Flying fox

[den]

I couldn't do it. I had to take the flying fox out to the zoovets. Tim looked at the wing, shook his head and said "There's only one result here."

They gassed her to sleep, then Jane injected the lethobarb. It took the bat about 10 seconds to die.

I wonder if they'll give me a mask like that for my EU duties. It's better then the old toilet roll with a wad of tissue paper in one end.

Comments

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

*sigh* sorry mon ami

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, Den.

You're a good guy.
You go through a heck of a lot to help all those creatures.
I'm so sorry it doesn't always work out.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

The masks are clear plastic and have a rubber seal around the edge. The animal sees the toilet roll as a black hood going over the top and they panic a bit. The clear mask would help reduce the panic.

I'd have to devise something to deliver the chloroform, probably a fishtank pump bubbling air through the bottle, and piping the gas into the mask.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[jamesb]

Batty, have you got a rough idea of what you'd like, or would something the general size of a toilet roll made out of a transparent material do the trick?

What ever you come up with for your delivery system, don't forget that chloroform (trichloromethane) is a solvent for a lot of plastics. It's very close chemically to the dichloromethane that I use to weld perspex/plexiglass.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about something like this:



The mask is a truncated cone with a large rubber washer the animal's nose pokes through. I don't know what the mask and washer are made of, but it is tough enough to be sterialized. The hole in the washer is slightly smaller than a toilet roll, but the wide end of the mask is about 2x the roll diametre. I use the toilet roll to kill everything from sparrows to white cockatoos, possums and flying foxes, just to give you an idea of the size I need. Really small animals are killed in a sealed box.

I thought of maybe using a fishtank air pump (it won't be exposed to chloraform) and porus stone bubble diffuser to pump air through a sealed bottle of chloraform, and piping the vapour to the mask. I don't know what type of tubes to use yet, but I suspect silicone would work. I still have to research that.

[jamesb]

I'd be inclined to visit a scientific equipment supply place and look for the right sized glass (or maybe lexan) funnel.

[azhreia.livejournal.com]

perhaps the baby-sized clear plastic masks they use with asthma pumps could be modified ? there are some *very tiny* little masks out there -
like these (http://quickmedical.com/pulmonarydata/pocket_masks.html)

[tygermoonfoxx.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you had to put her down, but at least it was painless. You did the right thing. Maybe someday you'll find a less injured flying fox (though I'd prefer there be no injured bats at all) and help it instead. It's never easy to euthanize a wild creature.