Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue (YUWR) and Education Center

In the last 24 hours, we have received in the first of many spring wildlife orphans in need of care and support.

This baby opossum should be traveling through the world on Mama’s back, nursing inside her pouch, but instead, she was found by a Good Samaritan in Oakland and brought to the Oakland Animal Shelter. Now she is in care with us, warm and being fed. Soon others her age will come in and there will be a group of opossums who will grow up together as surrogate siblings.  For now, she cuddles into the wool sock that feels like Mama’s pouch tightly holding her.

This sweet little 7 day old baby squirrel fell from his nest into the middle of Mosswood Dog Park here in Oakland! A fast-moving Good Samaritan snatched him up before the dogs did and was unable to reunite him with his missing mother.  She rushed him up to us, where he is now cuddling in comfy fake-furs on a heating pad, recovering from injuries and bruising received from his fall out of a tall redwood tree. He is vocalizing and has a good appetite. He should recover well. No doubt very soon we will have others his age come in so he will have siblings to cuddle with during his time here in rehab.

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For those of you following our Crisis of losing our facility, I want you to know that we have never shut our doors, throughout all of this. We have stayed open and available to orphaned and injured wildlife and the kind humans who save them. However, our time here is running out rapidly. We have run out of funds, equipping the new facility and we are not finished yet. Without more funds to buy materials, without more volunteers to mud, tape, build cages, and more, we won’t be ready for the upcoming evacuation deadline. We badly need help.

If you are interested in helping, we badly need monetary donations, as well as volunteers who have experience with sheetrocking, mudding, taping, painting, cage-building, and more. We need the help, but we also need funds so we can buy materials to build the new cages etc. I know times are tough all over, but if you have the ability, please keep us in mind. All donations are tax deductible. Thank you.

Valentine is a very brave young female raccoon. Alameda Animal Control was called in to pickup a dead raccoon laying by the side of the road after being hit by a car on Valentine’s Day.  Much to the surprise of the officer, she found the raccoon to be alive! She rushed the raccoon to the Montclair Vet Hospital, where Dr Richter and staff took xrays and discovered she was VERY pregnant! With only a couple of broken teeth and some bruising on her lungs showing, she was transferred into care with our wildlife center.

For the first couple days after getting into care at our wildlife center, this young mama raccoon just lay there in her cage, not responding, not eating or drinking. But she was warm, safe, she was breathing and her pain was managed as best we could. We were concerned and consulted regularly with our Rancho Raccoon Team expert, Megan. We thought of all kinds of ways we could coax her to eat or make her more comfortable and less stressed.

None of our attempts had any effect. Until the morning of February 17th. three days into her care, when, I checked on her in the morning and held out the water dish in front of her nose. This time, she lifted her head and, with her eyes glued to mine, eagerly drank. Encouraged, I then offered her a raw egg – a staple in her wild diet, which she lapped and lapped up. She lapped up a second egg and had more water before laying her head back down and going back to sleep.

During the course of the day, she actually repositioned herself in her enclosure, had more water and another egg.

As of February 21st, Valentine is eating only Raw Eggs and Ensure (liquid diet). She is eating 9 eggs each day! She is moving around a little better and once she is done with her course of antibiotics, she will go in an outside pen.

(photos, courtesy of Montclair Veterinary Hospital)

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UPDATE: February 24th 2011 —   Valentine gave birth yesterday, over the course of 24 hours.  Sadly, all four of her babies were stillborn, which was not that surprising after the injuries she sustained when she was hit by a car.  Valentine is doing well, resting recovering,  and eating tons of eggs, Ensure, and other goodies. She continues to improve daily.

Although we are saddened by the loss of her babies, sometimes this is Nature’s way of ensuring there are enough resources for her body to recover from it’s injuries. Now she can concentrate on getting better and getting back out into the wild. She will no doubt have a litter of babies in the late Summer after she is released.

Thank you to Nancy-Jean for donating 15 dozen eggs towards her recovery! We still need KMR, Ensure, and turkey baby food, so if anyone else wants to contribute towards her rehabilitation please contact us. You can also make a monetary donation by sending in a check to YUWR  7036 Balsam Way Oakland CA 94611 or using the links to the Right of the screen for online donations.

Thank you for your interest!

Our Wildlife center is in the middle of relocating and rebuilding somewhere else. Spring baby season starts in MARCH, a couple weeks away. We will be receiving orphaned baby squirrels, opossums, raccoons, and other wildlife babies in need of care and support. We are looking for people who are interested in taking these babies, raising them according to our training protocols, and releasing them back into the wild, to give them a second chance at a normal life.  This can be a wonderful educational opportunity for families. Please contact us if you are interested in being trained as a YUWR FosterCare Volunteer. Thank you. 510-421-9897 or email at lila@yuwr.org

We are STILL open and taking in new patients, despite the eminent eviction and relocation process.

This difficult weather has brought in a few new patients, like Miracle Boy Squirrel:

Miracle Boy Squirrel – This squirrel was found by a kind-hearted citizen who saw him laying at the side of the road after being hit by a car. She thought he was dead but as she watched, he moved! So she scooped him up and brought him to the Montclair Vet Hospital, where he was triaged and sent into care with us. He was bleeding out of his ear, which is very bad. It meant he was struck in the head and could have any manner of brain damage. For the first 2 days he was pretty much comatose. We gave him supportive care and waited.

On day 3, when we went in to check on him we found him sitting upright and looking at us! He ate and drank and went back to sleep.

Since that day he has been getting better and better. We feel that he will be releasable, given enough time to fully recover.

Can you imagine? A 2 pound furry creature being struck by a ton of fast-moving metal, and yet he is not only alive but actually minimally affected by his ordeal!! Truly amazing.

Upcoming Event

Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue (YUWR) presents
Solving Common Human/Wildlife Problems
Brought to you by: The Alameda Animal Shelter
Sponsored by: Friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter

Do you have questions or worries about backyard wildlife like raccoons, opossums and
skunks? Want to know how to keep them from causing problems around your property?
We will tell you how to solve problems with wildlife around the house and yard. We can help

you make it happen without harming or killing animals!
We will tell you how to:
✦   make your home and yard less inviting to wildlife,
✦   safely and humanely evict wildlife from buildings,
✦   and answer your questions and concerns!
Where: Alameda Free Library, 1550 Oak Street, Alameda, CA.
When: Two Opportunities to Join Us!
Thursday, January 27, 2011 or Thursday, February 17, 2011
6:30 PM-7:30 PM
Cost: FREE
Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue (YUWR) is the wildlife rescue center serving Oakland,
Berkeley, Alameda, Piedmont, Albany and surrounding cities. We are an all-volunteer
organization, funded entirely by donations.

Dear S.F. Chronicle,

On October 12th 2010 you printed an article about the Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue & Education Center and our current eviction woes.
I am the director of Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue, Lila Travis, and I would like to make a request for a printed correction.

In the article entitled: “Yggdrasil wildlife center hopes for rescue” the following sentence was printed and the result has done some real damage to our struggling 501c3 non-profit organization.

“The Travises, who live on donations and grants given to the nonprofit wildlife center,…”

This statement is not only completely untrue, it has damaged the reputation of our 501c3 nonprofit organization, as well as the reputations of my husband and I.
Our wildlife center has received hate mail as well as requests for the return of recent donations made to save our wildlife center from donors who are under the mistaken impression, gotten from your article, that their money went towards living expenses for “the Travises” instead of towards the actual life-saving work we do here at our wildlife rehabilitation and education center.

The article was written by Carolyn Jones, a reporter we have read and respected for years. We have worked with Carolyn in the past and have found her to be a good reporter. She showed her integrity by responding to our inquiry about this major mistake with a sincere apology and correction to her online article. We appreciate her apology and that she corrected her mistake online, but the printed article is out there and the damage has been done.
We are requesting a printed correction be made so we can show it to those who have lost faith in our organization because of your article.

The Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue & Education Center, in Oakland, CA, is 100% volunteer-run and donation-funded.
Neither Richard nor Lila Travis have ever received any compensation for the 70-80 hours/week they each volunteer. Nor have they ever received any salary or benefited in any way from contributions made to our 501c3 nonprofit organization, other than the supreme benefit of seeing money put to good use in restoring precious living beings to their birthright in the wild.

We would have liked to have been given the opportunity to respond to the allegations in the article of “squatting” and “not paying rent” and having the house “overrun with animals“. Had we been given the opportunity to respond,  we would happily have shown proof that the rent has been paid in full every month for the last 6 years and continues to be, even though we are in the middle of a legal case against the landlady which has frozen all rent increases until it is resolved. Had we been given a chance to respond, we would have happily shown that there are no animals at all in the main house where we live, except our cat – not because of the wishes of the landlady but because we have a 2 year old child whom we keep separated from the wildlife animals for his protection. We would also have shown the numerous contracts and statements signed by Andrea Wood, the owner of this property, giving permission for squirrels, raccoons, baby deer, and other wildlife animals to be cared for on this property (including inside the main house).

We appreciate the S.F. Chronicle’s interest in our wildlife center’s work and we hope it continues in the future.
We truly thank you for highlighting the struggle our wildlife center is currently undergoing.
However, we really need your help in correcting the wrong impression that our wildlife center is run by human leeches, sucking away funds lovingly given for the welfare of the animals.

Thank you,

Sincerely,

Lila Travis

Our first fawn of the year came to us a day after a young buck was shot by the Police here in Oakland. This fawn was only a few days old. His hooves were still soft, his ears still floppy. He was running down International Avenue at 42^nd in the heart of Oakland. He was crying as he followed a couple walking down the street. When they turned up 42^nd Ave, he followed them. When they stopped to talk with two women loading a moving van, he ran up and caught the hearts of the women movers. One of them went inside, found our phone number and brought the little fawn to us. It was 11pm when they arrived. This fawn, whom we called “Rono” from the story of Bambi, was very thin. Something must have happened to his mother for him to be this thin. He spent his first night here wrapped in a warm blanket, on a heating pad, his belly full of warm fawn formula.

It was 2 weeks later when we got the call from WildCare, the wildlife rehabilitation center in Marin we work with to rehabilitate orphaned fawns. They had just received a little 3 day old female who had been found on a construction site. Her mother had been chased off by workers and there was no safe place for the fawn to be placed so she could be reunited with her mother.  She came into care and nuzzled happily up to Rono. We called her Rowena.

It was two weeks later that the last of the Fawn Graduates of 2010 arrived. He was older and therefore more aware and wary of us humans. We called him Olaf or Oli for short. He was found running up a busy highway. The finders had placed him down the hillside away from traffic in the hopes he could be reunited with his mother, but hours later, when they drove past to check he was back up playing in traffic again. They saved his life by bringing him in. He had been starving and would have been hit by a car.

Volunteers collected fresh fruit tree branches daily to provide natural food forage for the fawns

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For the next few months they frolicked and played in our fawn pen, nursing from the bottle 2-3 times a day, learning about leaves, branches, fruits and veggies and listening to the coyotes howl at night as they hunkered down and froze. Life Lessons that would be useful once they were free.

Volunteers Shima and Richard carry the fawns up the hill from their pen to the van for transport to Bambi Bootcamp.

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Once weaned, they moved to Bambi Boot-Camp, with our wonderful volunteer, Stacy who runs the Greener Pastures Equine Care Facility. Here, in a giant fruit orchard, they grew up, lost their spots, but not their innocence.

Exploring their new enclosure

Ooooo Pears!

...and all the comforts of Home at the Wildlife Center: Organic Fruit Salad!

Wow - Look at our new digs

Look at our new Pet Human!

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Over the months, Stacy and her family cared for them by providing them a safe place, clean water and good food. Stacy watched them frolic and play, bounding over one another, chasing each other thru the Orchard, sleeping in a pile under the trees, standing on their hind legs and eating leaves, and watching the fence line for their nightly visitors – the older adult wild deer who would visit, no doubt to share stories about life in the wild and to offer words of warning.

Well, now they too are free to roam the hills.

Stacy says they are staying in a group together. She sees them at dusk and dawn roaming the hills above her home.

We will post updates on their transition as we learn more.

Although there were many other fawns who came to us in 2010, these three were the strong survivors. The others were too injured, too starved, too sick to survive, despite our attempts to save them. Thank you to all of our volunteers who spent late nights holding ill newborn fawns, dripping water into their mouths or just comforting them as they succumbed. In the name of those who did not survive, we tell the story of those who did.

Argh! We are still in full operation here, despite our current crisis.  4-5 animals per day have been arriving in need of care. A month or so back, the 1992 Jeep we have been using for rescue work, broke down and needs to be replaced. We changed over to our fallback vehicle – the van. Now the 1997 Pontiac Trans Sport is unable to pass the SMOG and we are not allowed to drive it! The situation is ridiculous. We need a new vehicle for the wildlife center to use for animal transport, emergency rescues, transport of cages etc.

We need an SUV or Minivan type vehicle that is year 2000 or younger, in good running condition (we cannot afford mechanic fees to fix it. If you would consider donating your vehicle, you can get the Full Fair Market Value for it in tax deductions because we would actually USE the vehicle and would not resell it -And you would be making it possible for us to continue to do our work!

The IRS has an information book about how to donate a car (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/pub4303.pdf) but here are the main points:

• make sure you can benefit – as in do you itemize on your taxes?
• determine the value of your car – this is a good-faith agreement between you, the donor, and us, the donee. Or if the car value is over $5,000 it would need t be professionally appraised. We would pay for this when you donate the vehicle.

If you are willing to help by donating your vehicle, please give us a call at 510-547-YUWR (9897) and THANK YOU!

Or – if you are a Mechanic willing to donate your labor to help get our Wildlife Center Van to pass the SMOG, please call too! 510-547-9897

Thanks for your time!

Tonight, a call came in. A scream in the dark, and cries of pain and fright.

A baby squirrel lost his mother and met a cat instead, when he left the nest to search for her.  His cries of terror were heard by a good Samaritan who, dropped everything to find out who to call on a Sunday night, when all veterinary hospitals were closed or too busy to tell her where to go. Finally she found Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue and, at 5 minutes to ten at night, made the call and rushed this traumatized baby to me.

He is hurt. He doesn’t move right. But more than, that he is just so frightened. Nothing comforts him.

He is not alone. Several days ago, a little female squirrel came in, the same age. She was starving in North Berkeley and spent days with her sibling, sitting on the ground in a playground. Her sibling didn’t make it but we got her. Depressed and lethargic, she has lingered, unresponsive to food or water. Minimal interest in the grapes. A few half-hearted grunts in response to my poor attempts to comfort her.

Tonight, Scared Little Boy and Sad Little Girl meet up in their kennel. Having never met before doesn’t matter.  She is Squirrel. She is home. He runs to her and buries his head under her body. She, who did not noticed when I gave her subcu fluids a moment before, lifts her head and I saw the light switch back on. Her interest flooding back. Life. Love. Feeling. She grabs him in a desperate embrace and rubbed her nose into his hair. Now there is reason to get better. Now there is hope.