Second Chances: A Story of Animal Rehab
Jul 15th, 2009 | By Colleen McKie | Category: UncategorizedIt’s 5 pm on a Saturday and my phone rings. I grab it and am greeted with a frantic A friend of mine has a baby raccoon…
And so it begins. We start making arrangements to pick the little fella up and take it to an animal rehabber friend. First we need to prep the animal carrier with blankets and make sure that we have the right food for the baby raccoon. We aren’t sure how old he is, if he is injured, or even if “he” is a he, for that matter. All we know is a baby raccoon needs helps and we’re going to give it to him.
pring means new life. And sometimes that new life gets injured or left to its own devices. Usually around the beginning of spring each year there will be a quick segment on the news about leaving wildlife alone; how you aren’t helping by taking a wild animal into captivity. Just leave Mother Nature to do her job. Cue “Circle of Life.”
Thankfully most people can’t just sit back and watch an injured or sick animal without wanting to do something. This is where my husband and I, and a slew of other animal lovers, come in. While we don’t have the space to do animal rehab ourselves yet (but will, hopefully, within the next year), we are friends with one of, if not the main animal rehabber on Prince Edward Island.
Over the past few years, we’ve received several calls from friends who know what we do and have had “animal situations” or have known someone who needed help. We brought the above-mentioned baby raccoon up to our rehabber friend, falling in love with it on the drive up. The little guy started the ride in the pet carrier, but quickly ended up snuggled in my husband’s arms, suckling on a bottle and making chittery baby raccoon noises.
As a city girl who grew up with one dog and one cat and was perfectly fine with that, the transformation to pseudo animal rehabber has been interesting. Never one to get my hands dirty, in the beginning I was often relegated to the part of helper, handing my husband Jason towels or baby bottles and talking to the animals in an effort to reassure them that all was fine. I was happy with my supporting role and was in no rush to step into the rehabber spotlight. But as often happens in life, I had no say in the matter.
The moment I realized that I was no longer along for the ride with my husband as a mere passenger was when I found myself running through the Superstore parking lot in an attempt to capture a seagull with a broken wing. I finally cornered him and, after throwing a blanket on him, grappling him, and making sure that he and the injured wing were both secured, bounced him in my arms and cooed at him like he was a baby. I was surprised to find that I wasn’t scared just happy that he was going to get the help he needed.
I’ve comforted a baby fox who was sick and groggy from her distemper shot and learned how to splint a broken crow leg with some medical tape and a Q-tip. I can force feed a four-day-old bird, and I know enough to keep my face and fingers away from an injured, cranky seagull. And I have no problem stopping traffic to rescue an injured starling in the middle of the road.
Our most recent rescue involved a skunk trap, an injured skunk, and an hour-long trip with the skunk in the trunk. (BTW coffee grounds are super for helping to eliminate the smell of skunk, but it might turn you off of coffee for a while.)
Not all of the animal rescues are handed off to our rehabber friend; in fact, sometimes she gives us charges that are in need of some love and a good home. This time last year, I had my first chance to delve head—and heart—first into rehab by taking on the responsibility of a six-day-old starling. For the first time, I was 100% responsible, since my husband was working in Alberta. I took Einstein home in a small plastic flower pot with paper towel in the bottom. He was so young that for the first three days he lived on a heating pad. Since he was too young to walk or eat on his own, I had to hand-feed him about every 20 minutes. And I loved it. Sure, I was scared, but it was well worth it. A year later, “Einie” is a joy to have and if I had the space, I would gladly take on the responsibility of another starling.
My husband and I are hoping to buy a farm in the near future, where we will be able to get more involved in animal rehab, helping to rehabilitate injured and sick animals so that they can be released back into the wild. And if they are too injured to live on their own? We’ll also have an animal sanctuary where less than healthy animals can live. Until that happens though, I will continue answering the phone and helping the local wildlife anyway that I can, be that picking them up and handing them over to another rehabber or continuing to take care of my own brood.
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