Landers saves peregrine falcon

Every once in a while, Gary Landers, owner and operator of Wild Wings Raptor Rehab, has a raptor come to his facility that really gets him excited. In this case it's a rare peregrine falcon, so busted up from tangling with a PGE main transmission line carrying around 30,000 volts of electricity, Landers thought it might not make it.

Sometimes the raptor that makes contact with electricity is held fast to the charge and is killed immediately. Other times, a bird will make contact with so much energy it is actually blown away from the contact. This was apparently the case of the peregrine Landers is treating at the moment: He found it lying on the ground, 60 feet from the power lines.

Luckily, Gary has seen these kinds of injuries before and knows what to do, and luckily Broken Top Veterinarian Clinic has a piece of equipment to treat tissue injuries that works like a miracle.

The falcon has a leg fracture, apparently caused by the fall. The left wing is blistered, showing considerable tissue damage and drastic loss of blood-flow. Landers used a splint to set the injured leg and hydrated the bird immediately.

Once the falcon was breathing and moving as well as possible, he administered a series of medicines to help prevent infection, gave it additional fluids, wrapped it in a blanket and took it to Dana Bailey at Broken Top Veterinary Clinic between Sisters and Bend.

Bailey has a cold laser apparatus that stimulates unhealthy tissue and makes room for new, healthy tissue to carry blood. It is an unassuming treatment, administrated by slowly waving a small flashlight-like device over the damaged part of the animal. The light administered is so powerful the operator, assistant and patient must wear eye protection.

Cold laser therapy is a medical and veterinary treatment that uses low-level lasers - or light-emitting diodes - to alter cellular function. Cold laser therapy is controversial in mainstream medicine, with ongoing research to determine whether there is a demonstrable effect in humans.

There seems to be no question that cold laser is a positive tool in treating damage to tissues in birds. Landers and the staff of Broken Top have seen the positive results in too many cases to doubt its effectiveness.

After the first treatment, Gary could feel warmth (blood-flow) coming back into the area of the bird's wing that had been blistered, burned and suffering from serious tissue damage, and said, "I could tell we were on a positive track."