old ways

After a long week of driving, aided by visits to friends and audiobooks from Cracker Barrel, I finally made it back North. It’s been sleeting and gray, but I’m still so happy to be home.

This afternoon, my mom and I took this injured canada goose to the New England Wildlife Center, a wildlife veterinary clinic south of the city. He was admitted and diagnosed with a lacerated right wing, and the future looks bright – he was active and responsive, not very aggressive for a canada goose but alert enough to object to being scooped up and carried through the wards.

I worked for the wildlife center as a teenager. It was a very different place. The old facility was a ramshackle concrete building that may or may not have once been a military bunker. Dimly lit, half sunken below ground, with narrow hallways and low ceilings. It stank to high heaven, of bird poop and raccoon piss and everything in between. Space was at a premium. I think there was an iguana who lived in a tank on the radiator. Piles of laundry constantly threatened to tumble into the aisles.

But I loved it. The constant stream of new patients, the proximity to the animals, the company of the talented and dedicated techs and interns I worked with. They did wonders with limited resources. It was entirely worth spending time in such a stink hole, to have access to what the clinic had to offer.

A few years ago they finally completed a new facility a few towns over. Embarrassingly, I hadn’t seen it until today. It’s incredibly nice, with teaching space and real treatment rooms and surgical suites, all with large windows to allow observation. Even the resident llama got some sweet new digs. I think the goose is going to be real comfortable during rehab.