imagine the level of discomfort, even with the painkillers, they can have. In
general, I would not say we have very severe incidents; we just have to be
careful. It is a wild animal; we have to be focused on the work while handling
of every single one. Some of them are more feisty, strong and fierce, usually
they are the ones that are doing better, obviously cannot wait to be out. So
especially with those we have to be double-careful.
Could you describe an average day at the center?
Well, we have a lot of work, like I already mentioned, it is a 24/7 job for me.
We have a rescue line, a specific phone number anyone can call in case a
turtle is found injured or sick. Obviously, I would not be able to do any of
these things without our lovely volunteers, people who want to help us and
are coming from all over the world. A typical day consists of working between
nine to ten hours. During the summer we have more work, and also because
of the weather and high temperatures we have to start very early in the
morning, like 7 or 7:30 for example. It is a lot of work, that is why we need a
lot of volunteers coming in. The duties are a long list. There is cleaning the
turtles, we really have to keep them clean, cleaning the tanks, disinfecting any
kind of equipment. We are a hospital, so everything needs to be clean and
tidy. Personally, I have to oversee all the work of the volunteers, every single
thing that they are doing. Also, I am responsible for performing the topical
treatments of the wounds, I can have a lot of patients to treat every single
day - a minimum of four, up to ten during the summer when we have a lot of
workload. I have to take care of the medications, specific for each turtle. This
is one of the most important things. We also have the part of public
awareness, the visitors are coming in, so we have shifts in the volunteers
giving tours for the visitors and letting them know how and what we are
doing here. We also have night shift; minimum of two people are staying here
every single night. The volunteers have specific schedule, not the same
people are staying of course. There are some things that need to be checked
in the middle of the night or early in the morning, like the temperature of the
tanks the animals are in. If we have a patient in critical care, we have to check
up on it quite often during the night. Also, if we have a patient recovering
from a surgery and have that specific turtle out of the water. Eventually, it is a
very long list. Also, there is a very important fact that we are tube feeding
some of the animals that are not able to eat on their own. We insert a special
tube in the mouth of the animals and place it far down in the esophagus,