2021 and hopefully new hope are here! For the first podcast of the new season, here’s New Wild Review, vol 2 ep 1; – in which first we look at post release studies, and the limitations our obligations as caregivers place on invasive practices. Then we turn our attention to protecting wild families by protecting wild mothers – in this case skunks looking for mates and dens during the winter. Hope you find it informative and useful!
Thank you for helping us get through a difficult year!!! DONATE today to help us rescue injured and orphaned wild neighbors.
If you follow wildlife rehabilitation on social media or other locations you might see all kinds of release techniques. From throwing eagles into the air to tipping over a box and dumping its passenger out. At Humboldt Wildlife Care Center, we take a different approach. After selecting a release location as near to the patient’s original rescue location as prudent or possible, we set the transport vessel down, open the lid or door to an unobstructed avenue of escape and step back. At this moment, our patient ceases to be our patient. They are released from care and all the decision-making about their destiny is restored to them and their true autonomy. In other words, they leave the box when they are good and ready.
We waited for six minutes for this young female Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis) to emerge from her carrier and re-enter the dune world a few hundred feet from where she was first found, a few days before trapped in an outbuilding in Fairhaven. Uninjured, we took her back to a nearby location to release her. Six minutes is a long time when you’re stuck in traffic, but it’s nothing when you’re returning a wild neighbor to her home.BAX staff carefully places the carrier down so that our skunk patient can exit with ease once the lid is open.
So we patiently waited for our former patient to emerge, with one check to make sure that she is okay and not tangled in the bedding that’s also in the box. Eventually our young patient steps out of the box of her own free will (she begins to leave the box at 5:48) and then quickly makes her way to cover and then (out of view of the camera) up and over the dune along a trail that the we hadn’t noticed before she used it.
Rescuing wild animals who are injured, orphaned or otherwise caught in one of the myriad traps our human-built world has created, providing appropriate treatment, and releasing those who fully recover back to their wild and free lives is how we spend every single day of the year at HWCC/bax. But not without your support. We are in the middle of crucial fundraiser right now to help recover the costs of our incredibly busy year. We need to raise $10,000 by the end of October, in order to pay our rent and other critical bills! As of the 15th we aren’t even halfway there, which is cuaseing us some concern! Please help if you can! Donate today! Every little bit helps!
That don’t mean she’s the road to town Skunk’s got white stripes That don’t mean she’s the road to town Just trying to find her lover Everybody’s got to run her down
Every year the same thrilling tale that Nature has told since time immemorial ends in tragedy for many female Striped Skunks (Mephitis mephitis). In January here in Humboldt (as late as end of February for less temperate areas) female skunks begin to look for a mate. Their evenings are no longer spent watching over any remaining youngsters from the previous year. No longer content to saunter the night time world looking for food and whatever sparks her curiosity, now she is driven. The force of Spring renewal is powerful thing, sending her across fields and forests and very unfortunately, across roads too.
Three days ago, we admitted our first adult female skunk of 2018, who’d likely been hit by a car. Paralyzed and barely conscious, a quick, humane end was the only appropriate care. We rarely admit a skunk who’s been hit by a car simply because they rarely live through the impact. Instead, each January we see a sudden increase in skunks, dead and left to rot by the sides of our roads, from US 101 to the small two lane black tops that criss-cross the agricultural industry of the bottom lands. Samoa Blvd, from Arcata through Manila and south to North Jetty, on a these mid-winter days might have as many as four skunks freshly killed to be seen on the morning commute.
Accidents happen. Many of us can tell a story of hitting a bird, or a squirrel, or a raccoon without warning, with no chance to avoid the impact. It’s a terrible thing. The finality of it – and in the moment, the realized cost – this Swainson’s Thrush had crossed thousands of miles to be here to raise this year’s young, but no, instead, he’s lodged in the bumper of a car that had been speeding along with coffee creamer and a few other things that had been needed at the store. The casual slaughter of billions of wild animals each year by automobile is just another tragedy woven through the fabric of our daily lives.
In the last 12 months, how many Raccoons between Arcata and Manila, between Ferndale and Fernbridge, between Bayside and Freshwater, between Redding and Sacramento were struck and killed and left to bloat and decay by the side of the road, or worse, lure another animal, a Turkey Vulture perhaps, into the same trap. It’s a measure of how far below our concern these lives are, that we can tolerate their dead bodies lying on the margins of our thoroughfares decomposing where they were killed.
It must be the case that many animals are killed simply because we don’t see them, because we never see them. We don’t include them in our ideas about what might happen. We race through the dark as if the world was closed and nothing is real but the road, our headlights, our thoughts and the dark cavern of the sky. And the Road Runner startled by our engine’s roar dashes from the sage into our trajectory, smashed in the night by the predator who never eats – to be mourned if at all, only in the form of young who may have been orphaned to die, and the great sorrow of the Earth which is too large to hear – the Earth who reels in the blood of her freshest wounds and heals as she can from wounds long inflicted – strip mines, factory trawlers, pesticides sprayed across the plains, rivers choked…
There are so many wounds in the world today. Mudslides have killed at least 18 people in Santa Barbara County. In California alone, people in the last year have suffered one catastrophic calamity after another, in a world where greater disaster seems to always loom on the near horizon. It seems that there is little we can do about these wounds on this scale. But it’s simply not true.
Against these tragedies, we have a remedy. This remedy may not lower the temperature but will make the world where we are more beautiful, more just. Dr. King said that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, and we can do part of that bending right here, right now, in our tangible world and literally where the rubber meets the road. We can slow down and open our eyes. We can anticipate that we are not alone, free to tread where we will, to pay no regard to who is left broken or killed in our wake.We can find the joy in the nocturnal wild and search for their glowing eyes. We can stop teaching our sons violence as a form of play, violence as a right of passage – to respect the other lives, minds, hearts who they encounter. Far too many patients we’ve admitted were witnessed being run down intentionally, almost always a young man at the wheel. We can teach our sons now what it means to value the soul of another.
The world is made in moments and in each moment we can remember our first loyalty – to Earth and the wild. We can learn to undo our overly built confidence in the machinery of our times and re-align with our wild neighbors, our fellow travelers through this life on Earth, or kith, our kin; -our measured distance surmountable in a leap of recognition, not faith. We can give safe passage to this skunk here now, who is crossing the road, so that she might find who she needs, so that the world is refreshed, so that her young come to be.
Nearly three weeks ago we admitted a patient for care, a juvenile, very thin, suffering from parasites, and barely able to stand. At this time of year, struggling young wild mammals are a relatively common patient for us. Youngsters run into trouble, on their own, and once weakened, succumb to all sorts of perils. Internal parasites, dogs and cats are life threatening to a youngster, and if you happen to be one of the most unloved and misunderstood animals who commonly live near the world of industrial civilization, people can be the biggest threat you’ll face – which is why this young Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis) was very lucky that he stumbled into the backyard of someone who took pity on him instead of freaking out.
Freaking out when seeing a skunk is pretty common. Of course, skunks are relatively harmless. While they may suffer from rabies, though it’s not common, their only real threat is their ability to leave a lingering pungent aroma that most of Mother Earth’s children find unpleasant. Consider that the next time you pass the lingering odor of skunk dead on the side of the highway who’s only crime was trying cross the road, and who’s only defense against a thundering automobile was his unique musky spray.
Those who keep chickens, of course, need to provide their animals with a safe enclosure that keeps out all predators, if they wish them to not be eaten. Most wild animals are drawn to human households by food, water or, in the right season, an attractive den site. It is as much our responsibility to keep our wild neighbors safe from conflict with us as it is to keep our livestock, pets and property safe from damage caused by nature that is only doing what needs to be done for survival.
This young skunk needed only anti-parasitical medicine and safe place to eat a natural diet and regain his body mass. After a few days he was stable enough to be housed outdoors. After a few weeks, he was fit and ready to return to his free and wild life. We released him into the same area he was found. As you can see in the following phone pics, he made short work of dashing for cover…
And then he was gone….
Your support makes our work providing care for our wild neighbors who’ve become orphaned or injured due to our built world possible! Without you, neither this skunk, nor the other 15 skunks we’ve treated in 2016, nor the other 900 wild animals, as well as the thousands of wild animals we’ve helped by counseling people in the middle of a conflict with the principles of humane co-existence with the wild animals and Mother Earth, would have gotten the help they needed and deserved. Thank YOU!!!
We are still $5000 dollars away from our critical goal of $7000 raised for the month of September. You can help us reach it by donating today!
BAX staff carefully places the carrier down so that our skunk patient can exit with ease once the lid is open.
And then he was gone….
