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<\/p>\nWords and Photography By Remi Escudie<\/p>\n
In a forest on the edge of Florida, I sit and talk with Teresa Stevenson, director and wildlife rehabilitator for the St. Francis Wildlife Association. As we talk, a large crow lands on the table near my hand, takes my pen and f lies away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s Heihei,\u201d said Stevenson. \u201cHe likes to come around and steal our stuff sometimes.\u201d Heihei is one of the thousands of animals to be rehabilitated by Stevenson and her team at St. Francis Wildlife Association, but he isn\u2019t like the others. Human interactions are strictly kept to feeding and care at St. Francis, but Heihei required special attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we got Heihei as a baby bird, he was very weak and close to death,\u201d said Stevenson. \u201cUsually we put baby animals with their own kind, but we didn\u2019t have any other baby crows.\u201d In order to get Heihei to eat and recover, the rehabilitation staff had to stimulate him in place of other crows. None of the other animals at St. Francis have received this treatment, but for Heihei, it was life and death. Still, he\u2019s not habituated\u2014meaning he doesn\u2019t have trouble relating to other members of his species, and he\u2019s also not imprinted, which means he doesn\u2019t think he\u2019s a person.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just familiar with us,\u201d said Stevenson. \u201cHe spends most of the time with other birds, but every now and then he will come over to play with our stuff.\u201d I looked down at Heihei, who was busy vigorously destroying my notepad. In addition to crows, St. Francis Wildlife Association takes in all kinds of birds, opossums, deer, turtles and a ton of baby squirrels\u2014almost any wild Floridian animal in need of help. Most of the animals that are taken to St. Francis were directly or indirectly affected by human activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe majority of the animals are found by normal people, and many are hit by cars, tangled on fishing line, or attacked by cats and dogs,\u201d said Stevenson. \u201cWhatever the case, we take care of the injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team at St. Francis is trained to treat wounded wildlife, from giving medications and injections to putting on splints. If the animal needs a more intensive medical procedure, like a surgery or an x-ray, they have several veterinarians who help them for free. When the procedure is completed, the St. Francis staff will bring the animal back to the rehabilitation center and nurse it back to health. This process operates year-round, but spring and summer are the busy seasons for St. Francis because babies are being born and getting into trouble.<\/p>\n
“The songbird babies have to be fed every 10 minutes all day long, and the baby mammals are fed every two to four hours through the day and night,\u201d said Stevenson. \u201cThen when you\u2019re done feeding them you have to start all over again. We\u2019re busy around the clock.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the orphaned wildlife tends to cycle with the birth season, rehabilitation tends to be more consistent because animals are getting hurt year-round. These critters come in with an assortment of injuries, most of which are caused by humans.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes the animals we get have accidentally been poisoned by people who put chemicals outside to kill other animals,\u201d said Stevenson. \u201cThey\u2019ll put rat poison outside and any animal will eat it.\u201d According to Stevenson, most of the eagles that go through St. Francis have lead poisoning. This can come from eating prey that has metal in it, like hunted game or fish that have swallowed metal hooks. Domestic cats also have a huge impact on wildlife by killing millions of wild animals every year.<\/p>\n
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\u201cPeople need to do things like keep their cats indoors, dispose of their fishing gear properly, and stop using poisons or pesticides in your yard,\u201d said Stevenson. \u201cPoison kills one thing, and then another animal eats it, and another eats it after that. It never stops killing.\u201d<\/p>\n
By working to heal these wounds, Stevenson and her team\u2019s ultimate goal is to release the injured or orphaned animals back into the wild. About half of the animals make a full recovery and are set free. Orphaned animals can sometimes have a disadvantage if they weren\u2019t raised by their wild parents, but they are not always in a worse place than their wild counterparts.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can look at it from two points of view,\u201d said Stevenson. They weren\u2019t raised by their parents, but many baby animals die in the wild when they\u2019re young.\u201d Babies are extremely vulnerable to predators and the elements, so the survival rate for baby animals is usually very low. At St. Francis they have a better chance of surviving childhood. These animals may not have been raised in the wild, but they leave the rehabilitation center healthy, fed, and ready for the outside world.<\/p>\n
For the other half of the animals\u2014those that don\u2019t recover enough to be survive in the wild\u2014St. Francis works to f ind them homes as education animals. \u201cI recently flew a baby opossum\u2014she was born blind\u2014to an Audubon farm in Massachusetts that\u2019s going to use her for educational programs,\u201d said Stevenson. \u201cWe work to make sure these animals are good candidates for captivity; some of those find a home and will have a long life as wildlife ambassadors.\u201d<\/p>\n
The life of animals after rehabilitation can vary drastically. The wild is filled with dangerous interactions with weather, humans and other animals. Once the rehabilitated animals are released, they are set off to fend for themselves and hopefully to integrate back into their ecological niches. Aside from the animals sent into educational roles, the St. Francis staff rarely knows how their animals fare in the wild. In the eight years Teresa Stevenson has worked for St. Francis Wildlife Association, there has only been one exception.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t see Heihei as often anymore, which is a good thing,\u201d said Stevenson. \u201cEvery now and then he\u2019ll come visit us, but gradually he\u2019s coming less and less because he\u2019s making a home with his own kind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Words and Photography By Remi Escudie In a forest on the edge of Florida, I sit and talk with Teresa Stevenson, director and wildlife rehabilitator for the St. Francis Wildlife Association. As we talk, a large crow lands on the table near my hand, takes my pen and f lies away. \u201cThat\u2019s Heihei,\u201d said Stevenson. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,202],"tags":[104,432,478,433],"class_list":["post-1675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-outdoors","tag-care","tag-conservation","tag-enivromental","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1678,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions\/1678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}