By the time the well-meaning couple brought the injured owl in to the Center, its leg bones were so weak they couldn't even support the bird. For months they'd been feeding the orphaned baby a diet of crackers and hamburger, but the owl wasn't healing. The Rehab Center was their last hope.
Love and good intentions aren't always enough in the world of wildlife rehabilitation. The diet the couple thought was nutritious had almost no calcium, and the owl's bones were virtually dissolving. The crippled owl was lost - there was nothing anyone could do to save it. But many other orphaned and injured animals who reach the Schuylkill Wildlife Rehabilitation Center (SWRC) are much more fortunate. Every year the Center treats hundreds, even thousands of wild animals, brought in from all over the Delaware Valley.
Wildlife rehabilitation takes dedication, a lot of hard work and knowledge of a wide variety of species' nutritional and other needs and habits. Licenses are required for treating different types of wildlife, and the SWRC operates under licensed wildlife rehabilitator Trish O'Connell. Its goal, of course, is not just to save the animals' lives, but to return them to their natural habitats if possible, with the survival skills they'll need.
Supporters of the SWRC are invited to an open house of the facility each summer, when the cages and nursery are usually packed with recovering guests. On a recent visit I found the numbers were down radically because of a misguided decision by the Pennsylvania Wildlife Commission to ban treatment of all rabies vector species - foxes, skunks, raccoons and opossums. The decision was unfortunate because the rehab workers are vaccinated against rabies and they know how to handle the animals safely. If they can't take these animals in, good-hearted people unwilling to turn injured animals over to authorities for destruction are likely to try to nurse them on their own.
The decision is especially misguided in the case of opossums, who are poor vectors of the rabies virus and rarely transmit it if they have the disease. Over the summer, the nursery would normally be bustling with tiny opossums as well as raccoons and skunks on the road to recovery, but with the ruling many cages remained empty that summer.
A special reciprocal relationship with Penn's Veterinary Hospital and a Malvern veterinary clinic allows the SWRC to transfer seriously sick or injured animals in exchange for cases requiring basic first aid and nursing care. Devoted volunteers put in long hours with their little patients, who sometimes need to be fed every few hours or carefully monitored. Most of the patients ultimately recover and are returned to the wild. A few, like the turkey vulture who'd recently arrived with a missing wing, will never be able to hunt or survive on their own. They become permanent residents and part of the educational volunteer staff who visit schools and community groups to teach the public about the Center's work and the needs of wildlife.
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