 Max helping me email Max has been doing great out in the wilds and comes by every few days for a hello and a nut. But just when I thought I wouldn't have to worry about Max anymore, he turned up limping. A toe appeared badly broken. I kept an eye on him for a few days every time he came to visit. The foot was getting more swollen and after a few days he wasn't even using it. I lured him into a carrier and took him to the vet, this is what they found...  3 crushed toes ... 3 crushed toes! With lots of swollen soft tissue surrounding the joints.  Ouch!!  This is a really weird injury. What could have snapped/crushed off the ends of 3 toes?? All 3 toes had to be amputated. As you know, squirrels really need their back toes to go down trees (plus they love to hang on by their back legs and stretch!). I hope, hope, HOPE that this won't impede Max living in the wild. He has to stay with me for at least 2-3 weeks, and I hope that both Max and I won't go crazy. Even though he grew up with me, he is wild and gives very hard bites when he gets unexpectedly annoyed and even in "play." Meanwhile Runt is so happy he's back, but they can't play together yet. So, lots of very pissed off energy in the animal room at Wild Things at present!  And then there is sweet Peter the Opossum (named by my Dad, seen here with Peter at Thanksgiving). Peter has been at Wild Things for over 2 months. He was hit by a car, suffered a terribly displaced fracture of the leg that was not reset well by the initial vet, several cracked teeth, and now is dealing with various skin sores. All the while he has been such a good, sweet patient and seems very happy at Wild Things, where he is allowed to walk around as much as he wants for physical therapy (though usually he likes to walk over to the stacks of towels and blankets and find a good place to go to sleep!).  November 2009, 2 views initial Xrays  Slightly reset, 2nd Xrays  January 2010, 3rd set Xrays As you can see, the leg kinda realigned, but basically the tibia appears to have fused with the fibula and then a whole callous is forming around the whole area. In the meantime, he's had his bad teeth pulled and now we are dealing with his tummy sores. Egad! But he is so energetic and loves sticking his nose near the crack in the door to smell the wild that is waiting for him. Once he heals (and I hope he does) he will be returned to the area where he came, up by Syracuse, but only once it is warmer.  hello! Finally, a hello from one of the wild visitors, a 1st year White tailed deer, from the Wild Things woods! 4 Comments  Runty (L) & Maxie (R) OK, I know I've been the worst blogger ever. I have a bunch of pictures from last year that i never got around to posting, so I'll try to put those up soon! But for now.... Meet Runty & Maxie! They are about a week apart and came to Wild Things separately. Max kept crashing some people's party after the repeatedly put him back in the woods and it was determined that his mother was no where in sight and he was hungry and lonely at about 7 weeks old. Runt came to me via another rehabilitator. I don't have all the details on him, but he suffered from something called "Kitten Fur Syndrome," which is a symptom of a lack of calcium and may indicate the dreaded metabolic bone disease. Runt also appeared allergic to formula. When he got to WTS at about 12 weeks old he started putting on good weight and all his bald spots disappeared. The only thing that couldn't be repaired were his misaligned teeth, which can happen when baby squirrels don't get enough good nutrients at a young age. Sadly this makes him unreleasable as the teeth will have to be trimmed throughout his life so he will be able to eat.   Max (L) at about 2 months old. Max always looks like he is smiling, he is such a cheerful little fellow! And Runt is to the right at about 4 months old. You can see how is upper and lower jaws are slightly misaligned.  Runt & Max love to play!  Max on the wheelbarrow in the snow I released Max before Christmas. The weather was quite nice, but before long we got lots of snow. It might seem a bit mean to release a little one in the cold, but he was ready- tearing up WTS and so excited to get outside. And he is doing quite well out the wild. Below he collect toilet paper for a nest he built in my drainpipe (!) and to the right he is burying a nut in a pile of hay.   Max still comes back inside sometimes to play with Runt. They have so much fun and make a total mess of the sanctuary! It is really bittersweet and sad for me that Runt will never be able to join him. Runty is superb at building nests; he has an enormous nest in my office that he built out of any piece of paper he can lay his paws onto! He is also a good nut bury-ier. (I let him run around my office a lot as he doesn't like being in his cage all the time- you can see where he wore away some fur on his nose from trying nibbling on the bars and wanting to get out!) I think that I have found Runt a permanent sanctuary to go to live out his life. It is sad that these two will have to be separated, but I hope that they both live happy, healthy lives.  Max comes back for a visit! And while we're on the subject of squirrels...guess who else is back after several months out int he woods??? LilMo!  LIlMo, January 2010  White tailed deer are always welcome visitors to the Wild Things woods (seen here in January 09). But other nearby Ithaca neighborhoods are not so welcoming. The Village of Cayuga Heights has a very high concentration of deer, and the residents want to do something about it. They are upset about deer eating their gardens, worried that deer bring ticks that spread Lyme Disease, tired of having near-misses when driving, and often intimidated when the animals stand their ground when met face-to-face. They have formed a Deer Remediation Advisory Committee. This committee has made a plan to surgically sterilize 20-40 does and kill the rest of the 200+ deer using sharpshooters. I went to the recent town meeting and voiced my thoughts. The Advisory Board was interested in my comments and asked me to send my comments. You can read them here: 
 Danny & Daisy raid the carrots Who can forget the naughty groundhog sisters, Danny and Daisy? They were released a few months ago and I wanted to give their fans an update on their story. It is really hard to find a place to release groundhogs as so many people think that they are a nuisance and will trap and kill them. Lucky for me I have a great friend, Joshua, who knew a place on state land far away from any roads and people's gardens. Not only did Joshua find a great place for the girls, but he and his friend Matt helped me carry them about a mile to a quiet spot where we let them go. This was no small feat as they were weighing in at about 3kilos each, so with the kennel it was about 20lbs to carry!  Joshua & Matt carry the girls to their new home! I was definitely a bit sad to see them go and left lots of carrots and yummies for them. I also worry so much when I do a "hard release," which is when you release animals directly into the wild and they can't come and go back to their cage as they wish until they are ready to live out in the wilds on their own. But they had gotten so big and healthy that I think they will do great!   One last hug! I want to point out here that Joshua and Matt are both hunters. All too often animal lovers bash hunters and what they do. However I have come across few people who have as much knowledge and respect for animals as Joshua; and he hunts with this same knowledge and respect. He has been a great resource for me in these kinds of situations where I am looking for locations for the Wild Things' babies to live. I have a lot of admiration for him and his fellow responsible hunters. They eat what they kill and they kill fast and clean without causing the animal any undo pain, harm or fear. I've told him that the only meat I could think about eating was something that he brought to the table as I know that that animal lived and died well and never suffered the indignity, emotional nor physical pain that goes on with so much of animal farming. Thank you Joshua!  Clockwise from top right: stealing dandelion greens out of the shopping bag, finishing off a Dunkin Doughnuts iced coffee, plying with a shiny toy, eating delicious kale, stealing carrots, sneaking into the bag of dog food for a snack, sneaking around the piles of towels after some formula (you can see the milk moustache!), enjoying baby carrots together  Goodbye girls & enjoy your new home! We miss you!!  My little beautiful star, Stella Bella! For all of you lucky enough to have spent time with this little beautiful angel, you will be sad to hear that she passed on last week. It is unclear what was wrong but it appears that something was wrong with her digestion. She was about 6 months old. Stella was a Grey special needs squirrel, a "Down's baby." She loved to play and run around the best she could and was only ever sweet to all species around her. She was a true angel and so many people were touched by her gentle, special nature. I will probably make a special page for her on this website, but wanted to have a little tribute to her here on the blog. I miss her so much but feel truly enriched by her goodness and blessed that our life paths crossed if but for a short while. Stella taught everyone kindness and love by the sweetness she expressed every minute of her life. Bless you Beautiful Star!   Wow! It's been a while since I posted anything! This season has been crazy busy; have had 175 patients up to today, in comparison I only had 93 for the WHOLE of 2008. So I am sorry not to have been here for a while, but I have lots of stories and lots to report and I will try to be updating this a bit more now that the season ins simmering down. Today's post will be all about birds. There have been quite a lot here are Wild Things. However, this first picture was not at WTS but with my friend Gabe, another rehabber about 2 hour north of here. It is a baby Great Horned Owl, and the picture below is of me trying to convince him to eat a mouse on his own. Great Horneds are some of the 1st birds born during the year and this little guy has long since been released and is doing well.   WTS received quite a few baby Mourning Doves this year as well. Most arrived at between 10-20g. They are so adorable, and so quiet and mellow compared to other baby birds. They don't have a loud "feed me!" call like other babies, but just "peep" so sweetly and quietly. They also don't gape for food.  Doves, and their cousins pigeons, suck up fluids by putting their whole beak in a liquid and using it like a straw. When they are babies they put their whole beak and part of their face into their parents' mouths and suck up "crop milk," produced by their parents. This means that instead of just dropping food into their mouths, which is how you feed most baby birds, you have to stick their whole head into a syringe of special baby food (you can also tube feed them if you don't have a lot of time- I had to do this quite a few times this summer!). From syringe you move onto a small cup and slowly they learn how to eat on their own. This can take quite a long time and sometimes you have to let them get hungry otherwise they won't try to eat on their own! Part of this process is chronicled in the pictures to the left. And eventually they fly! Such a great moment! I will keep their cage open and let them fly around while I take care of all the other animals. When I released the 4 pictured below they would spend the day in the Wild Things woods and then come back at night. So amazing to see them flying back to WTS after their day exploring. These little guys took a lot of time and effort to raise, but definitely paid me back emotionally! :) One of the mourning doves who arrived had a "sour crop." The crop is an area where food is stored and then it slowly passes into the next area of their digestive organs. Food can get stuck in the crop and then starts rotting. I had to flush out this poor little one's crop over the course of about 24 hours. This was done by filling up the crop with water, squishing it's contents around, and then using a tube to suck stuff out. It was gross and so traumatic for such a tiny little 14g patient. But the little one did great and was eating again in no time!  A bit after I let these 4 go a baby Rock Dove (i.e., pigeon) turned up, and the next day another baby mourning dove arrived. Because the two species are closely related I put them together and they became fast friends. They had to sit side by side every minute and were eventually released together. It is important for animals to be together so they can recognize their own species and not bond with their human caretaker. I don't always put different species together as I don't want them to be confused as to what species they are and then end up not being able to mix with their own species once released, but I have no doubt that these two will be just fine as they are so closely related and other more experienced rehabilitators have done the same thing with great success. And most importantly neither ended up imprinted on me. And below are pictures of a few more Wild Things patients. Clockwise from upper left, 2 little European Starlings, a baby European Sparrow, a Snowy Owl, a tiny little House Wren, a young American crow, and an American Goldfinch fledgling. The top two are introduced species from Europe and do not belong in the US. They pose a problems for native birds- competing for nesting sites, but what are you oinf to do when a helpless little baby comes to you?! Its suffering and it needs help! The sparrow and goldfinch very sadly did not make it. They were both at a really difficult age, the fledgling age, when they don't trust humans but they aren't ready to be on their own yet. They were both SO adorable and I was sorry to lose them.       The tiny wren didn't make it either. It was so small it really still neeeded its parents. However, its well meaning finders had fed it ants. Ants have formic acid in them and can kill most species, and it may well be that this was what caused it death. The young crow (NB: the blue eyes and red mouth characteristic of young crows- the red mouth helps draw attention to the parents that their baby is hungry and begging for food!) was a hge success. It had broke both wings as a baby and no one thought it would fly again. Off it went to my friend Gabe's center. She is a miracle worker with birds, and it ended up flying just fine. It came back to me to be Xrayed at Cornell. The Xrays revealed that the wings had healed perfectly. There was worry that as this little one had been surrounded by humans for its whole life it would be irreversibly imprinted on humans, however after a couple of weeks at Wild Things it decided to go off and live in the Wild Things woods. There are lots of crows in the WTS woods and I hope that it found a great group to be with. And the Snowy Owl was a bit of a mystery. Gabe got a few of them this year, which is strange as they are supposed to be up north hunting. It was found very underweight and had a smallish abscess on its wing, but ended up doing just fine and was released successfully. I was just a taxi driver for it, bringing it from the Cornell Wildlife Clinic back up to Gabe's center (about 2 hours away, we meet half way for lunch!) after a few Xrays and blood tests.  Wow- I was going to keep going with a few more stories of the Wild Things' winged characters, but I will leave a few for later. Time to go feed the patients! But look out for more blog posts soon- won't let it go for another 2 1/2 months again!  This post is dedicated to Joanna & Larry. Larry is a Virginia Opossum and Joanna rescued him last autumn. She really went the extra mile and as there were no rehabilitators in her area she learned everything that she could about opossums and saved Larry's life! People like Joanna who have had an opossum in their life know just how great they are! Wild Things has had quite a few this year. Here is a picture of Mama Opossum and a couple of her babies. Mama was hit by a car while carrying all 11 babies in her pouch. 6 died at the accident site, and she had bad lacerations in her pouch, but incredibly she and 5 of her babies survived.  When she arrived at WTS there were a couple of little orphan opossums here. She started calling to them across the room, and they called back. I put them together and she instantly shoved them in her pouch and adopted them. This happened on Mother's Day!    And the babies keep arriving! This angry little missy was found at a local laundromat, trapped, and brought to WTS. She was in good shape, just needed a week or so to get back on her feet and pack on a few ounces. She has since been released and is living in the woods here. The night I let her go she ran into the woods never looking back- it's a lot nicer here than downtown at a laundy! All that I could see of her in the darkness was her tail held high as she disappeared into the night.  I know, I know, I know I am so behind on my blog! But it has been pandemonium here! 99 patients so far this year and counting. 2008 only had 93 the whole year, so you can imagine how much juggling is going on this year, especially during these busy baby season months. But here is a quickie... This is Morrissa the Eastern chipmunk, or "chippy" as she is affectionately called (named Morris by the folks who rescued her when they thought she was a he!) at WTS. She was just a little wee one when she arrived, but did great and has been living on her own for a few weeks in the woods. She occasionally stops by for snacks and has learned how to stuff her cheeks, see below!   What's cuter than a baby groundhog? Not a lot! But this picture of Kiely and baby groundhog certainly qualifies! Kiely is my #1 assistant at WTS and comes everyday after school and during the weekends. She is great with the two baby groundhog sisters who were orphaned after their mother was trapped and relocated. A few days after the mother was taken away one little baby emerged looking for mum. The next day another one emerged. There are usually at least 4 in a litter which means that 2 probably didn't make it, but these two little darlings are super healthy and are growing with leaps and bounds!  Groundhogs are also called Woodchucks & Whistle Pigs. They do NOT chuck wood, but they DO whistle, especially when they know it is feeding time or they are playing. They eat a LOT as they have a lot of growing to d before the cold weather and hibernation. They also often use their blanket as a pacifier as seen in the below upper right photo. ADORABLE!   One of the neighbours informed me & Kieley that if I let the little groundhog sisters go in the Wild Things woods she would trap them and kill them. We were speechless!! So I will be finding a good place to let them go. I prefer doing "soft releases"- when you let animals go near you so they can come back if there is any trouble, but hopefully I will find a place where they can thrive and perhaps where someone can keep an eye on them. I love this picture of Danny nursing- they have such cute tails! Their names are Danny & Daisy (all those who watched any Sidney Sheldon made for TV movies in the 80s will understand!).  
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