As soon as I push the spoon under his nose, he turns away. We’ve been sitting like this for 15 minutes already, the cat-sized bear cub and I: me trying to get medicated food into him, and he studiously avoiding the spoon.
The bear’s face looks grotesque, his lower left jaw distended by what appears to be a huge black blood clot. His tongue and lips have been pushed off to the side by the horrible black thing in his mouth. I’m at my wits’ end. This cub won’t live if doesn’t take his antibiotics — and if he doesn’t eat more.
A visit to Babine Animal Hospital two days before revealed that he has a partially shattered lower jaw bone, which hadn’t been apparent when he came in 12 days earlier and was first examined. The little one had been doing quite well at Northern Lights Wildlife Shelter, until he suddenly seemed to feel sick.
I’m not getting anywhere trying to give him the prescribed medication. Later, Angelika Langen and long-time volunteer Kim Gruijs succeed in removing the large bubble of bloody fluid in his mouth, but he still needs more medical intervention.
The following morning, the skinny little cub gets hooked up to IV fluids at the vet’s. His jaw is healing well, but he is in poor general condition. If he continues to refuse food, he will die. We are hoping that the fluids will make him feel better and help his appetite.
Back at the shelter, Kim and Angelika’s daughter Tanja Landry make the decision to withhold water from the little one so that he is forced to drink milk. Tanja makes the good point that he won’t survive if all he takes in is water.
It is Kim who finally succeeds in making him drink it: she squirts milk into his mouth with a syringe, forcing him to swallows it. I hold my breath when after the first few mouthfuls his milky muzzle begins to look for the syringe, wanting more. It’s late at night, but suddenly everything seems bright with hope.
Was it the IV fluids, the syringe feeding, or the combined effort of all of us to save his life? In the morning, the little cub sticks out his pale pink tongue and, looking back and forth between the bowl and me, starts lapping up the milk. This is the sweetest sound I’ve heard all week.
