This morning I did 2 back to back rescues in different suburbs but with the same cause.
English Rose is an adult female Grey-Headed Flying-Fox who was found hanging on a jade plant, then crawling along the ground. As soon as I arrived and upended her covering bucket, it was obvious what had happened to her. She had bilateral burnt thumbs from being on powerlines. Her thumbs were burnt down to the bone. Electrocutions aren't something the bats survive; they die slowly from organ failure over a few days. The bone is burnt and dead in both thumbs, so even if she survived, she has lost the use of both thumbs which means we can't return her to the wild.
RIP little English Rose, from English St.
On the way home from this rescue I accepted a call for a bat on the ground beside a road. When I got there, Verdant was under a box on the ground, and the MOP was standing guard.
I lifted the box and the first thing I noticed was a burnt thumb and wrist, and a burnt foot and leg with a fracture in the lower leg and the foot hanging by a thread. He also had a spinal fracture which would have happened when he fell and crash landed off the powerlines.
Mortally injured bats have a glassy look in their eyes, as their body tells them they are terribly injured but their brain struggles to make sense of what is happening.
I brought both bats home prior to taking them to the vet when Vicky started work. I gave both bats analgesia, then offered them grapes. Often they are ravenously hungry, as their survival instinct kicks in and the shock uses up all the glucose in their body.
I called him Verdant (from Verdun St) because he was in a green bed of longer grasses and roadside weeds and ground cover.
Verdant loved the grapes, after initially savaging and tossing the first offerings, but English Rose was quite stressed, so I left her to chill out with the analgesia, safely under her covers.
RIP Verdant and English Rose.
Powerlines are terrible hazards for our night flyers.
