What does a mother raccoon do when her kit dangles by his claws from a beam 20 feet up in the air?
Why are there so many raccoons in cities?
Should I be worried if I see a raccoon out in the daytime?
Join Megan Isadore, a naturalist and wildlife rehabilitator with Oaklandʼs Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue, for a family-friendly slide and video presentation on one of our most common urban wildlife neighbors. Megan will discuss raccoon life history and behavior, answer your questions on humanely solving nuisance raccoon problems, and show an exciting video update on our most famous raccoon patient, Tiny Tim!
When? Thursday, July 22, 2010 7PM-8PM (half hour talk, plenty of question time!)
Where? Oakland Animal Services, 1101 29th Avenue, Oakland, CA
Cost? FREE
Featuring the beautiful wildlife photography of Jack Gescheidt,
jackphoto.com and raccoonery.com
Although we are deeply involved in trying to SAVE OUR WILDLIFE CENTER from eviction (read more about it) we still want to share with you the daily miracles that are occurring at our wildlife center. Yes, we are still open and accepting animals daily despite our uncertain future. Please enjoy the unfolding tale of Tiny Tim.
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(all photos and video were provided by Jack Gescheidt, photographer, and Amy Pfaffman, Tim’s caregivers!)
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Tiny Tim had broken his back and both his rear legs were paralyzed. Because our job is to release the wildlife animals back into the wild, giving them a second chance, this was a very grave situation for this baby raccoon. Paraplegic animals do not survive in the wild! Something had to be done.
Tiny Tim’s miracle began when he was brought into care with our own “Rancho Raccoon” team and, under the supervision of raccoon team leader, Megan Isadore, placed in the care of two very wonderful fosterers, Amy and Jack, who gave Tiny Tim the extra care he needed.
Here is a video of him at the beginning of his stay with Jack and Amy:
Tiny Tim’s plight caught the interest of Dr. Andrew Sams of The Sams Clinic, an orthopedic specialty vet practice in Mill Valley, who has donated consultations about our rehabilitation raccoons, and provided great veterinary guidance. The Sams Clinic has a neurosurgeon on staff, Dr. Lisa Klopp, who looked at the spinal x-ray and examined the 9-week-old raccoon. Dr. Klopp determined that the fracture would need to heal for a month, and agreed to perform a laminectomy to free the spinal cord from the compression causing his paralysis. Tiny Tim needed back surgery!!
During his month-long healing time before his surgery and after, Tiny Tim received physical therapy from Amy. Amy exercised Tim’s back legs several time a day, helping place them under him, supporting him minimally. Tim barely needed the help; he was determined to do everything a normal raccoon does. While Amy patiently placed his legs under him for walking, Timmy was on to leaping and climbing, never mind the falling. We were worried that he would further injure his spinal cord — but not Tim. He refused to be anything but what he is…a wild raccoon youngster. Amy’s therapy included roughhousing using a raccoon doll so he wouldn’t get too used to playing with humans.
About a week prior to surgery, we rescued a female raccoon a little younger than Tim. Her mother was hit by a car, and she was found crying by the body.
This little girl wanted no part of humans. She’s a normal 12-week-old raccoon who would rather do almost anything than cozy up to us scary monsters. But when we placed her with Tim, they bonded within hours. Tim was so happy to have a REAL raccoon to bite, and she was delighted to have someone of her own kind to cuddle with. And Tim’s human team was equally relieved Tim could learn from his own species. This put an end to our concerns about Tiny Tim’s prolonged recovery and extended contact with human caregivers.
Finally the day for Tiny Tim’s surgery arrived. Although over the course of Tim’s month of healing he had recovered some use of both legs, he still needed the surgery to repair the damaged spine. Dr. Klopp, Tim’s neurosurgeon, said she’d never seen a smaller spinal cord. She had to perform delicate manipulation to get her instruments to work for a 3-pound raccoon kit! Thanks to the hard work of Dr Klopp, plus two surgical assistants, and an anesthesiologist, the surgery went great!
Three hours post-surgery, Tim was up and about, and even PLAYING with his new sister! His caregivers watched him like hawks and made pen modifications to ensure he wouldn’t fall and jar his tender spine. Nevertheless, Tiny Tim and his sister had to be repeatedly constrained to allow Tim’s staples to stay intact over the following 10 days! Thanks also to Amy’s daily physical therapy, we are seeing improvement in Tim’s abilities. Based on these improvement, and on our experience of raccoon healing, we predict Tim will be released as a normal, wild young raccoon.
Thank you to everyone who was involved in this amazing rescue! Thanks to Dr Sams Clinic, Dr Klopp and her surgical team, Jack and Amy, and Megan.
We will be posting a video of Tiny Tim post-surgery as soon as possible. Thank you for your interest!
Our wildlife center has been helping wildlife and human citizens of our surrounding cities for the last 10 years. We have saved thousands of animals in trouble, inspired thousands of children, and helped thousands of people having problems with wildlife. We are still 100% volunteer-run and donation-funded, still grassroots after all these years. We are the ONLY wildlife rehabilitation & education center in the Oakland/Berkeley area.
Now, ten years into this, our wildlife center is a vital community resource. But we are being evicted from the property we have operated on for the last 6 years. The owner has taken the property off the rental market and has asked us to leave.
The GOOD News is….
There is a piece of property for sale here in Oakland which would be the PERFECT place for the wildlife center. It is 2/3rd of an Acre of flat, beautiful, forested land. Plenty of land for our pre-release enclosures, plenty of quiet, beautiful field for our fawns to run in, our squirrels and raccoons to learn to climb trees in. But we need your help to get it.
We have found the PERFECT property to relocate our wildlife center to but it is selling as a “cash-only” sale. We have launched a fund-raising effort but still need to raise $125,000 in order to buy the property outright.
- We are looking for tax-deductible donations or matching funds to help us during this crisis. However, we are not just looking for money.
- We are also looking for someone who supports our work who might be willing to privately finance the purchase of this property by providing us with a bridge loan.
Thank you for your support and with your help, we can SAVE OUR WILDLIFE CENTER!
Please, if you want to be involved in any way or have suggestions, call me at 510-547-9897 or email me at lila@yuwr.org
Thank you for your ongoing support and assistance.
Sincerely,
Lila Travis
director
This 9-week-old raccoon Tiny Tim’s rear legs are paralyzed from a spinal injury. Our own “Rancho Raccoon” Team is arranging for Tim to undergo spinal surgery. If successful and he recovers his mobility, he’ll be released to the wild when full grown!
Thank you for your support!
This year we have had more orphaned wildlife come in sooner than ever before.
We are frankly a bit intimidated. In May of 2009 we had a total of 113 patients. This year, we have 203 patients so far.
Luckily, we have some really great, reliable volunteers this year and are handling it in stride.
Thank you to the volunteers who come here daily to clean and cook for the animals.
Thank you also to the volunteers who have opened their hearts and homes to our orphaned babies, giving them both a family and a second chance at a normal life in the wild. Without our volunteers we would not be.
Coming Soon
Title: Wildlife Center CLEAN UP DAY!
Location: 7036 Balsam Way, Oakland CA 94611
Link out: Click here
Description: Come help us Spring Clean and get ready for the coming wave of orphaned babies!
Haul branches, move lumber, clean cages and kennels! Sweep stairs, wipe walls, change lightbulbs, and fix anything you see out of place!
Bring fresh branches and stimulus for our wildlife patients to prettify their cages!
Bring old towels, puppy training pads, paper towels, tissues, or anything else from our wishlist to help us get through the coming year!
Thank you!
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2010-03-06
End Time: 17:00
Title: Volunteer Orientation
Location: 7036 Balsam Way, Oakland CA 94611
Link out: Click here
Description: Meet us, take a tour of our facility and talk about what we need from our volunteers. If you like our facility and want to volunteer, you can sign up for a shift right then, or set up a time to train for foster care.
This will probably take only 1 hour.
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2010-02-13
End Time: 13:30
We received our first wildlife patient for the 2010 year. A gray fox was stuck in a live trap for 4 days. Aside from some scrapes and bruises and a very empty tummy, he is fine and will be released in a few days, following a little fattening up.
If he looks sinister it is because I accidentally woke him up taking this photo. He will be with us a couple more days to fatten up and recover from his four day starvation diet.
(this page is under construction – please bare with me)
In the 2009 we were able to successfully help 519 orphaned or injured wild animals. Although we cannot write about every animal who comes in, we intend to give you updates on the animals we did write about in our previous 2009 posts, before things got so busy that we ran out of time to update our blog. Thank you for your patience.
Thank you for your support and interest. We are 100% volunteer-run and donation-funded and without your support, we would have to stop doing this needed work. We hope you will continue to visit in the 2010 year, and perhaps consider becoming a volunteer or send us a donation so we may continue this work.
Raccoon Babies
These raccoon babies (from THIS POST) grew up happy and well under the care of Jack & Amy and Megan’s supervision. They were released and are living out their wild lives—but not before some photos were made of them. Visit Jack’s website to see more photos and learn more of their story: http://raccoonery.com
These five little ones had a tragic start: their mother was killed by humans, an old-school “pest control” company. These week-old orphans were left behind and Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue was called in.
We volunteer with YUWR’s Raccoon Team – Rancho Raccoon, as foster parents. We feed and shelter them until autumn (2009) when they’re 7 months old and can survive on their own. We release them back to the wild, near where they were found.
Soon, they had grown enough that their eyes opened and they became the curious explorers that they are. Jack & Amy would take them on supervised outings in the woods for them to learn the sights and smells of their future wild life.
When they were old enough, they were released back into the wild. They live free now.
The Moses Family Squirrels
(from THIS POST)
Luci, Dean and their sons Milo and Felix raised Luke and Busta for us this year. In the end, once Luke and Busta were outside in their outdoor cage, 2 other foster babies were added to the mix, making a total of 4 babies in their care. Due to an unexpected birth defect, Luke did not make it to release. However, Busta and the other 2 babies, Florence and Bud, did. They were successfully released into their backyard where they roam free as they were meant to. Here are some photos:
When they first arrived these were tiny! But with proper care, they grew…
Soon they were old enough to graduate from a nursery kennel to a playcage!
Then, as the weeks passed and they continued to grow, it was time to make a pre-release cage for them in the backyard.
The cage was ready for them. They would stay in here for a month, then one day we would open the door and let them come and go. We continue to put food out for them for a while so they have help if they need it.
After release, on sunny afternoons, we were lucky to see our squirrels coming back for a rest and a visit…
…and sometimes for a treat too!
Good luck to you, our squirrel friends!
If you are interested in fostering baby squirrels, please give us a call at 510-547-9897. We will train you and supply many of the materials you need.
Tina’s Newborn Squirrels
(from THIS POST)
Theses squirrels were so young when they came into care with us, but thanks to the dedication of our volunteers – Lucy B. and Tina, they grew up and were successfully
Here is their photo story:
The Newborn Squirrels on Intake
After 2 weeks with Lucy B. they moved into Tina’s care
They grew well!
Eventually it was time to move them into their outside cage to prepare for release.
Look how BIG they’ve grown!
Now they are living Free, Wild Lives.
Thank you to Lucy B. and Tina for their hard work. And thank you to the caring family who found these little ones.
2009 Fawns (Coming Soon)
2009 Opossum Babies
Every year we get in hundreds of opossums who are injured or orphaned. This year we had a higher than normal number of mothers with babies in their pouches. The mothers had terrible injuries – the majority of them were either hit by car or attacked by a pet dog.
Opossums are north america’s only marsupial. That means that they are non-placental – that they are born as embryos and continue to develop inside their mother’s pouch. They mate and 13 days later they are born. The embryos crawl up a hair-path that leads to their mother’s pouch. They climb in and attach to a nipple and stay there for a long time, growing and developing their eyes, fingers, and everything else. When they are born, 22 of them can fit inside a teaspoon!
Here is a good picture of babies in a mother opossum’s pouch. This opossum was attacked by a pet dog. She recovered and was released shortly after this picture was taken:
When the babies are too big to all fit inside the pouch, they attach to mom’s back and go back into the pouch to nurse only.
In 2009, we received hundreds of opossums and many of these intakes included injured mothers with 8 or 10 babies in their pouches. I would like to highlight one story this year. That would be the tale of a mother opossum who was hit by a car. She was found by a good Samaritan who reported her apparently lifeless body to Oakland Animal Control when they saw the squirming of babies in her pouch. Animal Control found that she was still alive and brought her to the Montclair Veterinary Hospital where she was examined and it was discovered that she had a broken jaw as well as a skull fracture. It is always a question – put them to sleep so they don’t suffer VS give them a chance to recover even if it is against the odds. In this case we decided we would manage her pain and let her recover and see how she did once her jaw was healed. We were concerned about brain damage from the skull fracture. This way, her babies would have a chance to grow up cared for by their mama.
The Mama did really well. Very soon her jaw was working again. She ate well and nursed her babies well. They grew and grew. They grew faster than she recovered and before she was ready to leave our infirmary, her babies were ready to go out on their own in one of our opossum pens. By chance, the same day that her little ones went out into their new pen, another opossum mama was brought in with a pouch full of babies. This mother had been mauled by a pet dog and did not survive her injuries. We tried putting the dead mother’s babies in the current Mama’s recently emptied pouch – and it WORKED! She was still lactating. The babies latched on and Mama settled in as their new foster Mom.
Over the months that followed it soon became evident that the Mama did have severe brain damage and was also blind as a result of the impact of the car. As long as she was caring for little ones she seemed fine and focused, but as soon as we moved babies out and she was alone she would start walking in circles and showing real signs of brain damage. When the baby opossum season was over, The Mama had successfully fostered 27 baby opossums that were so small they would not have otherwise survived. However, with no new babies to put in her pouch, her condition soon deteriorated and her quality of life plummeted. After discussing it with our daily volunteer staff, we all agreed that the best thing to do for the Mama was to let her rest peacefully. She had given a miraculous gift of life to all those otherwise doomed orphans.
I chose the Mama to write about here as one wild animal’s story which stood out in the 2009 year because her tale filled us with amazement and inspiration. Her strength to live against terrible odds with the sole purpose of loving not just her young – but any young in need.
Thank you to the Mama, for all her caring work this year.
