Black Flying-Fox in care: this is Zena

Описание: This is Zena
Zena is a tiny black flying fox adult who was found crawling on a compost heap attempting to find scraps to feed herself. She had a number of injuries, including a malformed (but healed) leg fracture, loss of a thumb and loss of all her toenails on her ‘good leg’. The toenail loss was recent and painful. Her wings were undamaged but were dry and papery.

As there was no nearby indicator of the reason for her injuries, it could have been due to being entangled in something (discarded fishing line, fruit tree netting, caught in fence palings, etc). How long she had survived like this is uncertain, but she gratefully received our help and was an excellent patient.

Due to malnutrition, Zena’s fur had lost pigment, so she had tan circles on her face and brown fur. Once antibiotic treatment to heal her injured toenails was complete, she just needed time to recover before she’d be ready for release.

Over the weeks of rehabilitation she grew stronger and healthier. Her dull brown fur became sleek and black and the tan fur on her face darkened revealing a cheeky, intelligent and happy bat.

As bats need their toenails to hang properly she required an aviary with a shelf to rest, and hammock beneath to catch her if she fell. Walter’s aviary was perfect for this. As permanent care and rehabilitation bats need to be kept separately, unfortunately for Walter, this meant his aviary was divided so he and his gang (Teddy, Gelert and Angophora) could offer separate accommodation to Zena, and a couple of other bats with similar injuries.

Zena is now hanging in the aviary and in spring (September) will be released with any overwintered youngsters in care.

Often time and housing restricts what carers can offer for bats such as Zena but our doctrine is always (if the bat is a compliant patient and not stressed in captivity) to give as much time as each individual bat requires to regain flight condition.

However, it’s meant another intensive care aviary, similar to Walter’s needs to be urgently constructed to cope with future animals who will need similar accommodation. The aviary needs to be snake, rodent and goanna proof, and be able to be sectioned off so males and females can be housed separately in breeding season.


DONATION INFO:
If you would like to donate to the building of a new aviary for these rehab batties, the donation info is below.

Tolga Bat Hospital takes donations for me.
http://tolgabathospital.org
Mention Megabattie or Meg/aviary in the PayPal message box and the money will find its way to me.
If no message box appears, please email Jenny to tell her that the money is for the aviaries.
IMPORTANT: If you pay through the PayPal Giving Fund, can you please email Jenny with the amount donated and the name under which you have donated, OR just forward along the PP receipt.
The Giving Fund doesn’t charge any fees (so the bats get more money) but PP doesn’t itemise out the amount, they just send a total every month, and we don’t know if the money is for Tolga or for Megabattie.

Here’s Jenny’s email.
[email protected]