Where Surgeons Dare

The surgery ended after more than three hours, with a basketful of bloody gauze, four tired surgeons and nurses, two anxious "parents" pacing outside the operating room, and feathers scattered across the gray linoleum floor.

A golden eagle found two months ago on the Eagle Ridge Golf Course's eighth hole underwent a procedure to fuse two leg bones together Tuesday afternoon. As two members of Morgan Hill's Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center watched from afar, Princevalle Pet Hospital staff and veterinary surgeons performed the surgery in hopes of giving new life to the 4-month-old male, Orion. The bird was suffering from a dislocation that had reduced him to hopping on one leg and impaired his ability to hunt, veterinarians said.

"If he hadn't been found, he'd be dead by now," Doctor James Roush said.

Orion was happened upon by a Gilroy resident who had sliced his ball into the brush. The eagle was on the ground, having previously suffered a dislocation in the equivalent of his knee - perhaps trying to learn to fly in his first months of life, Roush said.

After law enforcement netted the bird, he was brought to the wildlife center, which has sponsored Orion's $700 in medication, housing and supplies thus far. Hospital staff, surgical nurse Karen Flewelling and Roush also donated their services, which could total almost $10,000 when care is finished.

The most intricate procedure occurred when veterinarians attached two bones in the eagle's right leg. The process started with hospital staff anesthetizing the bird and plucking out the leg's thick down. When finished, the leg looked like an uncooked turkey drumstick.

After transferring the eagle to the operating room and sanitizing the area, Roush made an incision through calloused layers of skin surrounding the bones. Next, he cut off the top end of the lower bone, and the bottom end of the upper bone with a handheld saw.

"Usually we're doing constructive surgery," he said as he sliced off about one-half inch of bone, blood spraying all over his gloves and scrubs. "This is kind of destructive surgery."

Roush took the two bones, placed them flush and fastened them together with a metal plate and nine screws. He sewed up the incision with a thread that the body would break down in about two weeks.

With the procedure finished, veterinary staff stopped the anesthesia and held the bird - whose talons they taped together to prevent an attack - as he awoke. First, Orion's leg twitched. Then his eyes rolled in their sockets as a milky-white eyelid horizontally opened and shut across one eye, then the other. About a minute later, he raised his head, let out a small screech and was officially awake. To prove it, he even reached his head back and tried to nip the anesthesiologist's face as staff put him back in the dog kennel in which he is transported.

"It's just taking care of a broken leg now," Roush said.

The eight-pound bird, which measures more than two feet from head to tail with a six-foot wingspan, will be kept on a regimen of painkillers and antibiotics and have several follow-up visits.

Orion will not bend his leg again, but has an 85-percent chance of being able to perch, Roush said. The process was the equivalent to immobilizing a human knee joint in a straight position, he said.

While this position would interfere with Orion's hunting abilities, he no longer needs to hunt. He will serve as an educational bird, touring schools and education centers.

As nervous as the wildlife center members were, as taxing and expensive as the surgery and treatment were, saving the eagle was worth it, wildlife center executive director Sue Howell said. Through land use and habitat encroachment, humans have caused animals irreparable harm, she said.

"In a way, it's our duty to put them back out there," she said.

Source: http://www.gilroydispatch.com/news/contentview.asp?c=224404