What's in this issue:
- Shower the Springtime Babies with Love
- It's a Squirrel's Life
- Educating the Fans
- Here Comes Peter Cottontail
- A Magnificent Fish Hawk
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SHOWER THE SPRINGTIME
BABIES WITH LOVE
 A baby raccoon peers out from her hammock.
Spring has sprung, and the little orphaned babies are flooding into All Things Wild.
Every time we get a dead mother opossum who has been picked up on the side of the road, she could have as many as 13 live babies in her pouch. To date, ATW has taken in over 200 baby opossums. The little orphaned squirrels started arriving in February. The first squirrel this season, named Evie, was raised and released this week. She will continue her life journey in the wild. Evie is joined by 48 orphaned squirrels so far with more to come. Cottontail rabbits are always plentiful. Last year, All Things Wild helped about 450 orphaned cottontails. To date, we have received over 150 orphaned cottontail rabbits. (Please read an important article about cottontail rabbits below.)
 Baby squirrels snuggle together.
But wait, Baby Season 22 is just beginning. This month we will also take in orphaned baby foxes, raccoons, skunks, and birds (lots of baby birds) to name only a few orphans. The floodgate of wild babies is open!
To celebrate the rebirth, regrowth, and renewal of spring, All Things Wild celebrates by holding a Springtime Baby Shower. Beginning on April 15, we will hold a an online raffle of great prizes and a baby registry at Amazon with shower gifts for the baby animals.
Help us save all these precious tiny babies so they can grow up and return to the wild by buying raffle tickets and checking out the baby registry at Amazon. Thank you!
 Orphaned baby birds gape for food. |
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IT’S A SQUIRREL’S LIFE!
by Laura Hobgood
 Bosque
Sometimes I think of my life as BB (Before Bosque) and WB (With Bosque). You see, I’ve always loved being surrounded by animals, but I couldn’t imagine how much I would fall for squirrels. They have always fascinated me, but I’d never really gotten to know them so well and as members of my household.
For years my fostering energies were focused on dogs (particularly pregnant moms/puppies, orphaned pups, and other special needs canines). But in the fall of 2021 the fates aligned to lure me into fostering orphan squirrels for All Things Wild. Having fostered fragile orphan puppies in the past prepared me a bit, but I wasn’t anticipating how much I would fall in love with these funny little creatures. While there are many long days (and nights) of slowly feeding them, weighing them, and helping them stay clean, safe, and warm, it is worth every minute. At first, they consume much of your time and a good bit of emotional energy. You hope that you are keeping them toasty enough and feeding them the right amount (not too much, not too little). In my first round, I lost a few and realized that happens more frequently with these little wild ones than it does with puppies. My second round in the spring of 2022 was more successful (10 of the 12 baby squirrels survived and are thriving right now – just released in the last two weeks!).
 Here are some of the now-released squirrels Laura has raised this season.
What a joy it is to watch them transform from tiny little 15-20 gram hairless and helpless babies to the wild beings they are destined to become. You hold them and feed them formula, then suddenly they go from having closed eyes and ears, to scampering around, climbing up and down, and lunging from their hammock onto your hands. Then one day you try some little pieces of pecans and witness their little hands learning how to maneuver to eat that staple of their diet. Their tails start to get big and bushy, curling over their back and becoming an important tool.
Unlike puppies who want more and more of your attention as they grow, squirrels want less and less of it. They’re glad when you add corn nibblets, more pecans, berries, spinach, and sunflower seeds to their enclosure, but they stop wanting you to pick them up. Squirrels let you know that it’s time for them to be the wild, free critters they are. It’s time to patiently let them greet the trees, to let them learn how to be crazy mappers of their canopy. With dog fosters you carefully select good homes for them and keep up with them after they’re adopted. But with squirrel fosters you release them to the wild home, tell them to be strong squirrels, and bid them farewell.
So why did this piece start with Bosque? My first foster batch included a precious squirrel who obviously had some special needs. We assume he had a head injury when he fell from the nest causing nervous system damage and maybe breaking his jaw. Bosque would never survive in the wild, he couldn’t climb a tree and could hardly hold a pecan without help. His teeth didn’t align so would always need trimming. So Bosque stays with me as an ambassador squirrel, and he greets the new orphans when they arrive. Bosque stole my heart and has become quite a member of my family.
If you’ve ever thought about fostering some orphans, I encourage you to learn how to foster squirrels. Even if you already loved watching them scamper through the world, you’ll see them in a whole new light once you’ve watched how truly cunning, agile, smart, and funny they can be.
About the Author: Laura Hobgood is on the faculty at Southwestern University. She and her partner Jimmy are avid cyclists and committed dog rescuers. Laura has recently joined the wildlife rehabilitation team at ATW and is loving it! She has lived in Georgetown for 23 years.
To volunteer at All Things Wild, please fill out the application and submit.
To learn more about Eastern Fox Squirrels click HERE.
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Here Comes Peter Cottontail
 Cottontail rabbits in rehabilitation.
To put it mildly, All Things Wild is already flooded with bunnies, and it’s only the middle of April. We have taken in over 150 “orphaned” cottontail rabbits. Many of these bunnies could safely stay in their burrow with their mother and not come into rehabilitation. After all, the mother’s milk and care are better for the babies. Besides, the rabbit mom is able to pass on natural probiotics to make sure that the babies’ digestive systems are healthy. We can’t do that with commercial probiotics as well as the mom.
Cottontail rabbits are born with a benign gut which means they don’t have much in the way of beneficial bacteria and microorganisms to digest hay and grass, their primary diet, and ward off toxins. It’s all complicated, but the adult rabbit produces a digestive product in her cecum, a large part of the digestive system in rabbits, that the mother feeds to the babies in order to introduce beneficial bacteria into their digestive systems. As humans, we have a tiny cecum that we don’t need: it’s called the appendix. However, in rabbits, the cecum is very important, and the digestive by-product from the cecum is call cecotropes, or you could call them natural probiotics. The adult rabbits eat the cecotropes to keep their digestive systems healthy, and the mother rabbit makes her cecotropes available for her babies. We rarely see the cecotropes because the rabbits eat them directly out of their anus.
 Bunny poop on left, cecotropes on right. Not the same. Photo: Google Images
Many of the baby cottontails in captivity have not had a chance to receive cecotropes from the mom. For this reason, they frequently have a problem once they start eating greens and hay. Without the beneficial bacteria in their cecums to digest the plant material, the young rabbits develop diarrhea and almost always die.
Finding a commercial probiotic that works for the little bunnies has been a problem. However, we have received a recommendation to try a probiotic made for horses, who are also hind-gut fermenters like rabbits. A one pound jar costs $104 plus shipping. Let's all keep our fingers crossed that this expensive probiotic will introduce the needed bacteria into the babies' cecums and solve the digestive problem in young rehabilitation rabbits.
The little rabbits are so precious. It just kills us to helplessly watch them die because they can't digest properly.
OK, so back to keeping the baby bunnies with their mom so they can get not only cecotropes but also the mother’s healthy milk. The mother rabbit makes a shallow burrow in the ground which she lines with fur plucked from her chest. She covers the babies in the burrow with dry grass. The mom only comes at night to feed and care for her babies. You will NEVER see her during the day because for her to stay with the babies would attract predators to the nest. If you have a dog who has discovered the burrow, you can cover it during the day and then remove the cover at night when the dog comes inside so the mother rabbit can get to her babies to feed them. Some ideas for covering the burrow during the day are a heavy flower pot, an inverted wheelbarrow, a laundry basket with a rock to hold it down, or a tomato cage.
The babies will be grown and gone in about 2-3 weeks, so it’s not that difficult to keep the nest in your yard. You can do it and be responsible for raising healthy baby bunnies!
For more information on rabbit digestive systems click HERE.
 Cottontail rabbits in their burrow. |
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A MAGNIFICENT FISH HAWK
 Osprey with broken wing in rehabilitation.
Ospreys are fish hawks that are almost as large as bald eagles with their 2-foot long bodies and 6-foot wingspan. They are not very common in Central Texas, so it was quite a surprise when All Things Wild received an osprey with a broken wing found at Russell Park in Georgetown.
The large hawks eat almost 99 percent fish so they live near lakes, rivers, and other water sources. They are excellent fishers and have talons and feet designed to catch and hold onto slippery fish. Ospreys have been known to feed on up to 80 different species of fresh- and saltwater fish. They breed in the northern part of the United States and migrate south for the winter.
 Osprey nest on telephone pole. Photo: Google Images
Ospreys build large stick nests usually on top of telephone poles, duck blinds, and channel markers. People have erected platforms for osprey nests as well. The osprey pair return to the same nest every year, and after adding to their nest over the years, the nest can become quite large. The mother lays one to four eggs and stays on the nest to protect the eggs and offspring while the male brings the fish.
The Cornell School of Ornithology website “All About Birds” describes the osprey male’s mating behavior: “In breeding season, males perform an aerial "sky-dance," sometimes called "fish-flight." With dangling legs, often clasping a fish or nesting material in his talons, the male alternates periods of hovering with slow, shallow swoops as high as 600 feet or more above the nest site. Sustaining this display for 10 minutes or more, he utters repeated screaming calls while gradually descending in an undulating fashion to the nest.”
For more information on ospreys, click HERE.
To watch the male's "sky dance," click HERE.
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