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A Rescue Center for Small Wild Animals Looks to Place a Blind Moose Calf

A Rescue Center for Small Wild Animals Looks to Place a Blind Moose Calf

New York Times6 days ago
On Friday at Holly's Haven, a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center in a rural section of Ottawa, there was one coyote, two porcupines and more young raccoons and skunks than I could easily count. And in a makeshift habitat at the very back, there was a much larger animal: a blind moose with an injured leg that is about a month and a half old.
The arrival of Cedar, as the moose is known, has meant that Lynne Rowe, the center's founder and director of operations, has had to learn a lot about the needs of young moose very quickly.
But it has also created a particular challenge. Like all rescue centers, Holly's Haven normally returns animals to the wild when they are old enough to cope or when they have recovered from their injuries.
The best prognosis for Cedar is that he will recover very limited vision in his right eye, making a return to the wild a death sentence. But Cedar cannot follow the path set by Holly, a raccoon for whom the center is named and who lived there for years because brain damage made her release impossible. While Cedar weighs about 30 kilograms, or more than 65 pounds, he could reach 700 kilograms, or 1,500 pounds, as an adult.
'All the experts I've consulted, veterinarians and moose rehabilitators, confirmed that he is not releasable,' Rowe told me as Cedar contentedly munched on dangling willow branches. 'Young moose are heavily predated in the wild by coyotes, wolves. So he'd be extremely vulnerable.'
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10 Cheap Fish You Should Avoid Buying At All Costs
10 Cheap Fish You Should Avoid Buying At All Costs

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10 Cheap Fish You Should Avoid Buying At All Costs

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Winter Skate It pains me to write this because I'm a big fan of skate, and I consider it to be an unfairly overlooked seafood option on our side of the Atlantic. Skate are flat, diamond-shaped fish rather like rays, and usually what you'll see in fish stores are the so-called "wings." I've enjoyed skate for years whenever I could find it, because it's a great fish to cook. A slab of "wing" gives you two large fillets, one above and one below a dividing line of rib-like cartilage (like sharks, skate have no bones). It's delicious, and once cooked, it's easy to slide the flesh from the cartilage for serving. So why is it on this list? Well, there are a couple of reasons. One is that — again, like shark — because of its unusual physiology, skate breaks down quickly when it's not absolutely fresh, and produces an ammonia-like aroma if it is handled incorrectly. 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This Tennessee bachelorette party had a bear-y unexpected guest. Watch the video
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This Tennessee bachelorette party had a bear-y unexpected guest. Watch the video

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