WTS has opened its doors to 90 animals so far this year. There have been both sad and happy stories, as chronicled in this blog, but so far 70% of all animals arriving here end up released back into the wild. Including Baby Groundhog (left) who was hit by a car when a very small baby of just a few weeks old. 70% is a very good success rate for this kind of work, but of course, the aim is to make it higher! Most of the animals that died were either too young to survive without their mothers or were severely injured or sick. Currently about 20 young newly released animals of various species return to WTS everyday for snacks. That's OK, they didn't have any wild mothers to cache away food for them, so I'm happy to step in! A few have returned injured, and they are brought back in, patched up, and sent out again. It makes me glad to know that they know where to come if they get into trouble!

Below are some stats for those who are interested. They may be difficult to read, but I tried to post the the best I could!

The babies are getting bigger! They are about 6 weeks old now and are just starting on solid foods: grapes, squirrel chow soaked in formula, cheerios...but they still love their formula best of all! I m hoping to get them all grown up and released by Thanksgiving. It is late in the year to plan a release, but I will provide a shelter for them and food so they can always come and go if they like. You can see that their tails are getting fluffy and they are becoming more active and playful. They've come a long way!

And what else has been going on at WTS???


The opossum teenagers have been visiting on some nights....

I sold my hair for $800!!!!

(see www.hairlesscrusader.com)


That's going to save a lot of animals!!

Including the little chipmunk who came in today after being caught by a cat- Wild Things' 90th patient!!

I attended the New York State Wildlife Rehabilitation Council 2008 conference up at Niagara, NY. It was great! I always learn so much- from the talks and from talking with all the other rehabilitators. There are lots of inspiring stories and lots of people willing to help. A BIG thanks to all the wonderful members of the Squirrel Board who helped me look after the baby squirrels while I went to talks. I also received a scholarship from to attend the Rabies Vector Species course, which is a requirement for those wishing to work with raccoons, skunks & bats.

I also received a very special invitation at the conference. Does everyone remember Radar the blind fawn that came to WTS a few months ago?? He has found a wonderful home at an amazing deer sanctuary run by a deer rehabilitating guru! He is doing absolutely GREAT!!! See picture below. He runs and leaps around and has a girlfriend named Cookie Doe. Cookie was blind due to a vitamin deficiency, but her sight was restored with a proper diet. However, a car accident left her with a badly broken jaw. She arrived at the sanctuary a day before Radar, so they are the same age. Radar was neutered so they can be buddies and stay together always! You would never know that he was blind he runs around so well!

Just when I was ready to put away all my various baby formulas and baby animal nesting materials for the season, who should arrive but the Itsys! These 2 week old Grey Squirrels fell out of a tree that was being cut down. In this situation the mother squirrel will almost always come back and find them, moving them to a new nest, but as it's been so cold outside the people at the site thought it best to bring them into rehabiliation. It's a hard call as obviously mother squirrels are better than me at bringing up baby squirrels, but it has been below freezing, so I was happy to take these 3 into WTS. There are 2 boys and one girl; the little girl is much smaller, she is the runt.

Though they arrived weak and dehydrated, in the last week they have put on about 15g each and are doing great! However, owing to how late it is in the season (they may well be nursing into early December), they may have to over-winter at Wild Things. We'll see how they do.

In other exciting Wild Things news, the entire rehabilitation area has been torn down and construction has begun to build a bigger and better animal facility. Here are pictures from the first 3 days of construction. The old structure was built poorly and leaked and got below freezing in the winter. The new sanctuary will be able to cater to all the recovering wild things' needs. It is a long and expensive process, which is why everyone's donationas & support means so much! Stay tuned for progress!

I was worried that the construction would confuse & displace a lot of animals, but so far everyone seems just fine. As you can see (below), Pepina, a young wild Hooded Skunk, seems unpreturbed, as does this little Eastern Ribbon Snake who lives in the front yard of Wild Things, and all the young squirrels who still come to WTS for breakfast. I've constructed special squirrel feeders for the latter, which keep out chipmunks and other critters looking for food, the appear to be a success, and the young just-released squirrels can eat without their food being stolen!

And as much as I love WTS,with most of the animals now living on their own and just coming for snacks, I was able to get away for a few days (bringing the Itsy's with me). And every new place means new wild things to see! Here is a picture of a few Double-Crested Cormorants (dark ones drying their wings) & a Great Cormorant (white breast) just outside a friend's house in Eastern Massachussets. What a lovely sight!

Autumn has started to arrive at Wild Things, but that doesn't mean that the animals stop coming in! Though, thankfully not nearly as many, so I can start to catch up on a serious sleep deficit! This is a picture of a little Red Sqiuirrel, about 4 weeks old. He was found on a construction site, his nest probably destroyed by the construction activity.

I told the lady who brought him in to look out for his brothers and sisters, but so far no more have come in. He had scratched all over the pads of his feet, probably from the rough ground of the construction. After a few days adjusting he was all too happy to take advantage of a warm bed and formula at Wild Things. The best part is that another nearby rehabilitator had a little red just a week or so younger. So, the two boys are now together and are happy to be snugglepartners!

Wild Things also received a couple of little Eastern cottontail babies. Their pictures are below. They are very cute and were already about 2 1/2 weeks old, so out of the woods in terms of digestion issues, and have already gained about 50% of their weight in the last week. In total, 3 bunnies were found; a cat was "playing" with them. One appeared to have a serious injury to its back legs, possibly a spinal break. But on examination, there was no injury, it had been born with a congenital deformity of the rear limbs. It is amazing that it had lived so long- probably because up until the time it was found it was able to depend on its mum's milk. But it couldn't move. So, sadly, it had to be euthanized. I think it's siblings are a bit traumatized, they are very shy, but they are gaining weight and will hopefully be released in a few weeks. I want them to put on plenty of weight so they will be able to keep warm in this colder weather!

There is some other sad news from Wild Things. Little Bunchowski passed away last week. Can you see the "B" above his grave in the picture? (I usually don't bury animls here, but I'd had him for so long it was too hard for me to leave him in the woods for some animal to eat). For all those who have been following his story, he came to WTS at about 3-4 days old. As you all know by now, it is almost impossible to keep these tiny ones alive as they don't receive the important nutrients in their mother's milk. I tried new formula and infant anti-gas formula, and this got him through the first 3-4 weeks with no bloat or diarrhea. This was amazing! Well, then he broke his arm, a sign of metabolic bone disease (MBD). It healed well and I gave him extra calcium. He got bigger and bigger, but still never seemed right. At 300g, much bigger than the size I usually release bunnies, he was still here as he didn't seem quite right. At two months old he still wanted to eat formula more than anything else, and he didn't hop much. He got diarrhea at 2 months old. It went away, but then came back the next week and he was gone.

As you all know, I've been trying to X-ray some of the very young bunnies that have come to Wild Things to learn more about their health. So, I brought Bunchowski for a post-mortem X-ray. Well, take a look below. His long bones look thin but OK, but I have NEVER seen anything like his spine- neither had any of the vets. The way it is wavy is a sure sign of MBD, and poor little guy, I hope he didn't suffer too much.

All of this has been a BIG learning experience, which I had shared with lots of other rehabbers. I may even do a presentation on it at the wildlife conference this month. All of this indicates that there is something in the mother's milk that helps the digestive system to develop. Without this mystery factorX, the digestive system is not able to develop correctly and does not seem to be able to digest well or absorb the essential nutrrients. This winter I want to come up with a plan to help all those itsy-bitsy bunnies that come in next year. Perhaps they need uv light to help calcium absorption, or perhaps the pH of the formula needs to be tweaked. It's a real mystery- so stay tuned!
 

But I don't want to end on a sad note...so here are a few more pictures. Here are two of my 10 or so recently released squirrels, a little grey onthe left and a red on the right. All looks harmonious, right? Well, actually the little red was totally bullying the grey! I have now put out two food dishes!

Also, below is Soixante-neuf, or Lil'Girl as I've been calling her. She is released, but like Lil'Mo, she likes to come visit to play and even offers her nose for a kiss! She was VERY happy with this little piece of corn on the cob! I have to break it to her that they are not selling it anymore up here as it's out of season!

And check out the great insulation area that Ingrid and I made around her snapping turtle cage (wearing a mask because of the fiberglass int he insulation- we were mid-construction!). She will be hibernating her 6 year old almost-manhole-cover size snapper, but needed something to help keep the water from freezing. We'll get a top on it as well. As you all know, Ingrid is a great friend of WTS and my reptile/amphibian/fish expert. She has helped me all summer: Thank you Ingrid!

Saying goodbye can be tough. This is a picture of me & Habakkuk, a Virginia opossum, the day before his release. Habby came to me with 6 brothers & sisters on 1July and weighed 40g (~1.5oz), they were about 10-13 weeks old. When he was released the other day he was almost 2 kilos (4.4lbs)!

The reason why Habby ended up staying longer than his siblings is because one of them bit off the tip of his tail back in July (opossums tend to bite at almost anything- I still have a healing finger after about a month!). It was healing just fine, but then got terribly infected and had to be amputated. You can see the little tail stub in this picture. It finally healed up nicely, and amazingly enough he still uses it to hook onto things!

WTS has also released lots of little squirrels over the past 2 weeks. Here is a picture of one of the little Red squirrels that is now running around the WTS woods. Reds are a HANDFUL! They are so high energy and if they come in past a certain age (~6 weeks or so) they do not like to be handled. But they are very cute! I just welcomed another one yesterday. He is still very young and likes to be held, which makes looking after him a lot easier.

OK, this isn't the greatest photograph, but you can just about make out 5 very cute little Grey squirrel faces all cozy in the hammock in their release cage. These 4 brothers & 1 sister were raised by another local rehabilitator and brought to WTS to be released here in the woods. They are now running around and living in the woods full time...but still stop by for breakfast! it's a great time to release squirrels as the woods are loaded with acorns. Yum! Below is a picture of a couple of them just after I opened their cage and they went out to explore. The other 3 are up the tree!

And it's not just the WTS patients that have been busy. Below are a few pictures of some of the other residents in the area. In the last few days I've also seen a young Yellow spotted salamander and an opossum (perhaps one of the ones I released several weeks ago as it was about the same size as Habby), and this morning there was a Cooper's hawk sitting on top of the bunny release cage. I can just imagine it saying  "OK little bunny, let's be friends once you get out...."! He was beautiful but I scared him away! At this time of year there are many juvinille raptors about that have realised that hunting on one's own is tough and they are happy to find easy meals!

It's time to talk opossum (pronounced "POSSum")! Wild Things has had 14 opossums come to stay this summer, and all but one have been successfully released back into the wild.

Virginia opossums are North America's only marsupial. Marsupials give birth to young that are undeveloped. The young then crawl into a pouch on the mother and attach to a nipple. Here they continue to grow and start emerging from the pouch to explore at about 3 months of age. Most marsupials live Down Under (e.g., kangaroos, koalas, wombats, tasmanian devils). Quite apart from their gestational differences from placental mammals (mammals who have a placenta and who give birth to more developed young, like us!), marsupials have other interesting biological differences. For example, they have no corpus callosum, the main bridge of neurons that communicates between the two halves of the brain. They have other ways that the opossite sides of their brains exchange information, but differences like this suggest that marsupials broke off from the rest of the mammals a long time ago on the evolutionary tree of life.

Opossums generally have large litters and live only a few years in the wild. They are nocturnal and though all the ones that I have raised are sweet with me, they can be pretty aggressive. Because they do not have a well developed sucking reflex and there are so many in each litter, babies are all tube fed (the feeder, i.e. me, inserts a tiny tube down their throats and into their tummies) to ensure that they get all the nutrients they need in a timely fashion!

Everyone has a different personality, like Itsy-Bitsy below! He was such a funny little fellow! And then there was Jelly Bean, who spent a week in a local bakery before being caught. During that week she lived on jelly beans and came in with flourescent green poop to proove it. She was not very impressed with me and my healthy nutrition regime for her. Everytime I picked her up she squireted explosive diarrhea at me as a defense, and chomped my finger rather badly!

Here is beautiful Suzanne, her son Gus (dressed as Mr. Incredible!), and one of the friendly little opossum babies. Suzanne is a great supporter of Wild Things!

Below is a picture taken on the night of a release. They may not be sure at first, but then they disappear into the woods. It's sad to see them go, and I worry about them! But I know they are a good size to do well on their own!

The blue bin in the front of their cage is their litter box- yes! They are litter trainable, which makes them very good guests to look after! :)

And one last one, Itsy-Bitsy, now much bigger, just before his release, enjoying the luxury of Wild Things!!

Just when I thought the season was nearing the end and I might be able to catch up on sleep and other parts of my life, the last summer litters of babies started to arrive! Here are the stories on a few of them.

This is Bunchowski. He is an Eastern cottontail, and came to me at only 4 days old. He's about 3 1/2 weeks old now. Anyone who has been following this blog knows how incredibly difficult it is to keep these tiny ones alive, but Bunchowski was a real fighter! However, like my other tiny ones that survived to this age, it appears that he may be a victim of metabolic bone disease; his right arm broke a week ago (you can see it wrapped up in the picture) after jumping a few inches. But he is bright and alert and is almost weaned and LOVES cilantro! He is almost 4oz.

And this little lady is a Southern Flying squirrel. Her name is Lady Sedgwick and she weights 20g, or about 2/3 of an oz. Baby flyers are a funny shape- they are about 1/3 head, 1/2 tail, and have a little body in between. She was found when a cat walked up to its owner with her tail hanging out of its mouth. She suffered a few injuries, and is now on antibiotics and is doing really well. If you all remember, Amelia, my last little flyer, came to me with suspected neurological problems. And comparing Lady's behavior to Amelia's at the same age (she is about 4-5 weeks old) confirms this: Lady is so much more "with it" at this age, and has even decided to wean herself!

And these two cuties are 4-5 week old Grey squirrels. They are "Soixante neuf" (on the right) and "Soixante dix," or 69 & 70- their patient numbers (but it sounded so much better in French!)- and were both found wandering on their own flea ridden and thin. 69 is a little girl. And the day she came in, 70 arrived later that day. They are not related, but the same size and instantly snuggled and adopted each other as siblings! After only 24 hours of warmth, snuggling and TLC, their tails started fluffing up! :)

WTS also welcomed another little Virginia Opossum. She was in a wonderful local bakery/lunch place for a week raiding jelly bellies. And she arrived with green poop to proove it! She had some bad abrasions around her neck, but they look OK. She'll stay for a few weeks to get her nutrition back on track and to grow a bit bigger before release.

I am excited to announce that I now have my federal US bird permit to rehabilitate all birds! It only took 8 months to get it after sending the application in January (!). One needs a federal permit for birds because they cross state lines, especially during migration. can you believe it?!

This little fellow was caught by the neighbour's cat. It was unclear what species he was- so hard to tell with little ones before their feathers come in. He looked to me like a Wood Trush, though may have been an American Robin. The cat's owner felt terrible and rushed it here right away. He was very hungry and for the first few days had to be fed every 15 minutes from sun up til sun down. I made a special baby bird food and also gave him soaked puppy chow and some berries.

I also put a mirror next to his "nest" once he opened his eyes so he would get used to seeing his own species, even if it was only himself!

But sadly, the little guy didn't make it. It's hard ot know what killed him. He may have aspirated some food  into his lungs and contracted pnemonia, or there may have been internal injuries- his abdomen was a very dark colour, which may have indicated internal bleedingIt's hard ot know, but I'm glad that he had a last few quiet and warm days here.

A few days later I received a Ring Bill Gull with a terribly broken wing and he had to be put down. I hope that WTS has beeter luck with birds from now on!!

But the good news is that the neighbour has now put a bell on her cat's collar, which gives wildlife a better chance. See the WTS webpage on Cats & Wildlife for more information!

Little Amelia has finally taken flight. For all of you who have not been following her story, she is a Southern Flying Squirrel and came to me at just 20g as a baby. When she left she was over 60g and was so happy to be free. I miss her and really worry about her, but I know that she is happy to be flying through the forest!

I was worried about this little gal as she had real problems "flying" (not really flying, it's actually gliding, which they do by spreading out their arms and legs, making the loose skin between them spread out like wings). And several big leaps ended up in her plopping to the ground despite flying lessons- where we practiced flying by her being thrown into the air! She also couldn't seem to figure out how to run on her wheel (seen below sitting on top of it). I thought that perhaps any neural damage she had sustained as a baby might have impaired her abilities.

However, I learned that not all flying squirrels actually do fly/glide! Slowly, she became better and better at running and leaping and was soon getting around the house like a little superstar at top speed. And she began to use her wheel quite well. And then I knew it was time to send her on her way.

I wish her all the best and she know she can always come back if she needs to. I've heard some flying squirrels "talking" late at night from my window and wonder whether it might be her. She was really a dearheart to have as a patient. Goodbye little sweet Amelia and fly well!

So what's happened to all the Wild Things Cottontails??? Well if that's the question you're interested in, this is the post for you!

Sadly, as previously discussed, bunnies are some of the hardest baby animals to raise in wildlife rehabilitation. They have particular dietary and digestive issues which it is almost impossible to replicate as a human! However, WTS has had about half of all its bunny patients survive. All of the bunnies that were 12+ days did really well and have been released, but as you all know, I got so many tiny babies, and those have a less favourable statistic of survival.

An exception to this high mortality rate was Silver Blaze & her sibling Sparkles. If you go back to the posts in May, you can see that they arrived at about 5 days old, and Sparkles (or Catattack as she was previously known) had a giant gash along one arm. Amazingly not only did they survive the injuries, but they survived their rehabilitation and are doing great! To the right is a picture of Silver Blaze in the release hutch.

Here is the lovely Silver Blaze, about 3 weeks after her release, in the overgrown grasses of WTS. She is about 12 weeks old in this picture. The release cage is to the right, and she often goes in and out of it, looking for oats and other goodies.

She has been joined by another long-term WTS resident: Pale Pink! Pale Pink's nose finally healed, and here he is in the release cage 6 weeks ago (below) at about 11 weeks old. He left but returned 4 weeks later- perhaps he's taken a  fancy to the lovely Silver Blaze! Though they were both here for a couple of months each, they never met....until they were released. And now they are together all the time. Of course, he also may have returned because he has what appears to be some ugly botfly larvae in his neck (see pictures below)!

And guess what??? The 4th wave of baby bunnies has just begun! There are about 4 "waves" of litters throughout the spring & summer. So that means that there may well be more babies at WTS very soon!! Just like this little Bunchalicious who was part of the 3rd wave!