Rescue - 16th January, 2023
Rehabilitation - 18th January, 2023
Rescue
We are on call 24/7 here at Wildlife Aid and regularly attend rescue calls far into the early hours of the morning.
This unlucky girl was rescued by Lawrie and Alannah (our hospital manager) after several members of the public saw her staggering about in a road with blood coming from her mouth and nose. Amazingly, these callers managed to keep her contained until our team arrived and she was rushed straight back to the hospital.
Despite it being gone midnight, Marco (one of our vets) set to work clearing the airways and stabilising her condition before taking an x-ray of her head.
Unfortunately, the result was not good news, with three separate fractures to the jaw and skull. Despite the uphill battle ahead, Marco once again refused to give up on her and we set to work on a plan...
Rehabilitation
After discussing the situation with a dental specialist, a plan was made to try and realign and fix her jaw. With the fox sedated, Marco used a special cerclage wire to hold the sections of bone in alignment until a callus could form, reforming her jaw shape in the process.
We are definitely in the early days of recovery, but she is showing positive signs so far and we are keeping everything crossed for a successful outcome... Please wish her the best of luck!
A few weeks later, we're delighted to say that she has made great progress! She still needs regular checkups (and periodic tightening of the wire), but she is healing well and we have high hopes for a full recovery!
Once her cerclage wire fixator had held everything in place long enough for the healing process to begin, it was replaced with a less invasive fixator made from a special dental putty to allow the last stages of healing to commence.
It has definitely been a long journey, but we have high hopes that her ordeal is coming to an end soon, and we will be ecstatic to release her to the wild once again!
