A hedgehog with severe burns gets treated by Nora Affejee at Faune Alfort animal hospital outside Paris. MAISONS-ALFORT, France — Oxygen pumped through a tube in the intensive care unit, as the hospital director flipped through a medical chart and whispered the details of the intake to keep from disturbing the patient: a hedgehog.
receive medical care at the hospital and then rehabilitation in an enclosure or aviary. The goal is to get them ready for release — back where they were found, or in another suitable habitat. Two ducklings paddled in a water-filled sink with a fluffy gray gosling that had been abandoned by its mother. When older, the gosling would have to be separated from the ducklings, so as not to confuse its natural instincts, but for the moment it had found a temporary family.Grey herons, tawny owls, bats, seagulls, groundhogs, badgers, rabbits and even the occasional fox or boar from the suburbs have been treated at the hospital.
Steel shelves are lined nearly to the ceiling with food bowls of all shapes and sizes, labeled “pigeons,” “hedgehogs,” “magpies” and so on. The fridge is stocked with dead mice and worms. Sacks of pellets and other grains line another wall of a storage room. There’s even a plastic tub filled with stale baguettes.