For those of you who frequent our blog to read about our latest wildlife patients, we apologize for the wide gap in staying current. The person who manages our blog was in a car accident at the end of April 2007 and was unable to update, due to health issues.
Thank you for your patience!
I will be attempting to summarize the remaining months of wildlife patients and adding photos in the next few days.
-Lila Travis
January was busy with organization and cleaning to prepare for the oncoming 2007 season. In the midst of this, we had several injured animals come in for care. Amongst these was a young Red Tailed Hawk…
December was a busy month at the wildlife center.
The weather has been so odd that we never really had the winter slowdown we are accustomed to and need to recharge our batteries. We still had juvenile squirrels and other animals we were caring for who were late-season babies and we received many injured adults.
Mid December, the One Brick organization came back to help. It was a rainy day and despite the foul weather, many came up to fold brochures and newsletters and do general cleaning.
Late in December, thanks to the rain and a hidden ongoing problem, our sewer pipe backed up again.
We wish to express many thanks to the City Inspector, Mr Washington, and the 2 plumbing companies who worked with us to repair this problem in a timely manner.
Beyond Plumbing came out and videotaped the sewer line. Thank you Beyond Plumbing!
H&R Plumbing did the actual repair of the broken pipeline. They donated all the materials and labor for this project and replaced a section of sewer line that was broken and full of logs and dirt.
Apparently this had been an ongoing problem for over 6 years, before we moved onto this property. We are pleased that it has now been resolved and so grateful to Mr Washington, the City of Oakland inspector, for his patience and flexibility working with us, and to Beyond plumbing for videotaping the sewer line, and to H&R Plumbing for all their hard work repairing the problem.
Without your help we would not have been able to get this done! Thank you all!
Things are finally slowing down here at the wildlife center.
The occasional late-year babies or injured adults are still coming in, but nothing like what it was. There is room to breathe and think about the next step: Releasing the wildlife who have shown they are ready.
Thank you all for your patience with the staff here at YUWR over the last several months. It has been quite busy here with various events and dramas as well as an extreme number of orphaned wildlife in need. Below I will attempt to update you all, according to month, on the goings-on.
APRIL:
YGGDRASIL URBAN WILDLIFE RESCUE
RESCUED BY LOCAL REBUILDING TOGETHER ORGANIZATION !
Formerly known as “Christmas in April”, “Rebuilding Together: Oakland” accepted our application for their 2006 non-profit facility grant to enlarge and develop our wildlife center!
The wonderful staff at RTO, together with Pulte Homes, spent 3 weeks in April building stairs and creating an education area at the bottom of the 1/3 acre property, so that we have full access to all the lower caging and animals in recovery. Previously, our staff had to walk/slide down the hillside to get to our cages.
Now we have stairs - a much safer prospect, especially in the rainy season. Pulte Homes and
RTO also replaced the carpet in our hospital with sterile linoleum and installed a sink to facilitate better sanitary conditions in the isolation ward.
A full article will be published in our winter newsletter, thanking everyone individually. In the meantime, YUWR would like to thank all the companies who donated materials, labor, and ideas to this renovation project. Specifically, Rachel Matthews, Paul Radliff, Anders Schmidt.
And…Thank you to our YUWR volunteers who stayed up til 5am various nights doing prep work, painting, and packing boxes. Thank you all.
MAY:
In the midst of the RTO April Project, we were blessed with a first for YUWR.
A 5 day old fawn was dropped off at the Oakland Animal Shelter.
Seems she was found at a rest stop while traveling through Marin County and driven all the way to Oakland! The staff of YUWR, in cooperation with Wildcare and their Fawn Expert Suzie Sasso, raised this little female fawn and a companion from Wildcare, for the first 6 weeks of their lives before transferring them to the Fawn Rehab facility in Marin.
The director would like to express her extreme gratitude to “Pot of Soup” and “Bombadil”, the two fawns, for helping to put things in perspective and being constant reminders of the beauty in the world, while she was in the middle of coping with the sudden illness and subsequent death from cancer of her father, William Talcott, in early June.
“We may save these animals but they, in turn, save us when the need arises. “
JUNE & JULY:
Mercifully slow months for the Wildlife Center. We had a few baby skunklets and the odd squirrel as well as the fawns to care for.
June and July were spent coping with the death in the family and caring for these orphaned and injured wildlife. Baby tree squirrels were supposed to come in but none came. We found this odd, especially since the spring baby wave was extremely light as well. We did receive in 8 baby Ca. Ground squirrels.
SEPTEMBER:
The Baby tree Squirrel wave has turned into a Tsunami!
Things were mercifully slow in early summer, while I adjusted to the death of my father. Baby squirrels usually would have been pouring in, come June. However, for one reason or another, the wave waited til the end of August and the beginning of September. We have been inundated!! In a 2 week period we have received over 30 babies and are now up to 43 nursing little ones!
The call for volunteers is out there.
We need people to come feed babies!!
If you are interested, call us at 510-421-9897 or email. Thanks!
Photo courtesy of George Song. Thank you, George
I want to apologize for not updating the blog in several months.
I regret to inform you that, due to the illness and death of my father, I have been unable to update the blog.
I promise to update in the next few weeks.
I have fawns and skunklets and steller jay babies to write about.
Thank you so much for your patience.
-Lila
Today was a very productive day at our wildlife center.
We met new volunteers and were reunited with ongoing volunteers.
We FINALLY got one of the new squirrel pens even closer to being functional with a new fresh bed of level soil inside the retaining wall frame, and concrete around the posts. New nestboxes were built, cages and dishes were cleaned, brush was cleared….
It was a good day.
Thank you to David and Mike for driving far, far away, early in the morning to haul dirt.
Thanks to Paul for providing the dirt and the bulldozer.
Thanks to Slade and Manuel and Santiago, for providing even MORE dirt and also concrete blocks, and for performing the grueling task of hauling all the soil down the hillside and into the cage.
Thank you to Galen for pouring cement and digging post holes (and for those Wonderful Strawberries! )
Thank you to Jim for going up and down the slope, cleaning brush and hauling it away!
Thank you to Leslie B. for building 2 wonderful squirrel nest-boxes!
Thank you to Angela M. for cleaning cages and clearing brush and designing our new intake sheets!
Thank you to Leanna for cleaning animal dishes, making sandwiches and clearing brush.
Thank you to Helene for signing on as a new volunteer with many ideas on how to get more support!
Thank you to our neighbors for their ongoing patience with juggling cars on this narrow cul-de-sac.
Thank you to Richard for lugging dirt, cement, lumber and more up and down the slope (for days) and a BIG thanks for sweeping the mud out of the carpet, which inevitably gets tracked inside, after these events.
Our thoughts are with the volunteers who wanted to be here today but were unable to due to their housefire early Sunday morning. We are so grateful no one was hurt.
There is still TONS to do. If you want to help, PLEASE contact me and we can set up another workday!
I thank you, but more importantly, the orphaned wildlife who will learn how to survive in these cages before being released back into the wild, thank you.
For the last three years in a row March 3rd has been THE day that the first baby squirrel orphans of the year have come in to our wildlife center. This year was no exception.
March 3rd, 2006 was once again the date of the first orphaned squirrel babies of the year!
Three beauties came in, from a kind gentleman who found them in the gutter, after the powerful windstorm last night. One was icy cold and the kind soul did his best to get her warm and active like the other two. Unfortunately, she was just too cold for her internal organs to keep functioning properly and despite our best attempts, she passed shortly after their arrival.
The surviving two babies are good and strong.
A boy and a girl. The girl has some bad bruising and a broken leg and tail, but the boy is almost untouched!
Aren’t they beautiful?
Please be on the lookout for your local squirrels.
The Mothers will be more frantic than normal and more likely to engage in daredevil behavior to get what they need to take good care of their little babies.
If you find babies, please be sure to see if Mom is around. The best person to care for the babies is their mother. And believe me - baby squirrels are HARD to care for and Easy to kill with kindness. They eat special food (not cows milk) and eat a special way - if you feed them wrong they can die. If you find them and there is no mother around looking for them, please contact your local wildlife center as soon as possible. Or call me for advice:) 510-421-9897
Think good thoughts for these little ones!
And THANK YOU to David, for caring enough to drop everything to save these little guys!
Please watch out for wildlife at this time of year. They are more crazy, with mating on their minds and may not be as watchful for cars or passerbys.
Please DON’T trim your trees unless you are ABSOLUTELY certain there are no squirrel nests in their branches. Babies are born and mother’s are hiding them in nests. This is when we get the most number of orphaned baby squirrels from tree trimming projects. The mothers will NOT leave their nests and may get killed when the branches fall.
IF YOU DO FIND BABY SQUIRRELS, check to make sure their mother is not around, looking for them. If she is, place the nest or babies at the base of a tree near the mother and back away, but watch to make sure no predators get the baby(s).
IF MOTHER IS DEAD or Doesn’t Take back the babies, PLEASE CALL US ASAP. Baby squirrels are difficult to care for and easy to kill with kindness. Please call us so we can help. We can take the babies into our care and you can be as involved as you want to be in their recovery. (510) 421-9897
Thank you for caring about wildlife!
Here are a few pictures of Wildlife we currently have in care so far this spring….
Windblown in the storm. Recovering well…
