Wildlife Center of Texas comes to the rescue after the deluge
On an easy day, the Wildlife Center of Texas isn’t having an easy day. So last week, after the flooding in Houston, the steady stream of injured and abandoned wild animals in need of help turned into its own kind of flood.
Last Tuesday, the Houston center took in 87 animals.
“They were coming in cold, wet and dehydrated, with all types of stormrelated issues,” says coordinator Debbie Mitchell.
Baby rabbits washed out of burrows, little opossums floating on debris, baby songbirds whose nests were blown out of trees, turtles flooded out of ditches — all 200 or so of them landed on the Wildlife Center’s doorstep last week. Or, more precisely, were brought to the Katy Road center by kindly humans.
The good news is the worst part is over for these creatures. While they’re waiting to get strong enough to be released into the wild, all the cooing and cheeping and squawking attests to their returning health.
Some of the smaller birds are now snuggling in nests crocheted from yarn. But the most impressive makeshift structure at the center is the possum condo: two
long wall-like rows of cat carriers stacked at least three high, each one holding a pink-nosed baby opossum.
Mitchell is a big opossum advocate, sticking up for the perpetual underdog.
“No one understands,” she says. “They can’t look past the tail.”
The long, naked prehensile tail is not the marsupial’s best feature. But Mitchell says the opossum is a great animal to have around, since it doesn’t bother humans and eats all sorts of nasty critters, such as venomous snakes. Their enemies are predators, cars and people.
Some 75 of the opossum babies are cleared to be released as soon as waters recede and suitable habitats are found. Sharon Schmalz, the center’s director, says they should be sprung this week.
“I’ll feel better when there are more going out than coming in,” she says.
But for pure comedy — and now that they’re safe, it’s OK to think they’re funny — almost nothing beats a baby owl. Two solemn great horned owl babies (favorite food: skunk) about the size of American Girl dolls occupy a big cage. A quartet of bobbing, weaving, blinking baby screech owls, whose home tree was knocked over, look as if they should have wind-up keys. A barred owl with eyes like black marbles stares right back at any human that catches its eye.
It’s helpful to remember that not every aspect of wild animal care is cute and fuzzy. Affixed to the owl cage is a dietary note that reads: “3 rat pups, cut up.”
Because they need to learn to fly and hunt, the owls’ rehabilitation will be measured in months.
But all day, seven days a week, volunteers clean the cages and crates and feed every animal. The opossum babies eat moistened cat food with eggs. “It’s a challenge each day — are we going to win?” Mitchell says. “Somehow we always make it.”
She has advice for people who find a young or injured animal. Put it in a box with soft rags, but don’t feed or give water to the animal. Just bring it to the wildlife center as soon as possible during business hours.
Mitchell also recommends that baby birds be placed in a basket or bucket with drainage holes and hoisted back into a tree. If the parents come back, all is well. Contrary to myth, birds have terrible senses of smell and won’t know if a person has handled the babies.
But if you find a baby raccoon or fawn, she says, call the center immediately.
A baby mockingbird, an imperious little martinet, stomps around his little heated container at the center, enormous yellow mouth wide open.
“They talk all the time,” Mitchell says.
Schmalz praises the Houstonians who took time from their own flood troubles to bring in the animals.
“Even in the middle of a disaster,” Schmalz says, “they’re saying, ‘I can’t do anything about my house right now, but I can help this little life.’ ”