The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes by DVM Lucy H. Spelman

inevitable thud and cloud of feathers. Fortunately, someone had found him as he flapped impotently along the roadside, and had the presence of mind to take him to the Healesville Sanctuary veterinary hospital, where he came into my care. The Sanctuary is Australia's largest native fauna park. We do a brisk trade in injured and sick wildlife. That year, 1998, we examined and treated more than fifteen hundred animals that had been smashed by cars, perforated by cats, crunched by dogs, shot, poisoned, and otherwise fallen victim to the planet's current custodians.
    My newest patient was a little falcon, also known as a hobby falcon, one of Australia's smallest birds of prey but no less fierce and proud for his lack of size. He regarded me balefully as I wrapped him in a towel and took him into the examination room. The nurse covered his face with a mask connected to the anesthesia machine, and after several rapid breaths our patient was fast asleep. Now I could examine him without stress. Carefully feeling his wings and shoulders for any abnormalities, I felt a crackling high up on the left side of his body near his neck. We took an X-ray of his wings and body to confirm the diagnosis: the hobby had fractured his coracoid.
    The coracoid, a bone absent in mammals, sits high up in the shoulder in birds (part of the “wishbone”). It supports the movement of the wings and helps anchor them to the body. The coracoid is frequently broken by a sudden impact, so we see this type of fracture often in birds, especially raptors that feed near roadways. The trouble is that the coracoid lies submerged beneath a huge slab of breast, or pectoral, muscle—the major muscle group required for flight. These muscles attach to the bone, which acts as a brace. If the coracoid is left to heal on its own, the shoulder joint often stiffens and loses its range of motion.
    Because repair requires cutting through these muscles, I had always taken the easy way out. Considering surgery too difficult and also too risky, I had treated prior cases conservatively, prescribing cage rest for a month or so instead. A major reason for the Sanctuary's existence is the treatment and eventual release of injured wildlife. When this is not possible, we are legally required to euthanize the animal. This sounds harsh, but wildlife sanctuaries have limited financial resources and space for injured wildlife. Our mandate is to care for those that have a chance to make it back to the wild. Otherwise, we would soon fill up with crippled animals, denying those with a chance for release the space they need.
    Euthanasia was the rule rather than the exception with coracoid fractures in hawks or falcons. The birds recovered but they rarely flew well enough for release. Coracoid fractures were a frustrating and depressing injury for our staff.
    My heart sank the moment I saw Patch's X-ray. Yet another bird was doomed. There had to be more I could do for these birds than sticking them in a cage and then killing them a month later. Could surgery be an option? After all, what had I—or, more important, the bird—to lose?
    Feeling heroic, I decided that this falcon would be the one. He would live or die by the scalpel, instead of rotting in the cage. The raptor keepers took him to heart and had named him “Patch,” after the spot of oddly colored feathers on his chest. This was always a bad omen: naming injured wildlife was an invitation for death to come visit. Just to add to the adrenaline rush, we were in the middle of filming one of those real-life, fly-on-the-wall documentaries. The film crew decided this was an opportunity too good to miss. My first attempt at coracoid surgery would be recorded and shown on national television. The powers that be had already waived their veto rights, allowing the company to film and broadcast anything and everything that they thought would make good TV.
    Nowadays it's no big deal to have cameras follow me at work. I