Kurgan Volunteer Saves Wild Birds, Rescued Horse
Inna Zhuravleva helps animals in trouble
Inna Zhuravleva, together with the Kurgan rehabilitation center and shelter for disabled animals Chance, helps birds and animals in distress. A 45.RU correspondent met the volunteer again and asked where she finds the strength to help others.
Inna built the bird enclosures herself
By education, Inna Zhuravleva is a civil engineer; she works as a sales manager at a trading company. In her free time, she saves small but very important bird lives — and not only birds.
Sheri was saved from slaughter by volunteers
«I see an animal in trouble — I try to help,» Inna explained.
Sheri has learned to trust people
The shelter has no space for summer outdoor enclosures, so in summer the birds live at Inna«s plot in the open air. We drive to visit and feed them — Inna does this daily — but on the way we stop at Lukino Ranch to see a 14-year-old horse named Sheri.
Sheri must be walked every day
«Sheri is a Karachay breed horse from Tambov Oblast, bought from a slaughterhouse by volunteers, and I am her caretaker,» Inna explained.
A friendly company of gulls
Sheri has lived at the ranch for four years now.
Walks around the enclosure
«She has gone from a wild horse to a companion horse, learned to trust people, and will never hurt a human. Behind this is the enormous work of the ranch volunteers — they socialized Sheri really well! She is a smart horse and understands voice commands. At night she sleeps in a stall, during the day she walks in the paddock, and also with volunteers in the fields and forests around the ranch,» Inna said.
This gull chick came to Inna as a tiny downy ball
It seems the horse was once ruthlessly exploited and then sent to the slaughterhouse.
The young magpie and jackdaw have grown up
«Now Sheri has leg problems. She can«t carry riding loads or haul heavy things. She can only walk a lot and take many steps — doctor»s orders. So Sheri needs daily exercise to prevent stagnation in her legs. Every day after work I have an unchanging route: the ranch with Sheri — the Chance shelter — the plot where the birds live. However, right now, in the busy bird season, I get to the ranch much less often. Volunteers Elena Borovko and Olga Khmara help Sheri out, and sometimes Polina comes to walk her,» Inna explained.
Ducklings from Nekrasov Street
We stopped at a chain store near the highway and bought washed carrots and apples for Sheri.
Harold was saved by his ability to fly
«She can«t have dirty carrots or spoiled apples. Horses can»t vomit. If something stale or rotten gets into her stomach — colic will follow immediately, and death is possible,» Inna warned.
Harold and Donya
It takes about 30 minutes to lead the horse around a special area in a circle. Fifteen minutes one way and the same the other. Ideally, this warm-up is needed every day for the horse saved by volunteers from certain death: no matter how much her legs hurt, she still has to move. Sheri is not chased or hurried; she moves at her own pace and is glad for the chance to socialize with people, and after the walk she politely crunches on our gifts.
Nafanya survived!
We drive up to Inna«s plot. Gulls greet us with sharp laughter; 12 of them live here permanently. All have damaged wings to some degree — these beautiful birds can no longer survive without human help.
Orphaned chicks from Vvedenka
«Three more gulls came here this year as tiny downy balls, still without feathers — they fell prematurely from the roof of one of the Kurganselmash buildings. They will grow up and be released,» Inna explained.
Proper food is the key to a bird«s health
In the enclosures that the volunteer built herself, besides the gulls, live three jackdaws and four crows, and owls. Small falcons — the hobby, merlin, and kestrel — are waiting for outdoor enclosures to be built. The young magpie and jackdaw have grown up and are due for release.
The greater spotted eagle
This year, wild ducklings also lived on the plot.
Without good care, the eagle would not have kept its legs
«I brought six ducklings from Nekrasov Street. A boy called and reported: they were running along the road, darting about — they had lost their mother. When the ducklings grew up, they went into the wild — we released them on Patronnoye Lake. Every day I changed their water in the trough,» Inna recalled the restless little family.
A special transport box was made for the eagle at the Chance shelter
And a fat white goose strolls imperturbably around the plot!
A kestrel falcon undergoing treatment
«We don«t deal with farm birds, but here we made an exception. Last December we got a call from Tomin Street — a live goose was walking around the center of Kurgan. At first I thought maybe it was a swan. That year people found many young swans that couldn»t fly south. We sent such foundlings to Sverdlovsk Oblast, to the Special Pet animal rescue center — they have special rooms and conditions for swans there. But when I arrived at Tomin Street, I saw a man and a woman standing by an entrance with a real goose in their arms!» Inna recalled.
Rescued little owls
Most likely, someone had bought the live goose for a New Year«s table and decided to keep it temporarily on a balcony. As it turned out, the goose, of the Linda breed, could fly. And it decided to find freedom. The bird»s owner was never found, and the goose, named Harold, stayed to live with Inna.
«A real knight — he protects and guards everyone. Sensible, understanding. He walks outside calmly down to minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit). He chose a duck named Donya as his girlfriend and protects her. If I sit down to rest, he comes up to me and may give a friendly nip on the leg. And for some reason he also takes soil in his beak and puts it in a basin of clean water,» Inna said.
«Where did the duck come from?» I wondered.
«In the Prosvet area, two girls found a duckling without its mother on a pond in the forest. They contacted me. It turned out to be domestic. So the duck settled here, they named it Donald, and later it turned out to be Donya,» Inna smiled.
All the other wards are wild.
«Nafanya, a short-eared owl, arrived dirty and emaciated, with an old healed wing fracture. She lived with the people who found her for five months, until she stopped eating. Usually I don«t take birds after long home keeping, because there»s no point — prolonged improper care and improper feeding almost inevitably lead to disease and death. But here I decided to give her a chance,» Inna explained.
And Nafanya survived! She molted, changed her feathers, and her former owners didn«t even recognize her.
Sometimes birds come into Inna«s kind hands right in the nest — practically just hatched.
«In the Vvedenka area, people found a dead bird on their plot — it had hit a panoramic window and broken its neck. They brought me its nest with three chicks. They were tiny; until feathering began, it was impossible to tell what birds they were. Later it turned out they were black redstarts. This nest with chicks lay in a little box and traveled with me everywhere in the car for almost three weeks — I work and am constantly on the road, and the little ones needed round-the-clock care. They also had to be fed constantly — exclusively on insects. I gave them crickets and cockroaches with tweezers,» Inna said.
Small chicks, as Inna explained, are especially important to feed correctly. The foundation of the body and the bird«s future are laid then.
«Feed correctly — you«ll get a bird ready for release, for life in the wild. Feed incorrectly — you»ll get an invalid,» Inna believes. This is a rule everyone who wants to help birds should remember.
The most exotic resident this year so far is a greater spotted eagle listed in the Red Book. It was brought in with fractures of both legs. Necrosis of tissue had already begun on one leg.
«Dr. Mikhail Stepanov, a candidate of medical sciences, fitted the bird with Ilizarov apparatuses on both broken limbs. The operation lasted more than three hours! When the eagle had fully recovered, we sent it by rail to Moscow, to the Crow«s Nest rehabilitation center for wild birds. At the Chance shelter, a special transport box was made for the winged passenger,» Inna Zhuravleva said.
«If not for good care, the eagle would not have been able to keep its legs. With birds of prey, for example, I am greatly helped by Chance shelter volunteer Denis Bulygin,» Inna noted.
Often volunteers from other Kurgan groups come to Inna«s aid. Last autumn, during the influx of young swans that failed to fly away, Svetlana Ageeva and Valentina Ragozina helped a great deal.
Inna«s group and her like-minded people on the social network VKontakte is called Helping the Birds of the Trans-Urals | Other Animals, and it operates on the basis of the autonomous nonprofit organization Chance Rehabilitation Center for Disabled Animals. Inna is a founder of this nonprofit.
«We work with wild birds as volunteer intermediaries. We provide first aid, help with temporary fostering and delivery to the rehabilitation center for wild birds. We advise people on how to nurse injured birds themselves — those we generally don«t take in for fostering because we simply have nowhere to put them. These are common species — pigeons, corvids, gulls, swifts,» Inna explained.
