The following article is from AlphaPet's November 2009 newsletter. AlphaPet provides veterinary support to Brent Lodge.

The stoat referred to in the article is featured in the Brent Lodge 2010 calendar, available to purchase online via this website.

In May this year, a juvenile male stoat with a large laceration to its back leg was taken into Brent Lodge wildlife hospital. He had been found by a member of the public looking very forlorn outside the back door to their house. He was immediately transferred to AlphaPet where he underwent surgery to debride (clean up) the wound and then suture it closed.

Despite the size of the wound resulting in some tension on it, the operation was a success. However, this was a wild animal and it was not possible to immediately release him back into the wild with stitches in his leg. So, for the next 10 days, he resided at Hotel AlphaPet where he quickly became a firm favourite with the staff and also proved himself to be very photogenic!

Fed on a diet of chicks and mice, he gained weight and continued to grow in size rapidly. As with all wild animals, no matter how cute they may appear, the prime goal is to return them to the wild as quickly as possible and so, after just over 10 days with us, we were happy that the wound had healed fine and then made arrangements with the finder to release him back to very close to where he had been found. Needless to say, once he got a whiff of freedom, he was off without a backward glance, but at least we have the photos to remember him by!