06/12/2024
Good afternoon, friends! If you follow any other wildlife rehabber pages, you'll know just how busy we all are this time of year. I had hoped not to have to make the same post, but here we are.
Most if not all wildlife rehabs are at capacity right now, and yes, sometimes we have to say no to people. Sometimes we cannot even return phone calls quickly because we are so swamped. The phone rings non stop day and night, not just to the facility itself but to us individually on our cell phones. This is especially true of Rabies Vector Species rehabbers. Our training is longer, has more requirements for care and housing, and arguably has more risks...so there are far fewer of us than regular non RVS rehabbers.
We feel for every. single. animal. that we get calls about. Unfortunately, we cannot help them all, as badly as we want to. I would like you to take a moment to understand why that is. First, we have an obligation to not take in more animals than we can care for properly. That includes time, money and space. We are ALL volunteers and many of us have families, jobs or other personal situations that prevent us from doing this full time or at a larger scale. Even if we had all the resources in the world, we have to consider several other things when deciding whether to accept an animal. Disease is a big one; raccoons can carry not only rabies, but canine/feline distemper and parvo, and innumerable other things that can be contagious to humans, pets and other wildlife. If we have a population of healthy babies we may put them all at risk by bringing in a sick animal, even if we take every possible precaution of quarantine and disinfection. An outbreak of those diseases could kill even the healthy babies, most of whom were orphaned and did not receive the full natural immune system from their mother's milk before she was gone.
Please be kind when calling around and please try to understand if you don't get a call or email back from everyone. Our hearts break enough when we have to say no, and it brings me to tears when people leave messages like, "You are failing the animals left and right" which someone did to me today.
If you care as much as we do and want to help us do better, a donation to your favorite rehabber is never out of place. If you want to learn more about volunteering, we can talk to you about that as well. Meanwhile, please try to remember that the animals we do take in are being given a chance they would not have had otherwise. We can't destroy that by taking on more than we can handle.
Love to you all, and here's a cute photo to hopefully cheer up this post!
