LONDON — Wait ! Stop the car. Look at that !
Hopping around over there by that little pile of trash. By golly, that’s a great horned owl and it’s got a broken wing. It’s a magnificent creature with quarter-size yellow eyes and deep onyx pupils. Somebody’s got to help the poor thing. If you get that old beach towel out of the trunk, you can wrap the bird up gently and take it home for some yummy biscuits and gravy.
Biscuits and gravy ? I wonder whether owls prefer roux or au jus ?
Animal rehab 101: Don’t feed people chow to wild things. And if you really want to help that injured animal, contact a trained, licensed wildlife rehabilitator. Pronto.
That’s the message of Lynne Slater of London, executive director of HAWK, which stands for Helping Arkansas Wild Kritters.
Slater, 40, has had a love for wildlife rehabilitation since she was 10 and growing up in Virginia. She and husband Blake, a nuclear plant operator, moved to Arkansas in 1998 from Wisconsin where Slater had been co-founder of another rehabilitation outfit.
It didn’t take Slater long to find others in the Russellville area who shared her rehab interests.
In 2001, Slater teamed with Dardanelle veterinarian Dr. John Davis and Arkansas Tech University associate professor Chris Kellner to incorporate the HAWK Center.
Kellner is a federally licensed bird bander and a renaissance man in the ornithology field. He has an impressive string of degrees, capped by a doctorate in zoology.
An expert, a vet and a passionate rehabilitator: add about a half dozen volunteers and you have the HAWK Center.
The HAWK Center, an all-volunteer, nonprofit outfit, has lofty goals: To treat, rehabilitate, and release sick, injured and orphaned birds of prey and mammals. To educate ourselves and the scientific community through research and observation in all aspects of animal conservation, medicine, rehabilitation and biology. To educate the public about the relation of wildlife to their respective ecosystems, to humans and ultimately to the rapidly changing global ecosystem. To ultimately develop a full-service medical and educational rehabilitation facility in the Arkansas River valley. It would be run entirely by professionally trained volunteers from the community, including Davis.
That last goal is an ambitious one and, barring the generous largess of a wildlife-loving benefactor with deep pockets, a bit down the road.
Currently, the “center” of the HAWK Center is a virtual one — within the folders, Web logs, Web sites and links of Slater’s much-used laptop. It’s also in her cell phone address book and 24-hour pager — all part of HAWK’s extensive networking effort among the state’s scattered rehabilitators. How many licensed rehabilitators are out there in the Natural State ? “I would say under 50,” Slater guessed. “There’s a list of federally and state-permitted rehabbers on the [Arkansas ] Game and Fish Web site. But I would say the large majority of those don't do any substantial numbers.” HAWK, on the other hand, does rack up the rehab numbers. Lots of them. Slater noted the HAWK Center took in about 300 critters of all types last year, “but Lynn Sciumbato up in northwest Arkansas has the largest intake.” Contacted at her Morning Star Wildlife Rehab Center in Gravette, Sciumbato confirmed the load. “This last year I did over 600 animals,” she said. “A large portion of those are baby mammals and birds in the spring and summer. During the fall and winter it’s mostly birds of prey. I have a volunteer who raises many of the baby bunnies and another volunteer who takes many of the baby squirrels.” PASS THE GRAVY Six hundred is a lot of sick, injured or orphaned animals, but not one of them was nursed back to health on gravy. Teaching the public about wildlife rehabilitation is paramount for Slater and gravy is a good example why.
“I’ve had people bringing me birds that are on their death beds,” Slater said. “And they say, ‘Well, I fed him biscuits and gravy.’ People have fed them oatmeal and scrambled eggs. You name it, they’ve tried it, even hot dogs. It’s just not right, but they don’t keep freezers full of rats.” Slater, on the other hand, does have a freezer full of rats. Bags and bags of white lab rats — research animals that have completed their service to science and stand ready to thaw out and further the cause of wildlife rehabilitation.
The departed rodents are donated by a facility in Northwest Arkansas. That’s a tremendous help for an outfit such as HAWK that depends on donations to keep going.
Education ? Slater estimates that HAWK members spoke to several thousand people in groups young and old last year. Many of the audience questions reinforce the continuing need to educate the public. “One of my funniest questions,” she recalls, “is they ask if an amputated wing will grow back. No. It’s not a salamander. It won’t grow back. “ A lot of people also ask me what the most interesting animal is that we’ve gotten. To me, every animal is a unique case. Some are certainly prettier than others. Others are amazing because of their temperament or rarity, like the saw-whet owl that we have.” CONTINUING EDUCATION The little saw-whet is one of three rehabilitated, but unreleaseable owls that Slater keeps in an enclosure beside her home on East Point Mountain overlooking London. It, along with a barred owl and a great horned owl, serve as educational animals for her talks. Viewed from her deck, the heavily wooded backyard plunges to the Sulphur Creek valley 250 feet below. There are additional critter rehab cages down among the trees. But tucked away in the garage, away from house noises, three precocious cats and two boisterous dogs, is a large kennel carrier with another great horned owl. The bird’s right foot was severely injured in a live bait snare and Slater has been working to save it. If an owl loses its halux, or thumb toe, it can’t kill prey and can’t be returned to the wild. The prognosis for this fellow wasn’t good, but Slater needed to drive the owl down the mountain for one final examination by Davis.
Davis Veterinary Clinic on Arkansas 27 South in Dardanelle is a bright and cheery place with the usual assortment of cats and dogs, but Davis also has other creatures at the office and at his home.
“I’ve got five medical birds that I’m working on right now,” Davis said. “We’ve got a great horned that had a fractured wing. I’ve got a pin in it now and we’ll let it go for another week or so, then pull the pin out.” Davis fetched the owl and with Slater carefully clasping the talons, he spread the owl’s wing for a check.
“This one is a very good candidate for release,” Davis said. “After the pin is removed, the bird will then be placed in a [large ] pen. Soon as we’re confident it’s able to fly well enough, we’ll make sure the bird can kill on its own, then we’ll return it to where it was found.” That’s good news, but there would be a downside for the owl. “Right now we’re in the midst of mating season for great horned owls,” Davis said. “This bird won’t participate this season. Yeah, there are no babies out of this one this year.” WIN SOME, LOSE MORE This bird is fairly young and would recover and be a success story. Not so for the great horned owl with the injured foot. Davis ’ examination revealed that despite Slater’s extensive efforts, the owl would lose the foot. That meant it had to be put down. About 60 percent of the animals that HAWK takes in don’t make it back to the wild.
The euthanasia is unfortunate, but doesn’t discourage Slater because, “considering that 100 would be dead, the 40 we’re able to put back get a second chance.” Still, it’s never easy for a rehabilitator to lose an animal.
“If [putting an animal down ] becomes an easy decision, or easy to handle, it’s time to get out of the field,” Slater said. “You can’t make a good decision, if you get too jaded.” Animal rehabilitation becomes a passion for those involved. It takes long, hard hours to qualify for the required federal and state permits. The work can also be frustrating and far from glamorous.
“The turnover on rehabbers is extremely high,” Slater said. “The attrition rate is phenomenal. The majority of rehabilitators quit doing it within three or four years.
“ And volunteering isn’t all warm, fuzzy either. It might be transporting an animal or cleaning cages — and we’re all expert pooper-scoopers. It’s not all about handling animals, because we want to handle them as little as possible.” There’s also that 24-hour pager. Slater’s often goes off at 2 a. m., but she doesn’t mind. It means an animal needs help and that’s what she and HAWK are there for.
For the safety of the animal and the human, Slater would much rather the public call a licensed rehabilitator than try to handle an injured animal themselves.
Remember that hypothetical busted-wing owl above ? True, the bird may not be able to fly, but it still has razor-sharp talons that can grip at 1, 000 pounds per square inch. Its beak is designed to rend flesh from bone.
You don’t want to be messing with that.
Finally, why are so many birds of prey hit by cars ? You’d think that since they can fly, it wouldn’t happen that often.
Slater explains that many raptors are “perch-and-pounce” birds. They’ll patiently sit in a tree and watch the trash piles by the road. The trash draws tasty little critters. The birds then swoop down and pounce on lunch.
However, when they’re “in the zone,” the hawks and owls are oblivious to oncoming cars.
So, the next time you come across an injured animal, leave that old beach towel in the trunk and get hold of a wildlife rehabilitator. They’ll tell you exactly what to do.
And it won’t involve gravy.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
