much at all. Then, old trousers and top, obviously. Latex gloves which have to be renewed frequently. Next, when you are working outside, especially with creatures with pools, you have to wear big waterproof trousers with a pull-up bib on top, and wellies. Those wellies keep going on and off the whole time, so you need shoes you can manage easily.  Crocs seem to be the shoe of choice, like they are for hospital staff… I got some knock-off crocs this morning for £7.99, so am now well kitted-up. Unflattering outfits can get more exciting still – when you are working with creatures who are in quarantine, it is full PPE….

You have to concentrate quite hard to remember all the cleaning, disinfecting and sanitising procedures necessary to keep the animal and bird patients, and us their carers, safe. Again, much like a hospital – and Mallydams is first and foremost a hospital for wild animals, where creatures are rehabilitated prior to return to the wild. As I mentioned in a previous post, this means that handling and human interaction is kept to a minimum, and there is certainly no ‘taming’ them. Still, I always talk to animals, and I do find myself talking to the creatures at Mallydams as well. They are unlikely to remember my brief once-weekly intervention in their lives.

Clearly, everyone who works at Mallydams is an animal lover, but there is no room for sentimentality. You can’t get fond of them, and even the cutest-looking creature has sharp teeth, sharp claws or a sharp beak – they have to be treated kindly and gently, but also respected as the wild things they are.

Excuse the few photos – while you are working with the creatures you rarely have time or a free hand to pick up a phone… Mallydams has a very good Facebook page, where you can see much more about the animal and bird patients.

So what have I actually done? This week I had to look after three pens containing built-in pools. One contained two seal pups, the other a single pup, and the third pen contained two very grumpy swans. The pens have to be pressure-hosed and squeegied, the pools drained, cleaned and refilled. The seal pups certainly look cute, but there is no touching them – they can deliver a nasty bite even when they are small. They are very curious and can flipper themselves surprisingly quickly round the pen after you as you clean.  I was advised to fend them off gently with a broom if they got too close. The pair did that once, and in trying to manage the broom and the hose I ended up squirting myself in the face… Then you have to get their mackerel out of the fridge, weigh it out, give it to them and record how much they have had. All the Mallydams pups are orphans – found abandoned and often injured. There are pups even smaller than this, but they have to be hand-fed – a job for the staff.

 

The fridge reminds me of another thing you have to abandon at the gate – squeamishness. As well as being comfortable with everything from a tiny bat via all sizes of bird up to angry badgers, you have to be immune to the obvious poo and vomit, but also be happy to fish entrails out of pool gratings, and be ready to contemplate a fridge full of dead chicks (for foxes etc.), whole dead fish and pots full of wriggling writhing wormy-maggoty things…

The swans were a different matter. The staff member who was giving me my tasks told me not to worry about their hissing and flapping, but fortunately I first went into the pen with her and the vet, who was examining one of the swans. They indeed hissed and flapped, but I soon realised they are all talk and little action. They are in fact very sensitive and fragile, and can easily injure themselves if they are frightened, so the work with them has to be slow and gentle, with no sudden movement. I hadn’t realised that when swans go through an annual moult, for a while they lose their flight feathers, and can’t fly. During this time they are vulnerable to injury from dogs etc. The swans in the pen had injured themselves by trying to escape in panic from dogs/humans. Their cleaning took a long time because they are so messy – very pooey indeed – loads of poo. Not clean creatures at all…  Then I had to fine chop half a cabbage and throw it into their nice clean water so they could have their ‘greens’.  The photo just shows one swan sitting in the half- empty pool looking quite relaxed – I must have been adequately reassuring.

We have a half-hour tea break during the course of our ‘shift’ when everyone, staff and volunteers, congregates in the staff room for a welcome sit-down, drinks and biscuits. Clearly though, the phone keeps on ringing with people enquiring about what to do about sick or injured wildlife they encounter, so there is no real rest for the staff (who all seem pleasant and friendly btw).

After break, I was moved into one of the bird rooms, where birds stay that are getting better, but are not ready to go to an outside aviary. The walls are lined with built in cages. Cages with small birds have to be cleaned like domestic bird cages, via trays that slide out from the bottom. Quite straight forward. Most of the cages though contained only one bird – mostly pigeons – feral and wood. I guess pigeons are one of the few species that mere volunteers like me can handle directly – they are quite tough but also mainly docile. I was working with a much more experienced volunteer, and was surprised to discover that as well as cleaning/feeding we had to pick up each bird, put it in a little plastic box, weigh it and record the weight on its chart. I did OK, I think, only one bird escaped from my initially anxious clutches and flew off round the room – we caught it again easily enough, in a net. But I also forgot to zero the scales at least once…  I’ve heard Mallydams staff say that pigeons are their favourite patients, and I could begin to see why – they are gentle, trusting and surprisingly vulnerable.

1pm is home time – and I was so starving hungry I could scarcely drive the car home – fortunately Mallydams is only about a mile up the road from us.

I feel very glad that finally, at this stage in my life, I can actually do what I have always wanted to do – work with animals. It is excellent that the RSPCA has given me the opportunity to get straight into that work – I was afraid I’d get fobbed off into working in the office or something… so, long may it continue. I know they are always looking for volunteers – there are plenty of things you can do…