Baby coyote trapped in hundreds of cactus spines is freed by rescuers

The three-pound coyote pup — about 4 weeks old — appeared frozen. He was covered in hundreds of cholla cactus spines from nose to tail and could not move.

A homeowner in Surprise, Arizona, found the baby coyote alone in their yard, with no sign of his mother nearby. The pup had likely collided with a cholla, and its spines — barbed like fishhooks — were embedded across his face, legs, stomach and paws. The homeowner called the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center, a nonprofit wildlife rehabilitation facility in Scottsdale, and a volunteer was dispatched to collect him.

“To that little guy, I’m sure it was a very sharp pain,” said Berk Martineau, a veterinary technician at the center.

The pup was lethargic when he arrived on May 19, Martineau said, and was subdued in a way that suggested shock. Animals occasionally come in with a few spines lodged in their skin, he said, but nothing to this extent.

“This was a pretty extreme case,” he said.

(snip)

Martineau and his colleague sedated him and spent two and a half hours methodically removing each spine. The needles slide in easily, he said, but extracting them is difficult, as the barbs grip and resist. The two worked with small metal clamps to avoid getting pricked themselves.

Once all the spines were removed, the pup was placed in a heated incubator and fed fluids. Had he not been rescued, Martineau said, the pup would not have made it.

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