Four veterinarians from the Natonal Zoo are heading to Louisiana to help with the oil slick animals that continue to struggle with the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The animals are being cleaned up and then released back into the wild with fingers crossed. Hopefully, they will not return to the fouled areas and become drenched in oil again, but these are nesting and migratory creatures and they have a homing instinct that makes them return to their "territory." They don't carry memories of almost being killed by a thick black soup.

The veterinarians from the National Zoo will be rotating in and out of Houma, La., over the next eight weeks to help at the incident command center there. The first vet left yesterday.

They will be working with the U.S. Coast Guard to help determine where to release the cleaned and rehabilitated animals.

This BP disaster has dragged on for months now. There is some hope that the flow will be diminishing soon and that a second well will stop the underwater gusher. But for the animals, the tragedy is just beginning.