When Sabrina and I first began rehabbing as a team some twelve years ago, any reasonable person, asked the question: Will Lucky or Sabrina be the most competent at diagnostics and healing?
The logical answer was Lucky; at that time, I’d been a physician for over thirty years. But that answer omits the wildcard of God-given intuition to heal wildlife; Sabrina has that gift, I do not. She is a legend among rehabbers because she has made the choice to fully exploit that gift with study, application, and long hours practicing, learning her craft. Such is her talent, that there are several species of birds the Wildlife Center of Virginia sends to her since the center has little success healing these species; Sabrina does.
Rehabbing is expensive both in money and time. In terms of time, consider this: each day, baby birds must be fed every twenty minutes, fourteen hours a day. A trip to Krogers, just down the road becomes a luxury. Phone calls? How about 40+ per day? [That’s just incoming, it doesn’t count the outgoings to other rehabbers, Animal Control, or return phone calls.] Then there’s the laundry: two loads each day from the animals alone. Between Sabrina and I, and our few volunteers, we intake 25-30% as many animals/birds as the Wildlife Center of Virginia, a fully-staffed agency.
In the midst of all this, three phenomena are emerging: 1- The amazement and respect with which I watch Sabrina refine her art and intuition. For instance, it was she who began to question time-honored diets in young birds as being hurtful, sometimes fatal; diets which had been the accepted traditions of rehabbers for years. She made changes, and her ‘save rate’ soared.
2- Sabrina has a license to teach, so 14-20 times a years, she takes our ‘education birds’ – a hawk and owl rescued but too old or infirm to be released, they are unable to either hunt or evade. She takes these birds to schools, civic clubs and the like. She takes their ‘castings’ with her. Raptors – or meat-eating birds – ingest a meal, it sits in their stomach a while, then they regurgitate the indigestible parts in an egg-shaped mass. The children, some of whom have to adjust to an understandable repugnance, dissect these castings and find tiny bones, teeth, and so on. The letters of thanks she receives from the kids suggest a genuine fascination.
So the phenomenon is this: what are the future effects of her instruction, how will the kids be so shaped in years to come? Chances are, we’ll never know. But it makes you wonder, will this experience usher them towards a life of veterinary medicine or vet-tech, to human medicine, or just an abiding love of wildlife, ecology or the environment?
3- Perhaps the most amazing of all, in the last two years, we have had young volunteers who have the gift, the instinct Sabrina has. Their gift is ‘in the raw’, so to speak, and wants shaping and direction. Some of the kids have not yet completed high school! Sabrina is well acquainted with folks who volunteer, thinking this is, for them, a passion; it turns out to be mere novelty, or the desire for ‘bragging rights’ [I work with wildlife!], and they are soon gone. But Sabrina has to spend time teaching them all.
But, these special few bring their instinct to Sabrina, and she becomes mentor to eager, motivated students. Some are of such talent, Sabrina trusts them by themselves in the animal room, leaving them alone – except to consult on difficult situations- and now the gifted ones are teaching our new-comers, and so the gift is passed along to generations of rehabbers, and my Sabrina gets a bit of much-needed rest.
It is my belief that the Creator works in obscurity – or anonymity – all around us. It is said no two snowflakes are the same, this since the beginning of time. We are told not only are no two zebras the same, but no two sides of a zebra is the same! Ditto night skies, daylight skies, and who knows how many other examples. I know they’re there for me and anyone else who chooses to partake in this beauty; rewarding with this pageantry any eye or spirit or heart that seeks it. I see such splendid pictures of earth e-mailed me from time to time. One must ask: if God expends this much glory on Earth, what must Heaven be like?
I have long felt each of us is sent to Earth for a purpose, and that the ultimate quest – as well as the greatest blessing – is to discover that purpose. It is the feeling – the joy – which accompanies passion that lets us know our search has been successful: to go to bed thinking about it, dream about it, wake up in the morning eager to get back to it, whatever the passion might be.
My Sabrina is about her ultimate business. She gives her blessing substance by working at it each day. And thus, when her time comes, she will repay her ‘ten talents’, with interest. There is a poem named ‘Rainbow Bridge.’ It says that when we pass over, all the animals or birds we have cared for in our life will be there to greet us. On that day, the bridge will be at a stand-still, crowded about by those critters Sabrina has loved and helped.
Finally, discerning these phenomena taught me this: the next time I want to see my Creator at work in my life, I’ll look right under my nose.
Look for Lucky’s books locally and on-line: The Oath of Hippocrates; The Cotillian; A Journey Long Delayed, Campfire Tales, Sabonics