Remembering Victoria

We called her Victoria
Dr. Shauna O'Meara BVMS (Hon)
Veterinarian at RSPCA

I am angry … because of a swan.

We called her Victoria. As a vet, I am loathe to give sick animals, particularly wildlife animals, names because, as Murphy's Law would have it, the second you name something, it gives up the ghost or needs to be put down for some reason or another. So I never named her. I refused to (she was that sick), but my wildlife nurses did. Victoria. I said, "That's it. You've named her. Now she's going to die." Because that's the sort of sick joke you make in our line of work, just to survive the job.

Victoria came in to RSPCA about 10 months ago with thistle wound tightly around her leg. The thistle, once removed, left a wound in her inner thigh about the size of a child's hand. The wound destroyed a lot of the ligaments on the inner aspect of her leg, exposed her thigh bone to the air and damaged some of the nerves operating her foot.  In many cases, she might have been put down - the injury was severe. But she had a mate waiting for her on the lake and she was a fighter.

So we treated her. As her doctor, I did five surgeries on that swan's leg over a period of four months. I learnt a little bit about swan plastic surgery in those operations, I can tell you. As big as the operations were, my role as a vet was only secondary to the huge role my wildlife nurses and vet nurses played in her care. They changed her bandages and bedding, they medicated her, and they fed her. Worst of all … they fell in love with her.

Gradually, Victoria got better and eventually she was released into the wild at Lake Gininnderra, where her mate was.  We all cried of happiness.

The day after her release, we went out to see her and she was with another swan of similar size. Her mate had found her. After 10 months, he still remembered her. Of course, we cried again because those are the times in this job that makes it all worthwhile.

Because it was such a lovely story, we told other people about her. Victoria's story made it into the local media because wanted to let people know that, when they donate to RSPCA, it is to do real life-saving, animal welfare wor k.

For a month only, Victoria had a lovely time with her mate. In the wild. Free. On Anzac Day, Victoria was attacked by a dog. A dog that was allowed to run free, off-lead in a region of the Lake marked "no dogs off lead". She was brought into the RSPCA, dreadfully injured, her leg smashed. The nursing staff who had loved her and named her could only stand by and nurse her and cradle her head while we, vets, had to put her to sleep.

Later, we took radiographs (x-ray) of Victoria's leg. Much to our horror, in the middle of that fractured leg was a bullet. Some mongrel had come down to the lake and shot her through the leg, crippling her.

What sickens me and angers everyone at RSPCA is that someone would shoot a bird at all. Especially a swan, of all birds - those magnificent galleons of birds that glide across the water with all of their sails up, regal and proud and hurting nobody. Do the idiots that did this realise that swans mate for life? Do they realise that, in killing her, so too did they kill the male and all of his future mating potential? Do they realise that, in crippling her so horribly and not killing her, they had condemned her to then being torn apart by a local dog? Following the gunshot, Victoria may well have deliberately gone to land where the people had helped her before. But nobody would help her this time. There was only a dog.

That it was her, Victoria, makes it personal. As a vet, I see a lot of shot birds. I see a lot of birds with dog and cat attacks. There was only one Victoria. What brings me to tears is the possibility that the incident was not a freak thing, but a deliberate attack.

So that's the tale. At RSPCA, we work our butts off caring for all creatures, both great and small. We spend small fortunes on all kinds of cases all of the time, trying to get 'happy swan stories' not just for the media and our image, but so that the staff, who work here and who really do adore these animals, can keep going. We do an amazing amount of good on a very limited budget with limited space and limited staff. You might not read about it in 'letters to the editor' but there are thousands of people out there who can vouch for this and the invaluable work we do.

When you listen to media comments and read stories about some of the unfortunate incidents that occasionally occur (as they do with any large, public organisations), please try to keep the facts in perspective before joining in with the lynch-mob.  We have a limited budget - only donations keep us going. We can't give every person who comes to our door every little thing they demand because we simply cannot afford to fund everything and we simply do not have the staff or the space to do everything we would love to be able to do.  All we can do is our best and for the most part, we have been succeeding.

Please continue to support your RSPCA: we really are trying to do everything we can for the animals.

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