Wildlife Rehab

I was wondering if anyone out there had any stories about assisting injured or orphaned wildlife. I hope to get a license to rehabilitate wildlife with-in the next year or two and I would love to hear (and see lots of pictures of!) animals that have been assisted and how they were helped. Every little bit helps, not to mention its fun to share stories with one another.

Feel free to share any stories, pictures, questions or advice.


We have always helped baby birds when they need it. One of the first successful orphaned birds we raised was Robin Hood, the baby robin with the injured leg. He had fledged but because his leg was injured we worried the dogs would get him. We fed him earth worms and kept him in a cage until he was old enough to be released. Here he is perching on the back of our bunny.


We've also saved a lot of turtles from our dogs, which are turtle catching experts. We have a pond that the dogs like to swim in and they go after any turtles that come to land to lay eggs. We have lost a few to Rax (he is our dog that can chew through turtle shells) but we've also saved a lot and relocated them to our neighbors pond or the near-by creek.


One turtle was caught before she could finish burying her eggs, so we took the eggs inside and incubated them.


Surprisingly they hatched! I think there were 10 healthy little babies and we released them into our neighbors pond where they would be safe from dogs.


One mother turtle got a cracked shell. We kept her in this tub and the mud that was packed onto the shell (she did this herself) healed the wound and we released her later.


Here is one of the larger turtles we saved from the jaws of Rax.


We've had a few turtles that didn't need to be saved from dog jaws but to have the dogs saved from their jaws. This Snapping turtle was trying to dig under the fence and got one of our dogs on the nose. He went to the neighbors pond, but he had to be handled with far more care.


A very smelly, angry Snapping Turtle in our trunk as he prepares to be relocated. I cannot remember why we were assisting this one, but I think that it was found on the road and we were moving it to a pond where it would be safe.

Great thread GitaBooks! I have saved a baby baby deer from my dog. Thankfully he didn't hurt it, but it was separated from its mother and we couldn't find her. In order to keep the baby calm we wrapped it in a towel we also wrapped it because that way if you do find the mother she will except the baby deer because she won't smell human scent on it. We then took the baby to a local deer rescue.

We also rescued a baby jack rabbit from our dog. It's nose was bleeding so we put a cold damp towel on it to make it stop. We then took that one to a local wild life rescue.

We have had more that we have rescued, but I can't remember them.

CherriesBrood said:

Great thread GitaBooks! I have saved a baby baby deer from my dog. Thankfully he didn't hurt it, but it was separated from its mother and we couldn't find her. In order to keep the baby calm we wrapped it in a towel we also wrapped it because that way if you do find the mother she will except the baby deer because she won't smell human scent on it. We then took the baby to a local deer rescue.

We also rescued a baby jack rabbit from our dog. It's nose was bleeding so we put a cold damp towel on it to make it stop. We then took that one to a local wild life rescue.

We have had more that we have rescued, but I can't remember them.

Click to expand...

That's awesome! We've never had to help a deer, but we have helped rabbits before. We got our pet Rabbit because we helped a young wild Cotton-tail that had been hit by a lawn mower.

These are the orphaned rabbits that we accidentally mowed up from the tall grass. We lost a couple of them but the others we sent to the rehab center where I'm pretty sure they survived (the card they sent telling us didn't make much sense).


They only eat once or twice a day so most of the time they just snuggled together in the "nest" we made them. The reason we didn't leave them for their mother is because they were inside of our dog fence and our dogs eat rabbits.

Aww they are so cute! I really wanted to keep the baby jack rabbit as a pet, but it was wild so we didn't know what its personally would be like when it grew up also because it belonged in the wild.

We've also had more then our share of bats sneaking in through the attic into our house. When you are laying awake at night and see a huge shadow fly over-head its one of the scariest things ever. Then you actually have to try to catch them, which isn't easy. Bats are one of the main causes of rabies in the United States, so doing so has to be done very carefully, especially with a bat that seems sick or like it can't fly.

Trying to get it out the window. This didn't work, however.


A bat in the bedroom.


Thick gloves in order to carry the bat out to freedom.

I actually have been around quite a few bats! My dad used to have a bat business and he got bats out of peoples attics. He's retried now.

CherriesBrood said:

I actually have been around quite a few bats! My dad used to have a bat business and he got bats out of peoples attics. He's retried now.

Click to expand...

Cool.
I like bats, I just don't fancy them flying in my house (however, they make up for it by eating the big, fat mesquitos that fly around our property).

Haha! Yes!

It's a wonder how people can be so kind yet so cruel.

We've also helped a number of frogs and toads around our area. Our dogs like to catch frogs in our pond (toads don't taste good so they will try to catch them but then drop them quickly)

This is a tree frog we found in our house, covered in dust. We washed it off and released it.


Here is one of the toads we have around us. As far as I know we've never had to actually help a toad with health issues. However, we've saved a large number of frogs of all sizes.