Rescuers scooped up a 3-pound coyote pup — estimated to be about 4 weeks old — from a homeowner’s yard in Surprise, Arizona after the baby animal fell into a cholla cactus.
After discovering the pup — barbed in the plant’s spines — the homeowner called Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center in Scottsdale, and a volunteer was dispatched to help.
Once at the clinic, Berk Martineau, a veterinary technician at the center, vlogged the whole event and posted a video on YouTube.
“It is considered baby season right now, which means we are getting a lot of orphaned baby animals. Of course, our goal is to always rehabilitate and release these animals. And today is a very interesting day,” Martineau said to the camera.
He then showed a photo of the baby coyote, with spines poking out of his face, paws, legs, and stomach.
“ These cactuses are super gnarly, and they have barbed spines, and they stick to your skin like crazy,” Martineau said. “So, this guy definitely needs some help.”
Once the coyote arrived at the clinic (via a volunteer transporter), he was given some sedatives to undergo the spine extraction as painlessly as possible.
“The hard part about cactus spines is that they aren't like any thorn like you'd be used to; they are barbed. So when they go in, they don't come out as easily,” Martineau narrated, as he attempted to pull a spine out of the small critters’ stomach.
According to the Washington Post, the pup was lethargic when he arrived at the clinic, in a way that suggested he was in shock. Martineau said it’s not uncommon to see animals with a few spines in their skin, but “this was a pretty extreme case,” he told the Post.
After about 45 minutes of using metal clamps to gently pull the spines from the sedated coyote — including some that went all the way through the pup’s ear — Martineau started seeing some progress.
“I'd say this guy has had a pretty rough start to life, but we're going to take good care of him,” he said in the video.
Martineau said the pup would have struggled on its own, even without the cactus spikes. As an orphaned animal, he would not have been prepared to live in the wild yet, as evidenced by this incident.
“They’re learning to become animals, they’re exploring, they’re running around,” Martineau told the Post about orphaned wildlife. “And unfortunately, a bunch get injured or separated from their mom.”
Overall, it took about two and a half hours for all the spines to be removed by Martineau and his colleague.
After they were done, they set up the baby animal in a warmed incubator to rest. He was given some fluids to get rehydrated, and once he was ready, it was time for his first meal.
“He's still got some time to go. We’ve got to get him all raised up to a big adult coyote and get him prepped to go back out into the wild,” Martineau concluded in his video. “So, that could take some time, but we are one step closer.”
Now spine-free, the pup was ready to finally begin healing.
“Hopefully, this was his hardest obstacle that he's going to have while he's here,” Martineau said, “and the rest is smooth sailing.”
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Header image courtesy of Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center
