Texas Update 7: Humans are the Funniest Animals

Hotline is a funny shift. It's the one shift here where you sit down all day, answering the phone ringing off the hook. 

Most calls require listening, then gently but firmly telling the caller to step away from the opossum, put the bird back, and return the rabbits. 

Some are melodramatic, particularly when the call goes to voicemail. I've now fielded a number of messages where the angry or panicked voicemail decreed that "he won't make it," to call back and find that the animal is completely okay. 

Quite a few callers have a great sense of humor, and one in particular today. I've been waiting for this call, itching to give someone this advice. The caller reported that she was the animal in distress; a mockingbird had set up a nest above her garage. She had royally pissed off the bird by trimming back a tree overhanging the garage last week. Since then, the mocker had been violently divebombing her every time she set foot outside. The advice I gave, with almost a straight face, coming from the most accurate and reliable of sources, was to hold a sheet of tinfoil over head. The reflection of distorted light is supposed to confuse the birds and shield the identity of the pedestrian. Otherwise, she might use a giant umbrella (highly practical), or, failing that, she might print and attach a pair of giant eyes to the back of a hat. 

I can't wait to hear how it worked out. 

Several of my roommates have come down with a cold, which I'm still fighting off. As such, I have done almost nothing all week but work and sleep, with the notable exception of baking cookies to celebrate the April birthdays. One day I worked, fell asleep, and woke up the next day four minutes before my next shift was due to start. So it was, between scurrying around and trying to remember if I had done a shift task that day or just the day before, that I bottle fed my first fawn. Heading to the deer yard I had a 70lb bag of deer pellets tossed over my shoulder, a baby bottle with 8oz of formula in my hand, and a set of keys to unlock the deer yard gate in my other hand. The fawn is tiny, covered with spots and a large black nose that rises and falls, twitching like rabbit, but giant-sized. She drank like a champ and I tried not to make eye contact, stiff upper lip and don't habituate the adorable baby animals and all that. Dashing back into the hospital kitchen after, a giant pile of dishes waiting and a ton of work left to do, I just grinned. M-, engaged in a less pleasant task, gave me a wry look. "You just fed the fawn, didn't you?" she said.