Well, Spring is here(in Oregon anyway!)and we are going to start getting phone calls from well meaning people who found an baby_______and want to know how to feed it. Hopefully I can help spread some common sense about this and maybe answer some questions before they need to be asked. If you find a baby anything, the first thing you want to do is LEAVE IT ALONE! Unless you saw the mother killed, or the infant is injured, leave it where it is for at least 24 hours. Almost always it has been left there by the mom and she will come back. If it is a fledging bird on the ground, the parents know it is there, they will feed it. If you are worried about a dog or cat getting it, put it up on something and the parents will know where it is by the calls, and feed it. It will probably hop back down to the ground the first chance it gets, that is the safest place for it. In the meantime, while you are leaving the wild infant alone, go back home, get on the phone to your local Fish & Wildlife, Humane Society, Police Dept. etc and get the number of the Wildlife Clearing House near you. Call them, listen to their advice. They may give you the phone number of the person who specializes in the species you found. They will advise you from there. It is usual for a parent to leave youngin's while going off to forage. If a Wildlife rehabber encounters what they suspect is an orphan they will mark the spot, go back and check on the baby or babies in 24 hours and again in 48 hours. If at that time, the infant(s) are still there then they will take action. One of the things that the average well-meaning rescuer doesn't consider is that there is a danger from some of these species to your own pets or family. Deer are usually infested with ticks and other unpleasant parasites. The parasites carry some pretty awful diseases. Many other species carry plague infested fleas, lice and really scarey parasites in their feces which are dangerous and impossible to kill once the feces has been deposited around your abode. So, if you do find a badly injured wild infant, think about how to quarintine it well away from your family or pets and then call as per the above. Do not let any children oggle it and keep the family pets away. The less the "baby" hears of people life the better Put it somewhere quiet and dark, do not feed or water it. This does more harm than good. Then follow the advice of the rehabber. I know many of you will think, "Gee, I raised a baby watever", it lived without all this fuss and I turned it loose again." Unless you know what you are doing, these home raised critters almost always die. So, hopefully you will do wildlife a favor and just leave the little ones you discover alone. You will be doing them a favor even though you are concerned and want to help. Thanks for lend your ears. LOL LQ

-- Little Quacker (carouselxing@juno.com), February 23, 2002

Answers

We have them in Wyoming too, it's not just in Oregon. I call it the bambi-syndrome. They create problems for the G&F agents. Don't touch the critters, they don't belong to you, they belong to Mother Nature. It's the way of the forest. Leave them alone. Watch but don't touch. Arrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!

-- al (yr2012@hotmail.com), February 23, 2002.

Even though you are correct, and I do agree with you, I'm going to relay a situation that occurred last week. (The quotes are my recollection of an interview). Outside of Dillingham, a village in western Alaska, two snowmobilers last week found two young beavers out on the tundra. Both were about a year old, "about the size of a dark furry football". Both were quite eager to be rescued "The first one crawled right into the plastic sack we had...the second one just sat there." The local Fish&Game now is holding them until spring.

The situation with the beavers is as follows. Oftentimes in the winter the access holes beavers have out of their lodges gets plugged by "overflow" - water flowing over river or lake ice. The beavers inside their lodge can cope with that - they have shelter and their winter food cache stored underwater. But every so often in the iwnter, beavers will emerge from their lodge and go out for a little bit. The two beavers apparently did just that, and they were many miles from the nearest body of water that might possibly have been their home. Their return hole apparently had been plugged.

In the natural order of things, the two would have provided a meal for a wolf, which is also okay, and the Fish&Game officials were bending into pretzels trying to say on the one hand, don't "resuce" young wildlife, and on the other hand, saying that these two beavers absolutely would have died.

"They're just sitting here quietly, eating willows and sleeping". Come spring, the pair will be taken out to some prospective pond, after a nice warm Feb-April.

-- Audie (paxtours@alaska.net), February 23, 2002.