Locked-down pub becomes Ireland’s first wildlife hospital

Navan, Feb 21 (AFP):
A pub that closed its doors during lockdown is now serving a menagerie of very different clientele after transforming into Ireland’s first wildlife hospital. The bar of the Tara Na Ri pub in County Meath to the northwest of Dublin is now deserted, the blinds pulled down, the Guinness taps dry and the till empty. But the pub’s outbuildings are a hive of activity.
In one, a member of staff bottle-feeds Liam, a two-week-old wild Irish goat who was found on a mountainside. Three swans nest on straw in former stables, a skittish fox settles in a new enclosure, and a wide-eyed buzzard is being nursed back to health. “We were very much accustomed to just one singular way of living,” said James McCarthy, whose family have owned the pub for more than a decade.
“When that’s taken away you’re just kind of left with a void. It takes some time before it starts getting replaced with other things that you never would have thought were possible before.” McCarthy has turned the outbuildings over to the government-backed agency Wildlife Rehabilitation Ireland (WRI) and instead of pulling pints, now serves drive-through customers with takeaway coffees at the front of the pub.