Giving creatures some comfort

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This article was published 24/09/2016 (3547 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Keira Friesen was only trying to protect her strawberry patch from birds and squirrels — she didn’t want to put the life of a chipmunk at risk.

But that’s what happened earlier this summer when Friesen used netting to cover the patch, and a chipmunk became ensnared in it. 

“I had no idea it would do this to a chipmunk,” she said.

“I put on gloves and started cutting it out, but then it ran off with a chunk of it under its head and arms.”

When Friesen recently saw the chipmunk eating at her bird feeder, with netting still on it.

That’s when she called the Prairie Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. Its volunteers gave her advice, and a short time later arrived to rescue the chipmunk.

The centre, founded in 2008, treats injured and orphaned animals with the goal of successfully releasing them back into the wild.

Lisa Tretiak, a founding member of the centre and its president, said it’s a not-for-profit charity run by 50 to 70 volunteers. It operates on donations from the public and doesn’t receive government funding.

“Our organization is very grassroots,” Tretiak said. “We started it with very little money.”

The only paid staff member is a part-time education co-ordinator because the organization didn’t want to rely exclusively on volunteers if schools or other groups were booking times to have them speak.

During a recent visit to the centre’s home base — just outside Winnipeg in a location it doesn’t want advertised because volunteers don’t want to be inundated by people bringing animals to them at unscheduled times or to put the animals there put at risk — there were a couple of dozen birds and furry animals under care.

“This is a low period for us,” Tretiak joked.

“We’ll have 175 animals in May. We had 230 cases in 2008, and last year, 2015, we had more than 1,243 cases. This year, we’ve already surpassed 1,280 cases.

“Every year we go up by about 30 per cent. People know where to take the animals, and we have convenient dropoff locations.”

The Pembina Veterinary Hospital, at 400 Pembina Hwy., accepts injured animals for the centre 24 hours a day, and Wild Birds Unlimited, at 11 Reenders Dr., takes them during business hours.

The centre’s current, temporary home features a couple of school buses repurposed into animal hospitals, while cages are scattered around that have been modified from car ports, trampoline enclosures and former swingsets. Some cages are outdated ones donated by the Assiniboine Zoo.

First, Tretiak showed five baby bunnies from a nest found in a backyard. 

“They are 10 days old, and their eyes probably opened yesterday or the day before,” she said of the animals, which were about the size of full-grown mice.

“Part of our mandate is trying to educate the public. With these rabbits, we want them to call us first. Someone didn’t need to rescue them, but someone saw them in their backyard and dropped them off.”

Rabbits only feed their babies twice a day, Tretiak said.

“The mother spends very little time around, so people assume without mom they have been orphaned, but it is how rabbits are raised,” she said. “We’ll have these ones for about two weeks, and then they’ll be released.”

Tretiak said releasing the wildlife back into the wild is what the centre does.

“We don’t make them into pets,” she said. “Our goal is to get them back into the wild. We want to be hands off as much as we can so they can stay independent.”

Nearby is a cage with three baby grey squirrels, the oldest about 12 weeks and the other two around 10 weeks. They came from different areas of Winnipeg.

“We probably get about 100 squirrels a year,” Tretiak said while feeding each with a special formula through a syringe.

A white mink was roaming around a cage by itself. Tretiak said it was turned in by a group of students in the Interlake.

“There are mink farms up there, so this one got away from one. It wasn’t wild,” she said. “She will go for permanent display in a facility in Ontario. If she hadn’t got away, she definitely would be a coat or mittens by now.”

Another animal destined for the same facility in Ontario is a fully grown great horned owl. Perched on a branch in a large enclosure, it was rescued two weeks ago.

While the owl is adult-sized, it’s only as mature as a baby.

“She screams a baby call. We can tell someone must have raised it, so it’s used to people. But now she will be sent to a facility in Ontario for permanent display because she doesn’t know how to hunt and, because she’s so used to people, she thinks people will always bring it food,” Tretiak said. “That makes her unpredictable and dangerous.”

The centre is also caring for a Peregrine falcon, which volunteers suspect was clipped by a vehicle or hit a hydro line. It will be released today at the organization’s annual fundraising walk at St. Vital Park.

Others animals at the centre include three red-tailed hawks and a few pigeons. Tretiak said the organization released a coyote last week, and she expects to have a painted turtle — with a cracked shell suffered when a vehicle struck it — until next spring.

The organization has made do for more than a decade at a site volunteers describe as temporary, but has plans to begin fundraising for a move to a permanent site. The site being considered would cost approximately $600,000. That’s lot of money for an organization that has an annual budget of about $50,000.

“We are looking for a farm, so we can take the existing buildings and have a hospital building and other ones,” Tretiak said.

“We would rather have more indoors than outdoors like we have now. That’s our dream.”

If people can’t donate money, Tretiak said the centre can always use donations of frozen berries and fish, bird seed, peanut butter, garbage bags, laundry soap, artificial plants and heating pads with no automatic shutoffs.

Some might question why the centre bothers rescuing squirrels and rabbits — which seem to be in great abundance in the city and province.

“The thing is we, as humans, caused the problem. We are fixing the damage caused by humans. We have all these luxuries, but unfortunately wildlife become the victims of our luxuries,” Tretiak said.

“Some people call and they say they don’t want any animals in their yards, but where do you expect them to live when you moved into their backyard? We hope what little we do is making a difference.”

Tretiak said she’s pleased the centre could help Friesen with her chipmunk dilemma.

Friesen said she’s glad the organization exists.

“I had never even heard of them until now. They were great,” Friesen said.

“They put the trap into a garbage can, and while one held the chipmunk, the other clipped the netting off before they let it go free.

“I was glad not to be a chipmunk murderer.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca