Beverly Hills

Hi All! I'm closing in on my first week at the MRC, realizing in this quiet moment here how grateful I am that I signed up for a 3 week volunteering stint rather than just 2. Would hate to think I'm already half way through my visit.

Lots to share about this beautiful setting and the kind people I'm working with but, for now, you must meet the wonderful little moose I'm getting to know. Twins Beverly and Jose are MRC cow Layla's and Nugget, Minnie, and Yeri are orphans from various locales around the state. Each have a unique personality that makes them endearing for various reasons.

We feed them whole cow's milk with a supplement for lambs and 3 tsps. of casein which helps the formula remain within their systems longer. The formula is warmed to the "wrist test" in large bottles that are color-coded to match a radio collar each calf wears, although it's super easy to tell them apart from one another. About a 30 minute prepping process goes down the throats of some pretty voracious eaters in about a minute's time.

Although each day this week has included something different, from chatting with visitors to the MRC to riding the ATV out to gather willow, aspen, and birch cuttings for the moose to nibble on throughout the day, the primary focus of every one's attention has been the care and health of twins Beverly and Jose. Both have had kind of a hard go of it since birth in late May, showing a variety of signs that something isn't quite right internally. When I arrived on Monday, Jose was compromised enough that he spent most of his time bedded down and didn't have much of an appetite. Beverly was the first moose calf I got to feed and, she too, took her bottle laying down rather than coming up to the gate when she heard the whistle. The MRC staff were especially concerned because a calf died rather quickly just a couple days before and the results of the necropsy had yet to arrive. Fear of possible E coli infection or illness had everyone on heightened alert, particularly because several calves had already been lost this spring due to sickness and a bear getting into the pen.

As events unfolded over the course of the week, my untrained medical eye has been witness to more care and collaboration in benefit of these two babies from the MRC staff and interns Annie and Jenna than I will make space for here. However, it is worth noting that as we learned more about the possible causes for the twins' decline, the amount of effort that went into saving them was quite remarkable. Round the clock care, visit from the state's leading wildlife veterinarian, IVs and medications have all been part of the plan.

Unfortunately, we lost Jose' on Wednesday. His body was immediately flown to Anchorage and the necropsy report determined that there were nutritional factors at play in his death. It appeared that he was greatly lacking in copper, necessary for bone development, among other things. Moose on the Kenai have a difficult time finding copper naturally within their ecosystem. Jose and Beverly's mom, Layla, is likely copper deficient as well, although she produced a healthy calf last year and there are several yearlings at the MRC that seem to be growing well. Jose's bones were extremely brittle and he had at least one fracture, leading the researchers to believe that in order for Beverly to have any chance at all, she needed an increase of copper into her system.

After learning about Jose's issues, immediate steps were taken to help Beverly. On Thursday we erected a smaller pen within the calf pen so Beverly could still be close to the other three moose without them inadvertently stepping on her or knocking her over when she was standing. Fragile as she was, she still worked hard to stand up and obviously wanted to be close to her peers as well as to people. Her eating habits were sporadic and each time she took a bottle was a small victory. She was hooked up to an IV for hydration and every 8 hours she received a pain medication equivalent to morphine. Tom, the Director of the MRC, managed to locate copper supplements from his contacts in other parts of the state and she was given some in a liquid form as well as a gel-capsule of tiny copper pieces that was given orally as a time-released measure.

Friday was a day of two steps forward, one step back. She wasn't up for drinking much milk so she was tube fed an electrolyte mixture and offered milk each time we fed the other three. The calves are usually fed up by the gate to the pen but we started feeding them around her pen in the hopes that their hungry actions would motivate her. "Come on, Bev! Everyone's doing it!" Sometimes peer pressure is a good thing.

Despite her weakened state, Beverly continued to show us her intense will to live in a myriad of small ways; her struggle to stand, the trusting look in her eyes as we poked and prodded. An occasional lick on the chin.

Saturday morning, Tom arrived from town to help insert another catheter so we could continue with the IVs. It took the better part of the morning. Through it all, Beverly's patience impressed us all. Such a good little moose.

After lunch, Tom stopped by the cabin to ask how much milk I had prepped in her bottle and was happy to hear the amount as she drank just about all of it at the 1 p.m feeding. Small, but an important success and sign of her recovery.

Soon after Tom left for town, there was a drastic turn of events. Beverly lost her balance and took a fall that caused her to land in a position that we all knew meant we had to call Tom and get him back out here immediately. It took him close to an hour and a half to get the necessary items and return down the long dirt road that leads to the MRC. While we waited, Jenna, Annie and I tried to keep Beverly as calm and comfortable as possible, giving her some more of the "happy juice" medication to help with pain and holding her gently when she started to get upset.

We said goodbye to Miss Beverly Hills about an hour ago. Everyone's pretty heartbroken about it. Tom is on his way to put her on an airplane to Fairbanks for the necropsy, while I think Jenna is at the cabin and Annie is building a campfire. I'm down here at Pen 2, a mile square enclosure where the cows live, along with a few yearlings. Layla, Jose and Beverly's mom, happens to be the only cow here at the fence right now. It's intensely quiet, save for her leisurely munching. I want to tell her what good little moose she had and how hard people worked at trying to save them. I want her to know that in her short 49 days of life, Beverly had a spirit as big as the land from which she came. Everyone says so.

There is a cabin here that adorns a dozen or so moose collars. I hear that this is something of a Moose Hall of Fame, where some of the MRC's favorites are memorialized. Jenna, Annie and I took the liberties of hanging Beverly's collar on an empty nail in the midst of some enormous vintage ones. It's the little red one.