Our Certified Veterinary Technician (CVT) staff touch the lives of nearly every patient that comes through the doors at Dane County Humane Society's (DCHS's) Wildlife Center. Our appreciation for them knows no bounds! Hopefully you come to appreciate them too after reading about the job they do behind the scenes, day in and day out at the Wildlife Center. We interviewed our CVT staff and got perspectives from both new and experienced technicians about what their job at the Wildlife Center is like.
Everyone on staff at the Wildlife Center has a different and unique background, and our techs are no different.
Certified Wildlife Veterinary Technician (CVT) Kayla Salmon knew from a young age that she wanted to work with animals. At first, she didn’t know how or where, then she discovered the veterinary technician field and pursued an associate degree from Madison Area Technical College in veterinary science.
Kayla joined Dane County Humane Society’s Wildlife Center in 2022 when she applied for the wildlife rehabilitation internship. In this role she assisted with housekeeping, preparing patient diets, helping administer medications, and animal handling/restraint.
“I fell in love with it, but I was working at a general practice [for domestic animals],” said Kayla, “I took some time off and missed it, so I came back to volunteer and at that point they [DCHSWC] had a CVT position open up, so I applied and I haven’t looked back.”
The Wildlife Center’s Senior Certified Veterinary Technician (Senior CVT), Erin Lemley, took an unusual path to caring for wildlife, beginning with a typical office job, and receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Japanese and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin. She soon realized she wasn’t feeling fulfilled in her job and searched for a new career in veterinary medicine.
Erin began volunteering with DCHS’s domestic animals, and through that experience learned that she wanted to be more involved with the medical side of care. After starting a volunteer shift at the Wildlife Center, it was clear that the fulfillment she was looking for was in wildlife rehabilitation.
“I just totally fell in love with wildlife rehabilitation. I really enjoyed my time volunteering, so I got my wildlife rehabilitation license to rehabilitate here at the shelter,” said Erin. “I quit my full time job to take a position that was only going to last six months, which was a little bit scary, but by that point, I decided I really wanted to work in wildlife.”
Erin received her Associates of Applied Science in veterinary technology from Madison College in 2015 and has been with the Wildlife Center since, helping to care for the over 34,000 patients admitted from 2015 to present day.
Days at the Wildlife Center consist of veterinary (vet) days and regular (non-vet) days. Vet days are the days when a veterinarian from the University of Wisconsin Special Species Department comes into the Wildlife Center to examine patients that need extra care.
On vet days Erin and Kayla support the veterinarians as they address our most difficult medical cases. Their responsibilities shift to the patients that have been placed on the vet day caseload. These can include patients with more extensive wound care, fractures, patients in need of surgery, or patients that need physical therapy.
Some of these days can be quite long: “I'm often here for 12 hours on the days that we do surgery, because it takes a long time, and you want to be there until the patient is sufficiently recovered that you feel good about leaving them,” said Erin.
On non-vet days wildlife CVTs assist with medication administration and general care tasks, determine which patients will need to be seen by the vets, and most importantly perform anesthesia and sedation for patients requiring procedures that would be difficult to accomplish awake. Just imagine trying to take x-rays on an awake and feisty eagle! This aspect of their job is crucial to reducing stress for our patients, providing the best care possible, and making these procedures safe for staff to perform.
It is important to note that wild animals are under immense stress while they are in rehabilitation. Erin speaks to this: “I don't usually feel like an animal knows that I'm helping them. They are afraid, and I do what I can to lessen that fear, but we are predators to them. And every time I handle a songbird, I'm pretty sure that they're afraid that I'm going to eat them.”
For both Kayla and Erin, the best part about their job is seeing species that they’ve never seen before and seeing them return to the wild.
“I love seeing an animal we've rehabilitated return to the wild where they're supposed to live and they're happy. Sometimes people ask, is it sad for you to release them? And for me, when they get released, I'm so happy I don't miss them. I'm … thrilled for them that they get to go back to their life and live it how they want to, which is without us [humans], because we're scary predators,” said Erin.
We asked both of them what cases made an impression on them during their time working at DCHSWC.
The case that sticks out to Kayla the most is “bouncy time Turkey Vulture.” This case was one of a vulture that was brought into the Wildlife Center with bilateral hind limb paresis—a partial paralysis of the legs—in March of this year.
“He seemed to have a deep pain response [an indication of nerve function], so we were hopeful, but he came in sternal [laying on the chest]. We put him through a bunch of physical therapy,” said Kayla.
This vulture’s treatment regimen is where the nickname “bouncy time Turkey Vulture” came from.
“He had a harness on … so he could stand and work on moving his feet and his muscles to build them up again,” said Kayla.
This vulture did fully recover and was released.
Erin’s most memorable case is the time a pelican was brought into the Wildlife Center with a fish hook stuck in its esophagus (throat). “I stuck my arm in there [its mouth and throat] basically up to [my] shoulder and worked the hook out.”
A lot of research is still being done for rehabilitating wildlife and Erin often learns techniques for helping wildlife from other rehabilitation centers, as she did with this pelican.
“I learned this from a rehabilitation center in California who sees a lot of pelicans, that’s how they remove a lot of fish hooks from pelicans. So I tried it and it worked, and the pelican recovered.”
Erin also mentioned an important, and silly, task that makes her job feel surreal. “I feel really surreal when I'm painting a bat's toenails, when we have two bats in the same enclosure, I’m just sitting there with my little stick with a tiny amount of nail polish on it, putting a little tiny bit of nail polish on each toenail. And I'm like, somebody is paying me money to paint this bat’s toenails.”
The team will use nail polish to paint a bat's toenails in order to tell them apart from others of their kind that are already in rehabilitation.
Working at the Wildlife Center does come with challenges and heartbreak, though. Not every patient makes it to release, and many arrive with irreparable injuries. Wildlife medicine has come a long way in the last few years, but there is also a lot of research still to be done on the hundreds of different species that the Wildlife Center is licensed to rehabilitate.
Kayla said, “It is very hard and very draining because of the types of cases we do see. We see a lot of very sad things, so it's good to focus on the good things and the releases we get to do.”
Although there can be heartbreak involved, she added, “I definitely love my job, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
For anyone looking into the wildlife vet tech field, keep in mind that wildlife rehabilitation can be very competitive. Interning and volunteering with a wildlife rehabilitation center is a great way to gain experience. This is a great career path if you are really interested in life-long learning.
Erin also wants the public to know that wildlife rehabilitators are here to answer questions about wildlife. Even species that are very similar in appearance and classification are still very different.
“There's so much to know because every species has a different natural history. You think a little songbird is a little songbird, but they're actually very different from each other, just as different from each other as dogs are from cats, right? They're both mammals, but we don't treat them the same in veterinary medicine or in wildlife rehabilitation.”
