“Positive Teamwork, Positive Results”
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Welcome to INSTINCTS July 2014 Vol 4:3 “The newsletter helping you follow your Wild Instincts.” BUSY, BUSY!! After a slow, cool start to the official Baby Season, things have gotten steadily busier. And busier! AND BUSIER!! We are bursting at the seams with patients and they just keep coming. We are even at capacity for several species. In addition to ravenous bears, we have many other babies: red foxes, coyote, bobcat, otter, ducks, eagles, raccoons, fawns, squirrels, hummingbird, merlin, ground squirrels- just to name a few. We also have a number of injured adult patients like eagles with lead poisoning or downy woodpeckers injured from hitting a window or red squirrels from getting hit by Young baby beaver enjoys her grooming. a car. We even admitted a 2-3 day old orphaned We also admitted an adult female ruby- baby beaver the end of May with its throated hummingbird that had struck a umbilical cord still attached. After she was window. While she was in care, she laid an initially stabilized, she was transferred to egg. It was infertile so never hatched. We another wildlife rehab center that have it in our education collection. specializes in beaver. Beaver stay with their parents for two years. Fellow Mortals Wildlife Hospital , the center we transferred her to, has a yearling in care now so this one will have an older role model to learn from. Click HERE for adorable video! Turtle Releases Finally the weather warmed up enough for the turtles that stayed with us all winter to be returned to the wild. They were in care from Nov 6, 2013 to May 20, 2014. A hummingbird egg laid while female hummer was in care for injuries from hitting a window. www.wildinstinctsrehab.com 715-362-9453 (362-WILD) 715-490-2727(cell) 4621 Apperson Dr., Rhinelander, WI 54501 Friday the 13th in June was unusual in that just hours apart we admitted a 3-week old bobcat kitten and a 7-week old coyote pup. What is unusual is that BOTH these wild orphans were found and mistaken for domestic orphans. When taken to the vet to be checked out in the feline case or to the shelter in the canine case, the rescuers were informed they were not the domestic kitten and puppy they had thought. Both are growing like weeds and doing great! Coyote pup on day of admission, 6/13 Bobcat kitten resting. Growing up wild is hard work! (photo credit: Intern Susie) First day in outside enclosure, 7/9 Attention Lake Associations For those of you trapping Rusty Crayfish from your lakes, we will gladly take them off your hands. They make tasty food for the raccoons, bears and otter we have. It’s a win-win. Your lake gets rid of an invasive species and our native species turn it into energy and fertilizer! Left: Bobcat day of admission, 6/13; Right: Morning of 7/19. www.wildinstinctsrehab.com 715-362-9453 (362-WILD) 715-490-2727(cell) 4621 Apperson Dr., Rhinelander, WI 54501 Packing Crate Reds Follow Up In Memory or Honor of Last newsletter told the story of a dad who Donations have been received purchased a birthday gift for his son. When ~ In Loving Memory of “Flutter”, the he got home and opened the box to look for sweetest dog in the world and to celebrate the instructions, he found the booklet “Yodette”, the new sweetest dog in the chewed up and two-week old squirrels world nestled inside. Update: They’ve been ~ In honor of Sara Mishefske’s birthday released! ~ In honor of all our fathers, those who live on in our hearts and minds and those still among us ~ In Honor of Linda Seiter’s retirement ~ In Memory of “Riley” Gartmann, a wonderful companion who brought smiles to many for 13 years ~ In Memory of Craig Fink and his love for snakes Bears We are at capacity for bear cubs. Some lost their moms to cars, one mom climbed a utility pole and got electrocuted and two moms were illegally shot. At least one cub was just found wandering so we don’t know Day of Admission 5/25/14 what happened it its mom. What we DO know, however, is baby bears eat a lot. A bunch of baby bears eat a LOT! Sarah showing perspective to the bear chuck wagon. They are eating the equivalent of One Intern’s Length. Day of Release! 7/8/14 Right now they are eating about 50 lbs of food a day. That will only continue to increase weekly until their release in October. If we had to buy all the produce they eat it would cost about $3000 PER CUB! We have approached every possible retailer and contact about donations of expired product. We have donors that bring bags of www.wildinstinctsrehab.com 715-362-9453 (362-WILD) 715-490-2727(cell) 4621 Apperson Dr., Rhinelander, WI 54501 produce weekly. We get some left overs from the food pantry. We’re working with a produce wholesaler to get their discards as well as purchase at a better price. Despite all this, right now we are buying about 40-50% of our needs, depending on the week. Remember, we still have raccoons, fawns, squirrels and others eating produce, too. You can help by donating produce. When you go buy bananas for yourself, consider some extra for the wild ones. See our wish Meghan about to release a litter of squirrels. list for a detailed list of needed produce. Every day, especially when I’m feeding the Not local? Gift cards to Walmart are always young Southern Flying Squirrel we have in welcome. our nursery (my favorite patient here) with an eyedropper, I look down at the squirrel In Their Own Words and think, “This is an amazing opportunity. Meghan Pluemer, UWSP I don’t know where else I would get the Wildlife Ecology/Captive Wildlife chance to work with such interesting Platteville, WI animals and learn so much from some incredible people.” I truly have learned so much while interning Being able to watch a patient’s growth – here at Wild Instincts. How to feed, handle, from a young animal with its eyes closed to and care for all the different species of growing to be an animal that is release age wildlife are just a few examples of the and able to survive on its own in the wild – things I’ve learned during the work hours of is a tremendous experience. Although this my internship. However, the learning job involves a lot of long hours and tough doesn’t stop when our work shift ends. daily work -- I’ve learned that a normal day Mark and Sharon have taken time out of for a rehabber leaves him or her covered in their busy schedules more than once to milk formula, feces, mosquito bites, and teach us everything from how to identify an other untraceable smudges -- watching the Ovenbird call to how to use a charcoal grill. releases and the growth of the patients Not even a week into our internship Mark makes the long hours all worth it. and Sharon offered to take us on a bird This internship is one of the greatest watching trip one morning. We all gathered experiences I have been a part of. The at Wild Instincts and headed to the nearby knowledge that is here continues to amaze boat landing. Once there, we hopped out me every day. Between Mark and Sharon, of the van and instantly Mark and Sharon the volunteers, and the other interns, I am were pointing out birds, handing the learning new things daily and I am so binoculars around, and replaying the grateful that I had the opportunity to intern birdcall on a CD player they had with them. at Wild Instincts and learn from all of these Another day, Sharon took the interns to the extraordinary people. trails around McNaughton Lake and pointed out plant and tree species – useful information for my future Treehaven course at UWSP. She also showed us bike trails and other recreational areas we can enjoy on our days off. www.wildinstinctsrehab.com 715-362-9453 (362-WILD) 715-490-2727(cell) 4621 Apperson Dr., Rhinelander, WI 54501 Sarah Keller helpless, hairless, eyes closed orphans. Graduate, University of Maine Before this internship I can honestly say I Orono, Maine have never had a warbler land on my head BS Wildlife Ecology and start demanding that I feed it. There have been hummingbirds and hawks, baby When you hear the phrase wildlife beaver and baby bears, deer and deer mice, rehabilitation you probably have some sort a call for a wolf rescue and a raccoon of mental image of what the job entails. release. Then there are the education birds; Before starting an internship here the showing off Ruby or socializing Amelia phrase conjured up images of resetting hardly feels like work at all. bones and patching up scrapes. Well it Wildlife rehab has its ups and its downs but turns out that is only a very small part of it certainly was a worthwhile experience what happens here. Patients are treated for that I am not likely to forget. any immediate injuries upon arrival but then I will leave you now with some wise and they require time to heal. There is no ‘take undying words from our fearless leader, these pills and get back to us in a week’. “Any questions, comments, concerns? Okay That means a lot of long term care for a lot go to lunch.” of different patients.