Jan feeding Kiri-kou	Kiri-kou loves feeding!	She sucks well and eagerly	As she grows she tries to bite at the bottle with her new sharp teeth	Sometimes she holds onto the bottle herself sucking hard!	...or chewing hard!	Such contentment...
...all by myself...	...soooo nice	Kiri-kou needs daily bathing to clean soreness caused by incontinence from the nerve damage	drying after her bath	Kiri-kou cant wait for the next bit of action...	time for a quick explore	...yes!!! fish time...
Kiri-kou took to fish at the first try...	She has learned to chew usinig her new sharp adult teeth	Kiri-kou enjoys her fish, notice the back legs splayed abnormally due to her injury	Jan playing with Kiri-kou	Kiri-kou's new home	Kiri-kou enjoying her first taste of fish!	Kiri-kou needs cream to ease soreness caused by her dragging her rear body as paralysis remains

Kirikou is one of the biggest challenges we have ever faced. It all began on Christmas Eve with a phone call from the vet in Lerwick. They had just X-rayed a young female otter who had been brought in from Bressay. The story was that this two month old cub had been in a garden for three days while the Redman family waited for its mother to hear its loud whistling. Sadly Lucy, the family Labrador, found her first and though she only picked her up for a few moments, Kiri damaged the nerves to her rear end as she struggled to escape. The X-rays showed no damage to the spinal cord, but the cerebral nerves had been affected and she had lost the use of her rear legs and tail.

When she arrived at Hillswick the big question was whether we should keep her alive or not. Even if she could recover the use of her back legs, would it be possible to release her back into the wild? We thought that unlikely, but she had such an enthusiasm for life we felt we had to try everything we could to help her.

We contacted Grace Yoxon, at the International Otter Survival Fund, on Skye, who put us in touch with Carol Heap, who runs the Chestnut Centre in Derbyshire, where they look after several species of otter. Carol’s first words to Jan were: “Whatever you do, don’t give up yet!” She said they have had several otters which have fully recovered from such experiences to lead a quality life in captivity, where they take part in educational and breeding programmes. Carol explained that the cerebral nerves can regenerate and told us exactly what to do to encourage this to happen. She also said that it could take weeks or months for her to get the use of her legs and tail back.

Having followed Carol’s advice for the past fortnight, she has started showing definite signs of life at the rear end. She is now raising her legs and her tail on her own. On Sunday 18 January she showed she was growing in other ways too, by eating her first plate of liquidised fish. That means we can start to wean her off the bottle.

Because of her injuries we are having to bathe Kirikou several times every day and massage her back end, moving her legs and encouraging her to use them. This process means she is imprinting on us far too much to be able to go back into the wild, even if she fully recovers.

We have no idea how long this process is going to take or what the final outcome will be, but we are going to need to upgrade our otter facilities if she is going to stay here for any length of time.

Therefore we are launching an appeal for help to raise funds to create suitable facilities for Kirikou until she fully recovers, when we shall have to decide whether she can stay in Shetland or whether we send her to the Chestnut Centre in Derbyshire.

This is the first time we have ever launched an appeal like this. Until last year we raised funds through our vegetarian café, but this has now closed and we are having to look for new ways to cover our running costs.

And finally…in case you are wondering why she is called Kirikou, she is named after an African legendary character who was very small, but very determined, and very fast on his feet, which is what hope our otter will be soon.

We would like to thank the Redman family, the Lerwick vet and Shetland SSPCA officer Ron Patterson for all their help so far with Kirikou. We would also lilke to thank Grace Yoxon, of the International Otter Survival Fund; Carol Heap, of the Chestnut Centre and Ewan Tulloch for getting our otter fund off to a healthy start.

Anyone who would like to make a contribution to the fund can do so at the Clydesdale Bank branch in Lerwick (Sort code 82-66-08; Acc. No. 30241156). Our charity number is SC020979.

Thankyou for your interest.
 

click here to see Kirikou with Tony Nevin animal osteopath

click here to see Kirikou experience water and eat her first whole fish

click here to see Kirikou with Simon King