Besides working directly with animals, the center also spends a lot of time with people who call the center about birds and animals they fear are orphaned, ill or injured. It’s not unusual for staff to spend upwards of half an hour on the phone with someone, determining how best to help a found animal. In the age of smart phones it has become even easier to have people take a snapshot and send it directly to the center for evaluation. If the animal appears to need help, the staff will either instruct the caller on how to carefully catch and transport the animal to the center, or contact the San Jose Animal Care and Services to pick it up. Dains cautions people to not handle skunks, raccoons and bats, as they are more likely to carry rabies, and never use bare hands when handling ill or injured creatures. Often the animals don’t need any help at all, as in the case of young birds or fawns that are actually just waiting for mom and dad to reappear. Kinney quickly dispels the erroneous belief that baby birds can’t be returned safely to the nest because mamma bird will detect the scent of humans and reject the babies. Kinney says birds actually have a poor sense of smell: “It’s an old wives’ tale.” The center strongly discourages people from keeping a wild animal in their care. Sometimes people house them for a couple of days, Hawkins explains, but unfortunately, inexperienced care may do more harm than good; even offering an animal food and water at the wrong time can decrease its chance of survival. “OUR GOAL IS ALWAYS TO REHABILITATE AND RELEASE.” Seriously injured animals in need of surgery are either taken to local veterinarians (the Wildlife Center is not set up as a sterile surgical environment, according to Kinney), or, in the case of an animal deemed to be too badly injured, euthanized. “That’s the part of the job where in some ways it’s sad, but in other ways you are relieving an animal in pain,” Kinney reflects. Most cases have happier endings. Once an animal is healed and rehabilitated, it’s vital they return to the same area where they were found, Hawkins and Kinney say. “Putting them back to where they came from is essential; that’s their home, which is why it’s a government regulation,” Hawkins adds. Turner says it’s exhilarating to watch animals they’ve worked with be released back into the wild. Most of the time the birds or animals take off and don’t look back, but one barn owl gave Turner one of the most memorable moments of her life. “We had been working with him for awhile. I took him down to Coyote Creek and I waited until dusk to let him go, and when I took him out of the box, he just flew off. As I was watching him, he did a turn, and he came around and flew low, directly over my head, looking down at me,” Turner recalls. “It still gives me chills thinking about it. It felt like I was touched by it, like he knows. It could have been he was just curious about me, or it could have been that he was doing a flyby to say ‘thank you.’” n October/November 2016 85
South Bay Accent - Oct/Nov 2016
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