Surgeon seeking advice on procedure
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Dr. James Sweetman, a veterinarian at the Downtown Veterinary Hospital, holds Lady Gaga, a female Peregrine Falcon, Wednesday, July 6, 2011. Lady Gaga fractured her leg and is to undergo surgery Thursday |
WINDSOR, Ont. -- Lady Gaga, Windsor’s popular peregrine falcon, broke her leg and was expected to undergo surgery this morning so tricky and uncharted that veterinarian Dr. James Sweetman was seeking advice online from specialists around the world.
“There’s a lot of pressure here,” Sweetman said Wednesday from his Downtown Veterinary Clinic.
Sweetman put the falcon’s X-rays online on a vet information network to help formulate a plan that by Wednesday afternoon was based in part on advice from a specialist in California.
“You just can’t go ahead and open a book up because there is no book,” said Sweetman, who takes a special interest in exotic pets but hasn’t worked on a peregrine falcon.
“This is a once in a lifetime and you better do it right the first time.”
In part because of her name and early flying troubles, Lady Gaga the peregrine falcon has a large public following. She had been flying extremely well since requiring two rescues during her first flights in June but volunteers found her on the ground favouring her left leg Tuesday night underneath the Ambassador Bridge
X-rays Wednesday morning showed a distal femoral fracture which means the end of what would be our thigh bone in her left leg is broken and rotated.
There’s a risk of death with the anesthesia and the technicians don’t have any equipment to monitor the bird’s breathing during surgery. Sweetman and another vet, who were still doing research Wednesday, may try to insert two tiny metal pins this morning to help the bone heal correctly.
If she survives the risky surgery, the falcon won’t be set free for at least six weeks. Doctors can’t put a cast on a bird and the down time will create a problem for the falcon, which must learn to kill birds in flight.
That may be how the fledgling broke her leg. Volunteers didn’t see what happened but young peregrines, like Lady Gaga and her brother Spitfire which hatched this spring, learn to hunt as parents pass off food talon to talon during flight. A food package — a nice term for a dead bird — was found near Lady Gaga on the ground.
The young falcons also play and jostle each other in the air, said Canadian Peregrine Foundation — Windsor Watch site co-ordinator Dennis Patrick.
“One hundred mile per hour trips around the bridge? I don’t know for sure,” Patrick said of the falcons, which in a dive can reach speeds of more than 300 km/h.
Grounded peregrine falcons don’t stand much of a chance, so Patrick had to rescue Lady Gaga for a third time. He took her to Sweetman, whom he met just a few weeks ago when the vet had a question about a grounded American kestrel.
The hope is to get Lady Gaga’s leg fixed and get her back to the bridge area where her parents live so her training can continue. Patrick said her survival is crucial because peregrine falcons are a threatened species and because Lady Gaga is a female.
“It’s important that we get her healthy so she can go out in the wild, establish another nest and then have, let’s say, 12 generations of her own babies who would then have 12 generations of their own babies,” Patrick said. “They’re still a species at risk, so every single one of them make a huge difference in the wild.”
