FOR THE LOVE OF BIRDS

This wildlife vet rescued an endangered vulture but it couldn't eat due to a damaged beak - so she gave it a new one

- RICHARD VAN RENSBURG

IT’S not a request you hear every day: “Do you have a dead vulture in your fridge you can donate to me?”

But specialist wildlife vet Katja Koeppel knew the people from VulPro, an organisation that protects vultures, wouldn’t find it strange at all.

Katja was desperately trying to save the life of a white-backed vulture that had been hit by a car and needed a donor bird. The white-backed vulture’s one eye was injured and her beak was so badly damaged she had to be fed with tongs.

“We attached an acrylic prosthesis with orthopaedic threadwork to what was left of her beak,” says Katja, who works at the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of veterinary science.

But within a week the pros- thetic became unstable. Katja returned her patient to VulPro, which had originally rescued the bird, with the instruction she should be kept in isolation and at first just be given small pieces of meat.

It broke Katja’s heart to watch it struggling. “She became depressed so she was allowed back with the other vultures.”