Baxter Black: It's your head or your pocketbook

I was sitting on the beach reading the Malibu, Calif., newspaper to acquaint myself with local concerns. There were the usual stories: real estate, recession, anti-motorcycle rants, the Interior Secretary's visit to the park and the anti-rodenticide brigade. The second page had a story complete with photos of a very sick bobcat. One of the Valley Wildlife Care group diagnosed him as having "active rodenticide poisoning." I called the group's number. The answering machine said they were too busy to handle "information calls" since they were deluged with people bringing in injured birds, mostly baby birds that had fallen from their nests. They require so much care. They reported that in order to save the anemic bobcat, a healthy bobcat donor had arrived from almost 200 miles away to administer a blood transfusion. The prognosis was "poor." As a kid I can remember trying to feed baby birds with an eyedropper and taping splints on varmints' broken legs. I don't think I saved many. Rocket forward 50 years and veterinary medicine is now capable of performing almost any procedure that can be done in humans. The question then arises, is there any limit on how much one can reasonably spend to save a dying bobcat? How much would Gandhi spend?...more