Welcome to INSTINCTS July 2016 Vol 5:4 The newsletter helping you follow your Wild Instincts. What is REHAB TIME? There is a long standing joke in our world about Normal People Time and Rehab Time. Baby season is especially when Rehab Time comes out to mess with schedules and obligations. In Normal People s Time, a day is about 24 hours and time elapses for most everyone about the same; 1 hour = 1 hour. Rehab Time is different. So many things happen hours slip away. So many things happen repeatedly days slip away quickly. Seven days a week means there is no weekend to reset so weeks slip away. Conversations regarding some sort of timeline involve questions like what day is it? Or recent events may involve statements like didn t we do that two days ago? No, it was just 8 hours ago. Blink your eyes and three weeks have lapsed. Imagine now how Rehab Time has become super charged as our patient admissions are up almost 40%! As this article is being typed, we have admitted over 550 patients and it s not even the end of July. The entire 2015 saw 663 admissions. We are just 112 patients short of last year s total admissions and haven t even started the late summer squirrels yet! This is lining up to be a record year for admissions. No matter how many admissions, Wild Instincts is always about animal care first. The up side to that is that LOTS of wildlife in need is getting the quality care it needs. The down side of that is some office work is slowed down and social media updates aren t as frequent as other years. Don t forget that we are always working behind the scenes for new fundraising ideas and events so that we can afford to treat this record number of admissions. Make sure to check out Event Calendar on page ***so you can mark your calendars accordingly. Thank you for your patience and support. Otter Close Ups In early May we received a mass email from a wildlife rehabilitator in Georgia reaching out to all otter rehabbers across the country. She had someone interested in filming for some sort of program. We immediately deleted it and moved on. It was May. It s Baby Season. We are interested in the best care for the animals, not in becoming famous. In this issue Eagle Release Raffle..8 In Honor/Memory of..7 In Their Own Words..4 Otter Close Ups.2 Rehab Time.1 Rehabber of the Day..7 Rusty Crayfish 6 Species Admitted. 10 Upcoming Events..10 WildHelp 8
On May 18, we received an email from a very nice woman with British writing wanting to speak about filming otters. In her signature it read BBC Natural History Unit. The BBC? Really? Hmmm. River otter baby about to become a film star. It s still Baby Season so this correspondence was not put on the priority list. Sharon was surprised to hear this woman s British accent when answering the phone a few days later. A few more phone calls, a few more emails, some more research on our part which included scouring the links they sent to some of their programs for signs of animal stress and before we knew it, there was a British producer in Wild Instincts! BBC Natural World is a department of the BBC which produces natural history/wildlife themed television and radio programs. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries. Natural World is a series of British wildlife documentary television programs that take an in-depth look at particular natural history events, stories or subjects from around the world. They are filming the otters we have in care as part of a program about American River Otters. The experience has been wonderful. We have met award-winning photographers, videographers and cinematographers with the same love, fascination, respect and passion for wildlife on which Wild Instincts was founded. They have been respectful of our seemingly over-protectiveness to keep our patients wild. First and foremost what we do is about keeping animals wild so they may returned to the wild. Filming does not change that at all. Our local TV news station Channel 12 came out to interview our interviewers. For the video of that story, click HERE. This project will likely be a year in the making and is scheduled to be released sometime next summer. Don t worry. We ll be sure to let you know when it is! Filming for a BBC documentary about river otters There s a BBC Producer in our kitchen!
Rusty Crayfish Win-Win-Lose The rusty crayfish (Orconectes rusticus) originally came from streams in the Ohio River Basin states of Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee. Probably transported as live bait by anglers when fishing, today, rusty crayfish are also found in Wisconsin and surrounding states, the North Eastern states, New Mexico and many areas in Ontario, Canada. In the areas they inhabit, the rusty crayfish have dominated the native crayfish by taking over their habitat and natural forage at alarming rates. They have been deemed an invasive species and many lake associations are battling to remove them from their lakes so that native species can rebound. One means of removal is live trapping and disposing of them. Many people have crayfish boils, but you can only eat so many crayfish. Usually they are buried in deep holes, but not always Wild Instincts works has worked with lake associations and this year is working with a Master Naturalist, to get the crayfish for our patients. We have special permission from the WDNR to have live rusty crayfish brought to us for their final disposal. You may be wondering what that could be. Why, dinner, of course, just not in the form of a crayfish boil. Most of what is delivered is bagged into baggies and frozen. It is then added to meals for bear, raccoon, otter, and other animal species that would eat crayfish in the wild. A few live ones from time to time are added to those species meals so they can learn to hunt them after they are released. To watch a video of the raccoons learning to eat these crayfish, click HERE Lakes are being rid of an invasive species, our patients are getting a natural part of their diets AND we are training them to eat them after they are released back into the wild. Win-Win-Win. Except for rusty crayfish- You lose. Interns have a challenging game of Barrel of Monkeys using Rusty Crayfish. Summer interns Kylie and Molly are introduced to bagging crayfish. Spring-Summer-Fall Intern Megan inspects a crayfish.
In Their Own Words Molly Picillo Newburyport, MA Graduate, University of Maine Appreciation Being fresh out of college the most common topic of conversation is what I am doing for work, to which I happily get to respond that I work in wildlife rehabilitation. Most people who hear that automatically ask, What animals do you get to play with? The answer is none. My job as a rehabber is not to play with animals, but to stay as far removed from them while providing them with what they need to survive. Needless to say, after my initial response, most people become uninterested and do not care to hear about how I prepare food, clean dishes, or do yard work. So if I do not get to play with cool animals, then why do I do it? I can definitely say it is not for the appreciation I receive from the animals. In fact, that can be one of the hardest aspects of the jobs. After putting 20 + minutes into preparing bowls full of food for the raccoons, do they come up and thank me? No. Instead, they scour through the bowls searching for their favorite food item and throw the rest aside. Does the porcupine acknowledge the two times I had to meticulously cut up food and make a smoothie because it spilled the first time while I was cleaning the cage? Absolutely not. In fact, she does not even end up touching her food that night. To be honest, I thought this would be the reason why I could never go into rehabilitation, as my work seemed fruitless. That all changed one day when one of the smallest raccoons was digging through the food bowl and picked up a grape. Typically I would be heading back to the kitchen to clean out the dishes and work on the next patient, but today I just stopped. As I watched this poor thing struggle to pick up the grape smeared in wet cat food, I couldn t help but stifle a laugh. He began to juggle this grape hand to hand attempting to put it in his mouth but to no avail. It slipped from his hands and landed on the floor, but I could tell he hadn t given up. Instead, he was staring at the grape and planning. A minute later he quickly shoved the grape up under his neck and without a second thought he slipped it right into his mouth. A sign of satisfaction slipped across his face as he graciously devoured the grape and, being the spoiled raccoon he is, spit out the skin. That s all I needed to make my 12-hour day of chores seem much more productive. It s the sudden silence of the birds after they have all been fed, the milky noses of the fawns after their bottles. And as we move on to the final stages of rehabilitation, it is not the wave of a paw goodbye or the Thanks for everything! but the blur of tail feathers and scurrying of tiny feet trying to get as far as way as possible, to where they really belong that makes all the hard work worth it. Summer Intern Molly just before releasing an eagle.
Kylie Stevens Brooklyn, WI Senior, University of WI-Madison This summer so far has provided me with some of the most frustrating, rewarding, exciting and emotional moments. Throughout the course of the day I will experience nearly a million emotions. I ve fallen in love with so many animals, I ve laughed so hard I cried and cried so hard I laughed. Every day is repetitive, in that we work with the same animals every day, multiple times a day, but at the same time so many new and exciting things happen every day. Every day we get new patients, every day an animal does something I ve never seen before and every day I learn something new. This past spring when I accepted this internship I knew that I would face so many new challenges. I knew that working with orphaned newborn babies and starved or hurt animals would be hard but one of the challenges I didn t expect was how difficult working with the baby birds would be. Of course most of the birds are great, they know the routine and greet us with anticipation and wide gaping mouths, hungry for mealworms and high-pro (a blended mixture of freeze dried insects and other smelly things); however, many of the baby birds are reluctant to eat even though they must be hungry. When I found out I would have to force open their beaks and shove food down their throats I was immediately doubtful in my ability to do so. I was worried that I would break these frail, tiny little birds. Earlier in the summer we got in a Flicker (in the woodpecker family, identifiable by the white tips on the beaks of the juveniles and the mustaches on the males) before that day I have never even heard of a Flicker before, let alone seen one. At that moment I was unaware that they would quickly become my favorite of all the birds. One evening we got in five Flickers whose nest tree had been blown over in a storm. Before these baby Flickers we had only gotten in adults or older juveniles who would run or try to fly away when you went to pick them up and scream, peck and bite while you tired to feed them. When we got these babies I braced myself for the challenge of force-feeding these birds with sharp beaks and loud screams. Initially we had to euthanize one and separate another of the Flickers from the rest because of a leg injury. Working with the Flickers was challenging at first when they didn t want anything to do with us and we had to pry open their beaks every hour, but once they realized the food was good and we were only looking out for their best interests it didn t take long for the fighting to subside and the Flickers eagerly begged for food. Once they were eating they were moved outside into the songbird cage and every hour when we go out to feed they fly right up to us and we are greeted by their excited chirps. The fourth Flicker has since been reunited with its siblings and its leg is healed. They all hop and climb around awaiting release, and every time I go out to feed the birds I m excited to see them. Summer Intern Kylie feeds one of her favorite flickers. So far this summer I have learned more than I ever could ve imagined and I know there s still so much I ll learn. I ve gotten to work with animals I didn t even know existed and I ve gained so many important
skills, but most importantly I ve learned that I can do things I thought I couldn t and that everything gets easier with time and confidence. This has been, without a doubt, the best, most fun and rewarding summer of my life. Male Northern Flicker. Notice the yellow feather shafts, red on the back of the head and for the males, the moustache black streak from the base of the bill along the lower cheek. Katie Mitra Livonia, MI Senior, Michigan State University After working at small animal veterinary clinics the past few years, I was very eager to gain experience with wildlife. When I first came to Wild Instincts, I wasn t entirely sure what to expect. I knew I d be working with and caring for different animals, but what that actually entailed was more than I could ve expected. About 90% consists of meal prepping for each of the animals depending on which animal this part could take 5 minutes to as long as an hour and cleaning enclosures, dishes, feeding tubes, syringes, formula bottles, floors, counters you name it, and I probably cleaned it. The other 10% of the job is actual hands on experience with the animals, and that involved tube feeding a loon, giving sub-q fluids to baby bunnies, birds, and fawns, examining each new patient that comes through the door for any broken bones or other injuries, and even holding a bald eagle while it was given medication and tested for lead poisoning. Over the course of the past couple months, I ve definitely had my fair share of favorite animals. A turkey vulture that was so ugly you couldn t help but think he was cute, a baby raccoon with a personality so different from the rest of the bunch, and Arrr, a fawn who got her name after losing one of her eyes from being hit by a car, just to name a few. On the other hand, there were also animals that I loved, but hated working with. The baby squirrels were adorable, but so squirmy they made syringe feeding a real pain. The baby birds could also melt your heart with their little peeps, but feeding them every hour, sometimes every fifteen minutes for the hatchlings, was a tedious job. By far, the worst were the 16 bear cubs. They are sweet and fun to watch run and play like goofballs, but boy, are they messy. Whenever we went out to feed them their 9 heaping bowls of an assortment of different fruits, veggies, and other things, we d have to shovel out loads of smelly, mushy mixtures of excess food and who knows what else. Although my time here was short, this internship has easily been one of the most strenuous yet rewarding things I ve done, and working at Wild Instincts has taught me a lot of important things. I ve learned never to leave the pond room hose unattended (even if you think you ll remember it, there will be a time when you don t and trust me, you don t want to see that outcome firsthand), that eagle poop dries like cement, and that it takes a very special type of person, someone who is patient, knowledgeable, and self-sacrificing, to do this kind of work day in and day out. Is wildlife rehabilitation something I see myself doing in the future? At this point in
time, it s hard to say. What I do know is that I will be forever grateful for each of the experiences I ve had here and my eyes are now open to a whole new side of animal medicine. Summer Intern Katie feeding an orphaned Eastern Gray Squirrel In Honor or Memory of Donations have been received ~In Memory of Laura Struve ~In Memory of Roland James Kuehnl ~In Honor of Connie & Pete Muckleberg s 50 th wedding anniversary ~In Memory of Shirley Gluch ~In Memory of Juneau Muckleberg, his love lifted us up. ~In Memory of Helen Liimatainen REHABBER OF THE DAY We think of ourselves as a teaching hospital and try to go above and beyond for those who want to learn. Every summer we have Rehabber of the Day. Each of the interns become Mark for one day. We ve been doing this for 15 years or more. It s a LOT of work for us and turns the normal routine upside down for the day but it gives the interns one more valuable learning experience. Unlike the Spring or Fall Interns, Summer Interns arrive to be thrown in the deep end, way, way over their heads. They have usually around 100 patients to come up to speed on in about four days and of course it doesn t happen quite like that. Even if they have book knowledge, the hands-on skills take a very long time to develop. In the beginning they feel like they can t do anything right (and they are mostly correct) It s foreign and not at all what they had expected. They struggle. They get frustrated because Mark makes it look so, so easy. When they have settled in a bit and start to feel like they know stuff, we assign Rehabber of the Day. Mark assumes the role of an intern, but is also a shadow. They make the decisions, but he is there to make sure their decisions don t result in poor animal care or death. They get to experience the pressure of decision making in emergencies, the behind the scenes management issues like budgets, priorities, resources and need, the phone calls, the questions from volunteers, other rehabbers or the media, the endless paperwork; all the duties a wildlife rehabber faces. Because no two days are alike in wildlife rehab, some Rehabbers of the Day are swamped with new patients or critical care, others have it easier. No matter the type of day they are presented with, they learn that they actually have learned more than they think they have so far, that they need to be
decisive, that there s a lot more to the big picture and that there s a lot, lot more to learn! One of the things Sharon mentions to the incoming interns at training is that they will not be the same person when they leave as they are when they arrive. Immersion programs change people. We are just finishing Week 10 of a 13 week Summer Intern Session. We don t need Rehabber of the Day to see the changes in them. In some case, though, they need it to see the changes in themselves. SPECIAL RAFFLE Have you ever seen an eagle from afar and wondered how big it was really? Have you ever wanted to feel the rush of the wind from their wings in your hair? You could get your chance. We are raffling the chance to release an eagle! There will only be 500 tickets sold so there s a 1 in 500 chance of winning! Drawing will be on the Wild for Wine & Cheese Cruise on September 17 th. You need not be present to win, but you must be 18 or older. If you are wary or not physically able to hold the eagle, you may open the box the eagle is in for a hands-off but still up close release experience. Tickets are 1 for $10 or 3 for $25. We will be selling tickets at lots of different events and of course at Wild Instincts. Tickets will be on sale from May 1 st until September 17 th or while supplies last. Watch for more details! Get Help for Wildlife Faster! It is summer and people are traveling near and far and coming in contact with animalswhether in the woods or injured on the shoulder of the road. You may be in an area where you don't know who to call. We received a call from people in Hawaii. They had relocated there and didn t know who to call in Hawaii about a bird they had found. They had lived in WI so knew to call us. We were able to put them in touch with someone much closer to them but it took valuable time that sometimes an animal in need can t afford. Now there is an app for that.
There will be live music from 6:00-8:00, food available until 7:00 and raffles throughout the evening. Wild Instincts resident birds of prey will also be in attendance. Come out for a meal and good music on Friday, October 21 from 5-8 to help us help them! WildHelp is a new app for iphones that will put you in touch with the nearest wildlife rehabber. Just answer a few simple questions about the animal you found and using your phone s GPS, the app will let you give you contact info for the closest help. Unfortunately, it is only available for iphones and not Androids at this time. But it sure is a start! Yes. Wild Instincts is listed in it. Check it out at wildhelp.org The Blank Canvas: Looking for a way to express your creative side? The Blank Canvas of Eagle River is teaming up with Wild Instincts for fundraiser. Create a unique painting (no skill needed) to keep or give for a holiday gift! Details to be announced. Short-tailed weasel orphan with weaning formula on face. New Ways to Help Us Help Them We are happy to announce a couple new small fundraising events for this fall: CT s Deli s FUNdraiser: One Friday a month, CT s Deli in Rhinelander has a Friday FUNdraiser. Owners Chef Tom and Rhonda donate 50% of beverage sales from 5:00-8:00 p.m. This is ALL beverages, not just the alcoholic ones. Same short-tailed weasel ready for release
Species 1/1-7/19/16 American Crow 3 American Goldfinch 2 American Kestrel 1 American Robin 30 American Toad 1 American Woodcock 1 Bald Eagle 20 Barred Owl 2 Big Brown Bat 9 Black Bear 20 Black-capped Chickadee 7 Blanding's Turtle 1 Blue Jay 8 Bobcat 1 Bohemian Waxwing 1 Broad-winged Hawk 4 Canada Goose 7 Cedar Waxwing 2 Chipping Sparrow 5 Cliff Swallow 1 Common Grackle 2 Common Loon 3 Common Merganser 1 Common Nighthawk 1 Common Raven 2 Common Redpoll 13 Cooper's Hawk 1 Dark-eyed Junco 1 Deer Mouse 21 Downy Woodpecker 1 Eastern Chipmunk 10 Eastern Cottontail 72 Eastern Gray Squirrel 48 Eastern Gray Tree Frog 1 Eastern Phoebe 4 European Starling 10 Fisher 1 Flying Squirrel (northern/southern combined) 4 Fox Snake 1 Gray Fox 3 Great Horned Owl 6 Hairy Woodpecker 1 Hermit Thrush 1 Hooded Merganser 6 House Wren 4 Little Brown Bat 4 Mallard Duck 26 Meadow Vole 1 Midland Painted Turtle 1 Mourning Dove 9 Northern Cardinal 1 Northern Flicker 12 Northern Saw-Whet Owl 1 Osprey 1 Pileated Woodpecker 1 Pine Siskin 16 Porcupine 3 Purple Finch 2 Raccoon 23 Red Fox 3 Red Squirrel 14 Red-bellied Woodpecker 1 Red-eyed Vireo 2 Red-tailed Hawk 3 River Otter 4 Rock Dove 6 Ruby-throated Hummingbird 3 Ruffed Grouse 1 Sandhill Crane 2 Short-tailed Weasel 1 Snapping Turtle 2 Song Sparrow 2 Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel 5 Tree Sparrow 1 Trumpeter Swan 5 Turkey Vulture 1 Western Painted Turtle 12 White-tailed Deer 24 Wild Turkey 1 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 1 Total 539 Upcoming Events Wild for Wine & Cheese Cruise Saturday, Sept 17 th 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Wisconsin River Cruises, Rhinelander Reserve your tickets now at 715-369-7500 www.wisconsinrivercruises.com Eagle Release Raffle Drawing Saturday, Sept 17 th 1:00 p.m. during the Wild for Wine & Cheese Cruise CT Deli s FUNdraiser Friday, Oct 21 st 5:00-8:00 p.m. CT s Deli 17 N Brown St Rhinelander The Blank Canvas / Pictures & Pitchers Early November To Be Determined.