Saturday, August 15, 2009

All in a day's work



The following account is from one of AnimalCare's volunteers, Mr Lim. If you'd like to find out more about the monitor lizard, please contact him at limchinkah@yahoo.com:
At 8.15am, I received a distress SMS from a friend in Kuala Kubu Bahru to rescue a mother cat and her four kittens. The SMS read “There is a mother cat with 4 kittens in Bodhydrama, Kuala Kubu Bahru n all r hungry n thin. D workers r going 2 send them 2 d market next week. Either here or d market, they will die. Can someone help. Plse advise. TQ. I m in retreat.”
I didn’t know how old the kittens are and I assumed that they are all new born kittens. So I left for Kuala Kubu Bahru at 10.30am armed with 3 packets of milk (for the kitten), 3 tins of wet food and some dry food for the mother cat. I also brought along a syringe to handfeed the kittens with milk. I have seen KahYein feeding the kittens with a syringe before but I have never done it myself personally. Like it or not, I have to handfeed the kittens.
I arrived at the Bodhydrama Centre at around 12noon and was shown the kittens behind the kitchen.
It was a relief to me when I saw the kittens. They are actually quite big – probably about 2 months old. They are a bit thin as the friend had said but they are definitely not dying. They were running around mischievously. The friend was very concerned that the kittens would be dumped at the market soon, hence the distress SMS to me for help. I then handed the foodstuffs to the workers at the centre and told them not to dump the kittens.
I hope my appeal to them did not fall on deaf ears.
I left the centre at around 12.45pm. From KKB, I took a country road through Bukit Sentosa to Bukit Beruntung.
I was almost reaching Bukit Beruntung when I suddenly saw a 2-feet long monitor lizard lying motionlessly in the middle of the road. It was lying in a rather dangerous spot of the road where there was a bend. I drove past it and look at it again through my rear mirror. Even though it was motionless, my instinct told me that the monitor lizard could still be alive. I immediately made a U-turn and drove back towards the lizard. Several cars were passing by that stretch of the road at that time and I was praying that they would not roll over the monitor lizard. After parking my car, I quickly ran towards the monitor lizard and found that it was still alive. A few cars and lorries drove towards me and I had to signal them to avoid them running over the lizard and me. I picked the monitor lizard up and placed it by the side of the road, free from harm. Then I ran back to my car again to collect an animal carrier from the boot of my car. (I had brought the carrier along to save the mother cat and four kittens).
I then smsed KahYein whether the vets at Subang Jaya or the animal hospital in Gasing can treat the injured monitor lizard. Her advice was to bring it to them. AnimalCare would sponsor the medical cost for the lizard.
I drove the injured monitor lizard to a vet in Section 17 and reached the vet at around 2.10pm. The vet has never treated a wild monitor lizard before but she said she would try her best. An examination of the lizard showed no external injuries but there are internal injuries judging from the bleeding in its mouth and blood clot on its skin.
The vet gave the lizard four types of injections. It took a bit of time to inject the lizard as it gave quite a very strong resistance. Furthermore it was quite difficult for the needle to pierce through the thick skin of the lizard.
The lizard is now in my house, recuperating from its injuries. I will have to nurse him/her for a few days before I release it to the wild unless somebody wants to adopt it. In the meantime, please send positive energy to the injured monitor lizard.
Any adopters?
Chinkah
AnimalCare Volunteer

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