Rescuing Brickpits and Apunga; not all rescues end well.

The is the flip side of batty rescue daily life; not everything is cute cuddly and not everything survives. These 2 rescues happened within a few days of each other, neither ended well. This is not a video for the sensitive at heart or the emotionally fragile. Brickpits had a horribly fracture in his wing, and all I could do was to get him euthanased quickly. Apunga's condition was pretty ghastly and she was still alive and trying to crawl away. I'm pretty pragmatic, but this wound even gave me a shock, mostly because she was still alive. I put these videos up because wildlife rescue isn't complete with only the happy endings stories; to be a rescuer, you need to take the good with the bad, the hard work with the happy outcome pleasures. You can't be a rescuer and refuse to rescue because the bat might die; you can't arrive at a rescue and say you're not going to rescue it because it will need euthanasia. You can't vet the rescues before you get there and cherrypick to only bats who will survive, because if you do you're likely to find the descriptions don't always match what you find when you arrive and what was said to be a microbat is actually an adult male flying-fox who wants to turn you into confetti. But what you can do though, is to take rescues from a rescuer, once the batty been stabilised and has shown that it is likely to survive. Every contribution has its place, but you have to be realistic about what level of survival outcome you can cope with. Some people chop fruit for the bats (an immensely valuable occupation); some clean cages and help with logistics (collecting the fruit from a green grocer and dropping it off to the aviary, which can take hours by the time you load, drive, unload and return home). Some run a creche where they feed, clean and care for the little ones on their release journey, and there are few deaths or unhappy outcomes. What you can't do is to only have happy outcomes and only have the fun of playing with the babies; it doesn't work like that. Wildlife rescuers and carers need realistic expectations and willingness to do all the hard slog, otherwise they burn out. Having said that; all hail to the unsung rescuer/carer/wildlife slaves who survive the early days and continue day in and day out without a break.