Hello and welcome to Wild About Wildlife. In this podcast we explore all the great work being done at Salthaven Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Centre to keep critters where they belong in the wild. I'm Kathy Mueller. I'm a volunteer at Salthaven Wildlife, and your host. In each episode, I sit down with our staff and volunteers, as well as experts in the field of wildlife and environmental conservation. And we'll share tips on what you can do to help keep the wild in wildlife.
In this episode, I chat with Mel Paterack. She's the operations manager here at Salthaven Wildlife. And we'll talk about how climate change is impacting the migration patterns of wildlife we see and the hectic pace of springtime at Salthaven.
We talk about turkey vultures, possums, squirrels, those ever so prolific cottontail rabbits, and how you can help prevent unintentional wildlife abductions. Welcome, Mel. And thanks for joining us today. Anybody who knows anything about wildlife knows that springtime means babies. It's typically a really crazy time of year for Salthaven Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Centre. So give us an idea of what's been happening this spring at Salthaven.
Thanks for having me, Kathy. Yeah, you definitely hit that for sure. Springtime means that we're running off of our feet. The phones are ringing nonstop. The admissions are coming in around the clock, and we are running to get everybody fed. Springtime for us means babies, babies come in. And you know whether they're birds or mammals, or both, they're coming in nonstop. And that means that babies also need to be fed more frequently as well.
Can you give us an idea of like, how many is a lot of babies coming in?
Definitely. So, we probably receive on a busy day, upwards to 100 phone calls. And those can be nestling birds, because that's the season for nestling birds, and it can be baby squirrels, baby opossums, baby cottontails. And we probably could get in anywhere to seven to 10 admissions a day on some busy days. Or even more if it was really busy or even less if it was a slow day, but generally, I'd say probably anywhere in that five to 10 range of admissions, and they can be multiples as well. Because if it was a cottontail nest that was disturbed, that might mean that we're getting in six cottontails.
Right. And I'm just thinking of like human parents and new parents dealing with newborns and feedings in the middle of the night. You alluded to it a little bit about the idea of they need to get fed quite often. So, what does that look like? Are we literally, is our team literally getting up in the middle of the night and feeding these little creatures?
Yeah, well, it depends on the species and it depends on the age, so our most time consuming babies are hatchling birds. Hatchling birds need to be fed every 15 minutes from sunup to sundown. So, the nice thing is that they aren't nocturnal. So, we don't need to get up to feed them. The cottontail kits that come in they're a little bit different because mom usually would come and feed them at dusk and dawn. So, we're feeding them usually first thing when we get in and then last thing before we leave feeding the cottontails.
And same with the opossums, they're nocturnal feeders traditionally. So, we feed them first thing we come in and last when we leave. But if something comes in that is nocturnal or really young, we actually have we've had baby minks in the past and baby weasels, those ones we were feeding around the clock, you know, setting your alarm for every one to three hours, depending on the age and waking up feeding, warming up formula in the middle of the night feeding the weasel. Going back to bed.
Oh my gosh. So, we actually have team members who are on site in that case overnight.
Well, we have a room for interns in the in the house on site. And we also have Brian who's on site as well. So sometimes the burden does fall to him. But sometimes we can have people spend the night and take a little bit of that effort off of him. Because if anybody has had a newborn baby, just it's exactly like that you're completely consumed. Your sleep is completely disrupted. And you know, stubbing your toe warming up formula in the middle of the night. Yeah, it takes a lot out of you after a day or two, you definitely start to feel it. So, we try to shift the burden when we can.
And just for our listeners Mel referenced Brian and that's Brian Salt and he's the founder of Salthaven and he actually lives on site. So, we're talking about springtime at Salthaven and by the calendar spring starts straight towards the end of March, when does spring actually start at Salthaven? Are you seeing animals and come in before that babies come in before that?
Well for us, like you said, yeah, the calendar definitely tells us when spring starts, but the birds and the animals don't go by that they go by the weather. So, this year, we actually saw an early spring and we had patients coming in through April. We get our migratory species coming through. We have babies super early this year. The turkey vultures were back. Usually, the turkey vultures are back in March, they were back in February. So, we definitely had an early spring, we had some loons coming through earlier than we typically would see. Raptors migrating through as well. So even though the calendar didn't turn to spring until March, the birds and the animals felt it much earlier than that.
Right? And is that typical? Or is there a way that you as a team can tap into whatever research to give you an idea that hey, things might start picking up earlier or later this year, depending on what's going on in the environment, the climate?
Definitely so we follow the weather and the trends of the season and we knew it was going to be an early spring because it was quite unsettled, unseasonably warm at that time. Brian Salt our founder is also an expert at you know, watching those weather trends and looking into those, you know, potential early springs. He was saying it since January, we're going to have an early spring and he was not wrong. We definitely got an early spring.
How does that set things up for the rest of the year then? Does it mean things might get quiet earlier, or it's just going to be a really busy year?
It's pretty much just going to be a really busy year, because we still have our year round patients, you know, that we see. And the adult patients, you know, raptors are year round, we get those all the time, we just might see a difference between adults and nestlings or fledglings coming in with the species that are coming through right. Like I said, the migratory species came through a little bit earlier, we might see them leave a little bit earlier in the fall. But typically, we're seeing it almost extend the season, because it's not getting too cool in the fall to trigger that exodus.
In terms of trends, is this year, different from how it's been in previous years. Does it kind of go cyclical? However, this is a big question. I'm not sure if you'll even be able to tackle it, but about climate change and how it's impacting the different species and how that's impacting Salthaven.
Yeah, I didn't know if we wanted to get into that or not. But that's definitely what we're seeing. Climate change is forcing everything to shift. I mean, we're seeing it, like I said, with the babies coming earlier, in the migratory species coming earlier, because it's warm earlier, and it's warm longer.
So, we're seeing that global warming, it's extending the season, because the warm season is starting earlier and staying longer. So, we're definitely seeing an effect with that, we still see our similar trends, you know, like squirrels have two litters a year one at the start of spring and one at the end of summer. So those trends are still here. And the migratory birds still come through just a little bit earlier. So, we're still seeing the basic trends in terms of species, but it's just being extended a little bit longer due to that, you know, warmer summer and earlier spring and later fall.
And then how does that impact Salthaven then, the team at Salthaven in the operations?
Well, the big thing is that the people who kind of run the show at Salthaven are our trainers. And our trainers come to us as university students. So typically, we hire people who are in the field. So, biology, pre vet, vet med and stuff like that. But their school goes til the start of May, right. So, then we have to wait for them to finish their exams at the end of April and then get them here for our season to start at the beginning of May.
So, what we found this year is that we were already up and running in full swing by the time the trainers came here. So, they basically had to hit the ground running. So, we kind of held the fort down until everybody got here.
But we definitely were busier before the season started. So, we called in some of our returning volunteers to start a little bit earlier to help us with the workload. And then we do have our three staff members and Brian. So, myself, Sarah and Erin, plus Brian kind of all running off of her feet. And then when the trainers came in, they just literally had to hit the ground running.
You mentioned a whole whack of patients and the different wildlife that you're seeing or that you were seeing this spring and possums was one of them. I think a lot of people might be surprised that in Ontario we have possums because they're not native to Ontario, right?
No, they're not. So, they're Virginia possums and there are the only marsupial here in Ontario. And the sad part about it is that they're not really equipped for Ontario winters. So, as we mentioned, the summers are quite warm, but the winters are extremely, extremely cold.
So, possums have these great big, huge ears with no fur on them. They have hands with opposable thumbs. On their front and back feet that don't have any fur on them. And they have a tail that looks very akin to a rat tail. So again, with no fur on it, that leaves them vulnerable and susceptible to frostbite. So, if they can't find an appropriate place to shelter during the winter, we tend to see them as patients with some pretty significant frostbite. And oftentimes we see them if they might make it through their first winter, but sometimes it's difficult to make it through two so we typically don't see them reaching much more maturity levels than the first couple years old.
We get most of our opossums in the winter, we get them in as adults, but in the spring we actually do get the babies in. So often possums being nocturnal, and not being the most agile on the ground. They're good climbers, but on the ground, they don't typically move that fast. We typically see that the mom has been struck by a vehicle either severely injured or if not killed, and then the babies come to us out of her pouch so often in a lot of the ways we get them is that somebody's found an adult mom hit on the road and then they've checked their pouch for babies.
So, we do you know if it's safe to stop and you do have some protection that you can peek into mom's pouch we do actually recommend that you check and make sure that there's no babies in her pouch because being marsupials the babies are born quite early, and then they crawl into mom's pouch and they latch on to that. She has 13 nipples so she can have up to 13 babies in that pouch and they latch on and they finish developing and growing in mom's pouch.
What kind of a success rate do you have if those babies end up coming to you and mom is no longer able to support them?
Well, when first of all, they are quite young when they're in mom's pouch. So if they're if they're too young, and they don't have a developed mouth yet, the success rate is quite low because of how we have to feed them. Our success rate with possums used to actually be really poor. We were using syringes with nipples on the end and trying to feed them and all the formula would be dripping out of their mouths. And you know, they weren't getting enough nutrition and our success rate was quite terrible. It wasn't until we got in a mama possum and all of the babies were still latched in her pouch. And we saw that when they're latched on mom, the nipple actually elongates and ankles right down their throat.
So, we realized that we needed to change our methods to more closely match whatever nature was doing. So, we switched from using the nipples in their mouth because they have so many teeth, their mouth is just full of teeth and their mouth goes so far back on their face. And we changed it to tube feeding them where we take a tube and we put it right down into their tummies and we to feed them and our success rate completely changed. It used to be we would lose 90 percent now we successfully rehabilitate and release 90 percent. Oh, I love those success stories. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I learned so much from nature.
Yeah, you mentioned you know why possums are coming in and you earlier talked about rabbit’s nests being disturbed in that. So, this spring, what have you been seeing in terms of why the patients are coming to Salthaven in the first place.
So, cottontails are one of our most abundant patients every year. It's probably our number one patient that we see in and rehabilitate and that's because usually the nests are being disturbed by unintentional pets. A dog maybe might go out and sniff out the bait the babies and disturb the nest or a cat. If you have an outdoor cat, they could go out and also disturb the nest and the one that I you can feel that the donors are really the worst one is if they actually accidentally hit it with a lawn mower. Yeah, because those nests are exactly they're doing what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to blend in, so the bunnies use a little bit of fur, but then they take some dead grass and they put the grass over top and their nest just blends right into the rest of the lawn.
So, are they actually built into the ground down below?
They're kind of at the surface. So, they dig a little bit, make a little indent, and then they fill it in with grass and fur. So, it hides really well.
It's amazing what nature does, right? And like you say you can learn so much from them. And then you talked about squirrels and you're getting lots of squirrels. So, is it the same? Is it generally when you're seeing the babies it's because something has happened to mom?
Often yeah, so I mean in the case of cottontails it's more that something's happened to the nest. So, the dogs, the cat, I mean, you have to be able to let your dog out into your backyard but there are ways to help protect the nest. If you have found a nest that's out there and mom is visiting it. You can put a modified laundry basket over top and have like a door cut into it so that the mom can come in and out, but it protects it from your dogs. And so, in that case, it's not really anything happening to mom it's that the nest was disturbed.
With squirrels you definitely we tend to more often see that mom was maybe hit by a car or even these babies fell out of the nest because squirrels, their nest is up in the top of a tree. So, if one of them is exploring or you know, stumbles out and hits the ground, that's when they often come to us. We also see squirrel kits come in, if they've been starting to explore out of the nest and they come down the tree and, you know, mom's not going up and feeding them as often anymore. So, they see a person walk by, and they think, oh, food, and they might follow a person. And that's when typically, someone might grab them up and say, oh, no, the squirrel is lost. And we see them. So, it's kind of a couple of reasons with the squirrels, they might have fallen out in the nest, or they might have been unintentionally abducted, when they followed somebody home,
That was the term that I was trying to think of, because I've heard of it before the you know, to try and prevent these unintentional abductions, right, there's really nothing wrong with the babies, it's best just to leave them and you know, people's hearts are in the right place.
Exactly. It's always really well intentioned, because you see a baby on the ground, and you think I need to help it and totally understandable, but sometimes we do need to let nature be, you can always call us and we'd be happy to advise on the situation because the best thing for these animals is to actually be with mom and dad so that you know, their parent species can teach them how to you know, a squirrel teaches them how to be a squirrel, a bird teaches them how to be a bird, the squirrels do, we often want to try to re nests the squirrels with mom as well.
So, if you found a squirrel, we want them to be safe. So, we would maybe collect them and put them in a box with and we want them to be warm, because they would typically if they're young enough, they'd still be in the den with or in the nest with mom. So maybe put some warm water in a Ziploc bag or some warm water in a jar, wrap a towel or a t shirt around it and put it in the bag with the baby. And then try to let them vocalize for mom. So, put them safely maybe at the bottom of the tree or something like that, and let them vocalize see, we don't ever want to feed them. Because we want to make sure that what we're feeding them is in fact appropriate for them, which most people don't have at home.
But also, if their bellies are full, they're not going to vocalize. So, when we're first trying to do that reunite, we want the babies to vocalize and call for mom because then she can come down and get the babies and bring them back up to the nest. So that's usually our first line is our first and foremost, let's try to get them back with mom. If that isn't successful, and you know it's getting near dark, we would probably have you call us, and we would advise you from there with the potential of admitting them as a patient. But we always want to make sure first that we're not doing that into unintentional abduction. So, we want to make sure is mom coming can we reunite with mom then doesn't need to come into a rehab centre.
Okay, so many questions are one of them. Obviously, we're wanting people to wear gloves, right when they're handling the animals and all of that. That old adage, oh, I can't touch an animal because then my human scent is on it. And then mom is going to reject the baby. Is there any truth to that? Or does it depend on the species again?
Yeah, not typically. So, I mean, unless you're wearing really heavy perfumes I mentioned they're going to come and protect their babies. The big one, I know that that old tale was that with birds don't touch a baby bird because then mom will smell it and not come and tend to it. Well, birds don't have very large olfactory glands. They're doing research now to see how much they can smell. But typically, birds can't smell and if they can, it's not very, very good, with the exception of the turkey vulture who does have the largest olfactory glands out of all the birds. But so that is just a rumour.
So, if you see a baby bird, and you know where its nest is pick it up and put it back in its nest, with the little asterisk beside that, that there is a time during spring where birds do start to explore out of the nest. And that's called the fledgling stage. So, a lot of the times the calls that we're fielding in the spring are that I have a baby bird on my lawn, and it can't fly, I need to bring it to you. It's always that dire. But birds do that they're called fledglings, they will hop out of the nest, spend some time on the ground. And if you sit and watch from a window inside, often what you'll see is mom or dad coming down and still feeding and tending to that baby. And they are fledging, they're experimenting. They're you know, building up pectoral muscles before they can fully fly. And they're figuring out how to find their own food. But if you watch long enough, typically you'll see mom and dad still there, taking care of them.
And we've been talking a little bit about, you know how busy it's been at Salthaven this spring. We had a couple of years there with COVID of course, the COVID pandemic where things really had to slow down for obvious reasons. And how are things picking up again? Is it kind of back to pre COVID levels of the number of patients that you're seeing?
Yeah so just the same as everybody else. We had to kind of ebb and flow a little bit and adjust to the times as all of the protocol was changing and all the guidelines were changing. We are an essential service. So, we were still open, but we did have to drastically reduce our numbers of volunteers. So, the thing with us that the number of volunteers directly correlates with the number of patients, we can only do the work that we do at the level that we do, because we have a group of dedicated volunteers.
So, when we had to cut down the number of volunteers, that obviously meant we had to cut down the amount of patients we could care for, because we just had limited resources.
What we're seeing now, thankfully, is we are probably back to, if not over pre pandemic volunteer numbers, which means that we are back to and if not over pre pandemic animal admissions, which is great. So, we typically run three shifts a day. And we have usually about four volunteers on each shift. And we are now fully staffed that were able to resume that in the spring. So, three shifts of four volunteers, plus, our team of trainers and staff as well.
Oh, that must feel great to be able to get back to normal operations are absolutely as normal as they can be in a job where it's not nine to five, right?
Exactly. Yeah, I mean, there was things that we did learn over COVID. And we actually improved our policies and procedures with things like sanitation. And you know, you cannot, you can never have enough sanitizing in any sort of hospital setting, whether it's for people or animals. So there are things that we learned through the pandemic. And there's things that we adapted, and it's just nice to be able to be back to full clinic, again, with people everywhere.
And it's not just at the clinic that things are picking up. And you talked about, you know, you have the full complement of volunteers back, we're able now to get back out into the markets that happen over the spring and summer and really showcase what Salthaven is.
Absolutely one of the biggest challenges that we had to adapt to, was our education programs. So, it's this whole other aspect of Salthaven, and it's right there in our name, education and rehabilitation. So, the education program is so important to us. Because when we know better, we can do better. So, the more that we can educate the public on how to coexist with animals, and how to help animals and just the important role that they play in our ecosystem, the better that we are at preserving our biodiversity and just you know, being more conscientious of nature and animals.
So, the education program is a whole aspect of Salthaven that had to pivot during COVID. Usually, we'd go out into schools and community groups and go and do a presentation and bring a wildlife ambassador and educate the public. And we had to completely pivot when COVID hit and we started doing everything online.
It was great people actually still really liked that, because we could actually reach a wider audience than what we can just drive to. So, we were able to expand our audience, and we're able to still perform that education program. But the nicest thing now is that we can offer both. So, because we did have to develop our online programming, we can still offer it so we can still reach that wide community. But we are able to now go back in and be face to face with people, which is really nice, because we can use an ambassador.
So, we have animals that live here full time that are part of the education program that help people learn about the plight of Ontario wildlife and wildlife worldwide. We definitely use those in our online presentations as well. But there's just something to be said about seeing these animals in person. Like not many people have met a falcon in real life.
So, when I get to go and Brian and I get to go to these schools and bring out an ambassador and you just hear the gasp from the crowd, and you know, and you get the engagement, you get people laughing and applauding and being able to just have a conversation, it's, it's really nice to be able to get back to that.
And I can imagine with the kids, I just think of what ideas you might be sparking in them just by introducing them to and allowing them to see up close an animal that they've never seen before and hear the passion in your voice and in Brian's voice and who knows you might be inspiring future vets or wild animal, you know, rehabbers?
Well, absolutely we get we get volunteers currently who heard Brian do a presentation when they were in their public school. And now we get them as you know, university students or adults and that's how they were introduced to the world of wildlife rehab is through a presentation and it's continued it obviously stuck with them because they pursued it enough to come and apply to be a volunteer here.
In terms of the patients that you have seen this spring. Are there any that stand out to you for whatever reason, maybe it's in a just a quirky case that you haven't don't get a lot of or an animal that you don't see a lot of?
The one case that's actually really sticking out of my mind is a garter snake that came in. We've done snakes in the past and we've done different reptiles and amphibians, but we haven't. We're not, we're not snake spurts yet. And this snake that's come in the spring was really a great learning case. She, I don't know the gender I'm going to say she just because that's what I've been referencing, but she came to us after she was hit by a lawnmower in somebody's in somebody's yard.
And I really connected with the caller and this case right from the start, I actually was the one who took the phone call. She got it. She understood the importance of snakes in the ecosystem. And that's what kind of first resonated with me because snakes are a really often misunderstood animal. And, you know, I get it, they don't have legs, they look slimy. They're not slimy, but they're definitely misunderstood. And they play such an important role in the ecosystem. And one of the biggest things is that they're our allies in pest control. So, snakes eat mice and rats. And this caller, she said, you know, I love this snake. She eats all the mice in my backyard. And I was like, yes, you get it.
So, I connected with the case right from the start, and I really wanted to jump on and help her you know, and do whatever I could to help the snake. It she came in with a pretty good gash on her side. She's a full grown garter snake, and actually probably one of the biggest ones that I've seen. And about a third of the way she had a big chunk out of her side. And when I say big, I mean, it was probably like three inches, and the muscle was exposed, you know, we just weren't sure what to do if this wound could be closed because scales heal differently than skin and even suturing in this case would be difficult because the sutures would have to go between the scales. But we just thought, okay, let's see what we can do. Let's try so we brought the snake in.
And we are fortunate to have two vets on staff this year. And one of our vets Dr. Kate Hogan was like, let's try it let's see what we can do. So she came in and did a consult and looked at the at the wound and it turned out that there was enough skin that she thought she could suture it shut so we partnered with her and took the snake off site to her vet clinic which is Forest Veterinary Clinic and we were able to perform surgery, it was a great experience from the start because she had a couple that text jump in and offer to be a part of the surgery, which you know, in a in a clinic that doesn't do well a ton of exotics, Kate's an exotic vet, but she had her techs jump in and be totally willing to do it, we were able to get the Doppler on so we could listen to the heart throughout the surgery.
And Kate was able to successfully close the suture the wound closed and did a great job. It looks really clean. And you know, we kind of just went into it with let's just see, we don't know what the outcome’s going to be. But let's just do our best for this this patient. And the reason why this case is sticking out even more as after the surgery was done. And you know, everything was closed, and the snake was out of anaesthetic. Dr. Hogan just looked at me and was like, this is it. This is why I do what I do. This is why I went to vet school and she just was beaming from ear to ear being able to partner with us and perform that surgery and it was just such a such a great moment.
After surgery when the snake was came out of anaesthetic was still alive. And you know, we're giving it another chance. She's still not out of the woods yet. There's still some healing to happen. We don't know how the suture is going to hold and how if there's any muscle damage that we weren't aware of if there's any infection, so it's still a day by day, garter prognosis, but we're learning we've tubed the snake we got to tube feed the snake and do injections. And, you know, we've really brought we've done a team approach. So, everybody's jumped in on this case, all the trainers, all the staff, all the vets have been involved in this case. And we've all been learning every single day about, you know, the care of these snakes, and I think it's really going to benefit us in the future.
That's a fantastic story to end on. Thank you so much, Mel for joining us today.
Thank you so much for having me Kathy. It was lovely chatting with you.
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