Thursday, September 15, 2011

Injured hawk treated with bird accupuncture. It doesn't help. Sadly, hawk is euthanized.

A female red hawk, injured in November 2010 on the Johns Hopkins campus when she flew into a library window, was euthanized when attempts at rehabilitation, including "bird acupuncture," failed, according to The Baltimore Sun.

In The Sun article, Kathy Woods, in charge of the bird's rehabilitation, explained the difference between human and bird acupuncture: "Instead of having you sit there for half an hour holding a bird of prey with needles, they take a vitamin, and draw it up into tiny syringes. They inject that, and that amount of fluid is the pressure."

So vitamins injected into a bird with tiny syringes is bird acupuncture? Who decided that? I guess the ancient Chinese who knew so much more than modern science and medicine. Vitamins, syringes. Those ancient Chinese really were advanced. And I'll grant that the vitamin injection procedure does seem like a better method than holding a hawk with needles in her for half an hour. Yep, wise people those ancient Chinese.