Paws 'N Claws
News from All Things Wild Rehabilitation, Inc.
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What's in this issue:
The Shadow Knows
Here They Come Again!
Center Hours To Shorten
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The Shadow Knows
Shadow chows down on a chicken neck.
Last month, Animal Control responded to a call about a black vulture who was harassing people in a neighborhood. The caller wanted the bird captured and removed, so Animal Control brought the young black vulture to All Things Wild. We kept him in a large outside enclosure for a few days, but with nothing wrong, we let him go. He didn’t leave but hung around running up to staff and volunteers flapping his wings, baby-style, and pecking at shoes. He was obviously imprinted on humans, how, we don’t know. Perhaps he was found as an orphan, raised by someone, then released to fend for himself. Of course, the first thing he did was run up to people looking for food.
We named him Shadow because he was always nearby watching, waiting eagerly for a hand-out. You could be cleaning an outside enclosure, look around, and Shadow would be standing there watching you. We fed him dog food, chicken hearts and necks, and food scraps. When he wanted food, he would sit outside the window over the big sink in the prep area at the center. He was hard to miss, this giant black bird staring at you through the window.
Black vultures have been making their way into North America from South and Central America for several decades and can now be found in the southeast and along the east coast. They are smaller than turkey vultures and, lacking a good sense of smell, have to follow turkey vultures to food sources, primarily carrion. They keep our environment clean. Unlike hawks and owls, vultures lack the ability to grasp and fly off with their prey, so they have to eat wherever a meal is found. That is why you see them on the side of roads eating roadkill because they are incapable of picking it up and flying to a safer place.
Black vultures lack a voice box so communicate with grunts and hisses. They also defecate on their legs as a means of cooling themselves, which gives their legs a chalky grey appearance. This defecating on legs is known as urohidrosis, a neat new word you can drop in conversation sometime! They feed their chicks by regurgitating and can project their acrid, foul-smelling vomit as a means of defending themselves.
In flight, black vultures have long periods of gliding, followed by short periods of flapping their 5-foot wingspan. Flying turkey vultures have white edging along the entire wing; while black vultures have white feathers on the ends of their wings. Black vultures fly higher than turkey vultures, nest on the ground, and roost in family groups. Below is a comparison of a turkey vulture and black vulture in flight.
Turkey Vulture
Black Vulture
Recently, we did not see Shadow for about three days. We hoped he decided to leave with a group of visiting black vultures and wished him a wonderful, wild life. But no, Shadow reappeared, and he was very hungry. After gobbling down about 20 raw chicken hearts, he went into a digestive stupor, which someone called a food coma, for several hours. He hung around the center for the rest of that day and was seen silhouetted against the evening sky perched on top of the ambassador raptor enclosure. From there he few east over the fields as the sun set. One thing is for sure, the Shadow knows that he will return.
Shadow is silhouetted against the evening sky.
About the title, The Shadow Knows: This is a reference to a 1930s radio and comic book superhero detective. The entire quote is, “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit! Crime does not pay...The Shadow knows!" For more information, click HERE.
For more information on black vultures, click HERE.
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Here They Come Again!
We are repeating this article from our August 2020 newsletter because the orphaned baby squirrels are arriving in rehab again! We think they are coming in later this year because of the freeze in February.
The squirrel enclosure at All Things Wild is empty. The last of the juvenile squirrels were released to the wild in June. Rehabilitators and volunteers have turned their attention to other species of orphans, like skunks, opossums, and raccoons, when . . . here they come again!
Eastern fox squirrels in our area have two litters a year of 4-6 babies. The first orphaned babies arrive in rehabilitation as early as February, with the second litter of orphans starting to arrive in late July. They nest in tree cavities or build big leaf nests in the very top of trees as much as 30 feet above the ground. If not blown out during storms, the babies can fall out of the nest while blindly crawling around searching for mom, who may be away foraging for food. Fortunately, their bones are like rubber, and they survive the falls with only nicks and scratches. The lucky ones are found on the ground by a kind person and brought to a wildlife rehabilitator; however, too often the tiny babies are picked up by predators and become meals. Sometimes, if picked up by a dog or cat, the babies are brought to their humans, hopefully still alive and not too injured from being carried in a mouth.
If the nest location is known, the warm baby can be placed in a shoebox on a soft cloth at the base of the tree. The baby squirrel's cry for help is a penetrating squeak that will alert mom that her baby needs to be retrieved. If no humans can be seen, mom squirrel will descend from the nest and carry her baby back by the scruff of the neck. Babies should not be allowed to get cold and never be left outside overnight. If the mother fails to retrieve her baby in about 4 hours, the baby should be taken to a wildlife rehabilitator.
Newborn squirrels, only a few days old.All rodent babies look similar although they can vary in size with squirrels being the largest. Squirrels have black claws, whereas, rat and mice claws are white.
We rely heavily on our trained volunteers to take these babies home because they require warmth and 24-hour care with at least five feedings a day. Baby squirrels are great suckers and can empty a syringe of formula quickly. They also need to be stimulated to urinate which we do with a tissue. In the wild, the mother licks the babies’ to get them to urinate and ingests the urine. To allow them to freely urinate in the nest would make the nest unbelievably stinky and attract predators.
The smaller squirrel is a few days old while the other baby is about 3 weeks.Squirrels are born with both their ears and eyes closed. As they develop, the ears open first at about 2 weeks followed by the eyes at about 4 weeks. By 4 weeks when the eyes are open, the babies begin moving around and eventually become interested in solid food. But that’s a story for another newsletter.
The eyes begin opening at about 4 weeks of age.For more information on fox squirrels, click HERE!
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  Beginning October 1, All Things Wild’s operating hours will shorten for six months to 8 am to 4 pm. We’ve been open for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the past six months, a time we call Baby Season. Since most babies are born in the spring and summer, the period from April through September is our busiest time. However, now that it is fall with winter coming, it’s time to take a deep breath and recuperate from the crazy, nonstop Baby Season (over 2,300 animals taken in).
It’s time for us to reorganize, sort, clean, repair, and restock the rehabilitation center. Some of our plans include adding a quarantine area, re-sealing the concrete floors, and reorganizing the medical area. Of course, there will be animals to care for even in the winter. We receive a lot of injured animals who have been hit by cars. Fall and winter are the time when many animals breed to prepare for births in the spring, and they often don’t pay attention when running out onto the roads. Starting October 1 through March 31, we will be there seven days a week to take in injured, sick, and orphaned animals between 8 am and 4 pm.
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