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November 21, 2002 - Operation: Animal rescueThe News- Review •' �N,ovBmber 2062 O,P rat ion, Animal rescue I imes /Review photo by F'aul Stoutenburgn Raccoons have come to us from various places. Some were found in chimneys and others were orphaned because of the death of the mother. If they were real young when we got them we would bot- tle feed them for a while until they were ready to go on their own. F C .wsT WEED: WE STARTED to tell about some of the mals that have shared our home with" us over the irs. We spoke of domestic animals, but they were t all that found a place with us. There was a reject_ squirrel that lived in a tall wire cage with a nice A for him to climb. We tried and tried to get it to but it just couldn't get its act together. We even- tually decided that its mother probably knew best, for this lit. OGU$ tle fella never even learned the N trick of opening a nut. With those odds against it, there way NATURE little chance it would have sur- by Paul vived in the wild. Wildlife .Stoutenburgh seems to have an instinct for knowing this and, as in this case, the mother probably ) uhhed it out of the nest early on rather than contin- te to let it grow knowing it would never make it. Then there was the time we tried to have some ; hipmunks over here on the North Fork years ago. .t seems that the Quogue Wildlife Refuge received nany chipmunks from people who found them a iuisance in their garage or around their place so :hey would take them to the refuge, and they had a surplus of them. I asked Carl Nelms, director at the Lime, if he would bring some over to see if we could get them back on the North Fork. He brought some over in a cage in the back of his truck and every - time he went over a bump in the road the door to the cage must have popped open just enough to let another chipmunk out. By the time he got to our house there was only one left. They had been sprin- kled alone the highway from Quogue to Cutchogue We'd occasionally see the raccoons looking in our window as we watched television. That one chipmunk did stay around for almost six months. It would hide in the garage, which we left open for him, and it competed for hickory nuts with the deer mice. As often is the case, a roving cat probably put an end-to our little chipmunk. We have friends who have a dream cabin in the woods up in the Catskills. Before the cabin was built we used to stay in the farmhouse. One night when we were there they started to build a fire in the fireplace. We were all enjoying each other's company when a flying squirrel came out of the fireplace and ran up the front of it into an old clock on the mantelpiece. This made for easy capturing and my son, the Frank Buck of the time, had to cap ture this little creature. He did and we were able to observe and enjoy him for the day or two while we were still there. The calls about raccoons in chimneys or baby raccoons or- phaned would find us in the busi- ness of raising the young. It was fun to watch them hold the bottles with their little hands while they drank, and later it was a circus to watch them scoop cereal out of a bow. nce w en one of the boys was helping paint the house, his friend the raccoon climbed up the ladder to him and walked through the wet paint. Then it came down and walked across the cement porch where his footprints remain to this day. When the rac- coons grew up we let them go; we would occasion- ally see them evenings, looking in our window as we watched television. The bad part of all this is, if you raise chickens, the raccoons will come back and help themselves. Baby rabbits, often found when someone cut a field of hay or mowed a lawn, would be brought to us to see if we could raise them. They are hard to raise and you need to be extra careful with their diet. Normally the mother leaves t e a ies in a ground nest and covers them over while she is away during the day, so they do stand the chance of hav- ing the nest disturbed, exposing the young. I can remember that in order to be sure that the babies ate enough we had to use a doll's baby bottle when they were real small. Today they have special nurs- ing bottles made just for small animals. Young opossums that had lost their mother — probably in an accident at night while she was out looking for something to eat — were fun to watch a they hung upside -down by their tails. You've proba- bl seen dead opossums by the side of the road in the morning as you head out to school or work, along with rac- coons and other animals of the into the house, particularly the cute little deer mice that we see around in the fall. Many is the time Barbara would call Dr. Sperling to tell him that one of the boys had been bitten by a mouse. Remember that if a mouse is cor- nered it will try to protect itself and bite, but usually when kept in an aquarium they make good pets. One time as a school project one of the boys decided to make a big maze of wood. At that time he had white rats as pets. To make sure the experi- ment was a success, he figured he would not feed th rat until it was time to show his project in class; then he would offer the hungry rat his food at the end of the maze. The rat would work its way through the maze and finally find the food. Well, at that time his younger sister was going to school a half -day and when Barbara took her to school she was to deliver the maze and the hungry rat. Little did Barbara know that while she was anving to sc oo , t e rat was being fed all the food it wanted. When it came time to perform, the contented rat wasn't the least bit interested in the food at the end of the maze. So much for animal- behavior experiments. When I received a call from a lady in Mattituck who said she had a bat on the ground in her drive- way, Barbara and I drove up to see it. There it was with three young attached to it. It was evidently try- ing to fly with them and it was just too much and so they all landed on the ground. We brought them home and put them in a cage and fed the mother raw hamburger, which she enjoyed. So small was she, we used a toothpick and put the hamburger on the end of it to feed her. As we kept her fed, she nursed the three young and we eventually left them to their privacy in our little tool shed in the garden. Then one day they were gone. Out on an old water tower past the gar- den we have two bat houses, but we don't know if they are used or not. We do see bats flying at the edge of our woods summer evenings just at dusk; perhaps some of them have taken up residency in the bat houses. We recently had two calls from people who opened up their beach umbrellas to find bats inside The bats thought they had found a cozy place to hibernate for the winter. In both cases, once the umbrella was opened the bat left to find a more secluded spot. We had another call from a family that had a bat on the ceiling fan in their family room. We collected it and took it outside and let it go. Remember, bats won't attack you. They usually just want to be out there on the wing, collecting their meal. We'll be back next week with tales of more wildlife that has spent time with us.