The three-pound coyote pup — about 4 weeks old — appeared frozen. He was covered in hundreds of cholla cactus spines from nose to tail and could not move.
A homeowner in Surprise, Arizona, found the baby coyote alone in their yard, with no sign of his mother nearby. The pup had likely collided with a cholla, and its spines — barbed like fishhooks — were embedded across his face, legs, stomach and paws. The homeowner called the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center, a nonprofit wildlife rehabilitation facility in Scottsdale, and a volunteer was dispatched to collect him.
“To that little guy, I’m sure it was a very sharp pain,” said Berk Martineau, a veterinary technician at the center.
The pup was lethargic when he arrived on May 19, Martineau said, and was subdued in a way that suggested shock. Animals occasionally come in with a few spines lodged in their skin, he said, but nothing to this extent.
“This was a pretty extreme case,” he said.
Unlike ordinary thorns, cholla spines are barbed and designed to detach on contact with passing animals. For a tiny pup, a single stumble into a cholla patch can result in needles lodged across their entire body.
Martineau said it’s currently “baby season” at the center. Every spring, staff see an influx of young, orphaned animals too small to fend for themselves.
“They’re learning to become animals, they’re exploring, they’re running around,” he said. “And unfortunately, a bunch get injured or separated from their mom.”
Even without the spines, this pup likely wouldn’t have survived on his own.
Martineau and his colleague sedated him and spent two and a half hours methodically removing each spine. The needles slide in easily, he said, but extracting them is difficult, as the barbs grip and resist. The two worked with small metal clamps to avoid getting pricked themselves.
“We wanted to be as delicate as possible but also efficient,” Martineau said.
Once all the spines were removed, the pup was placed in a heated incubator and fed fluids. Had he not been rescued, Martineau said, the pup would not have made it.
“With the conditions of the summer and it being so hot and that coyote being immobile, there’s a bunch of factors that would have ultimately left this coyote to die in the wild,” he said.
The pup has since recovered completely.
“He’s acting like a wild coyote should and is just as healthy as the other coyote pups,” Martineau said.
The center is currently home to several other orphaned coyote pups of a similar age, and staff have introduced them to one another to encourage the animals to develop socially. As they mature, they’ll be moved to an outdoor rehabilitation space, and eventually released as adults.
“We’re able to create little packs where they can learn from each other,” Martineau said.
Staff at the center interact with the animals minimally — no cuddling, no talking and feeding only when necessary. They wear masks around the animals, too.
“The big goal is that none of these animals are imprinted to us at all,” Martineau said. “We want these animals to be prepared to go back into the wild without being reliant on people and we don’t want them to approach people.”
The pup is expected to be released in the fall or spring.
“Once he’s big enough and strong enough,” Martineau said, “we’ll let him go.”
The post Baby coyote trapped in hundreds of cactus spines is freed by rescuers appeared first on Washington Post.
