Originally Posted by
Shipwrekt29
Thank you for the suggestion. I'll order the blocks you suggested. I've done a lot of wildlife rescue down here and have had to learn a lot of how to care for the injured and how to assess their health. I'm always learning from our local wildlife rehab. For Neptune, she was found in a school yard lethargic. She had fallen from a tall oak tree and landed on cement. The kindergartners witnessed the fall. When she came around she couldn't use her rear left leg. I was given to her by my neighbor who's girlfriend's mother works at the school and he know we do rescue. I couldn't feel anything broken and it wasn't dislocated when she got to me. She was able to put weight on it trying to get away from me later that day. It took about a month for her to heal and has since showed no signs of weakness. Whenever I get a new animal to me I dive in to learning as much as I can, particularly common hidden issues that can come up later, like MBD. I was already aware of that working with baby opossums and Flit, my baby mouse rescue. I found him in the middle of a Home Depot parking lot several years ago. I still have him and he is my little boy. He comes when I call him and he loves being kissed.
Anyway, I'm not sure about release. That is the very reason I signed up. There are a few issues that I wanted advice on. The first, Neptune has the opportunity to spend hours on the lanai. For anyone not familiar with the Florida lanai, it's a large screened outdoor porch. I introduced the outside to her in increments so she could get used to it again. Here's the problem, sometimes after 5 minutes to an hour, or anytime in between, I go out to find her absolutely terrified. She is so terrified she is frozen and shaking. I talk to her to try and snap her out of it, but that doesn't work very well. Sometimes touching her helps, but she usually comes out it after I get her inside. I have to hold on to her tight because she will freak out. Once I past the threshold she sits on my shoulder like usual and looks around. I take her to her indoor enclosure where she sometimes takes a nibble of food, but more often just dives in to find a place to hide and I don't see her for hours. It's bizarre. One minute I look out and she's running on the screen, doing playful hops, eating, and then she's terrified. When I go out there's no large birds, cats, noise, or anything else I can see. We have a bird feeder and it's full of doves, a couple of blue jays and cardinals, a big family of bobwhites and sometimes grackles. So, if she gets this scared at home how will she survive letting her go? Keep in mind this has been happening after a few successful play times on the lanai after she was able to put weight on her leg and get around. I'll attach the day 1 photo of her. I'll try that later, for some reason I'm getting a question mark.
I'll address the other issues a little later so we can focus on one at a time if that's ok. I guess it did post the pic.