County Wildlife Center serves Mercer’s other residents.
By: Terri Bookman
Earlier this spring, a lawn-mowing crew uncovered a rabbits’ nest in our backyard. Out the window, I saw a bunny a few feet from the house, eyes open, hopping around the perimeter of an indentation in the ground, lined with fuzz. Several other baby rabbits were near, their newborn eyes still closed.
The lawn guy said he guessed the mother rabbit was around. We piled the bunnies back in the nest, hoping she would return. But by late afternoon, there was no sign of her. My daughter came home from school and we went out to look. One bunny was now splayed over the others in the nest, breathing hard, looking a little desperate.
Worried, I called our veterinarian’s office and was relieved to be referred to the Mercer County Wildlife Center. A phone recording there instructed me not to handle the animals unnecessarily, but to try to keep them safe and warm. It was supposed to get cold that night, down to 40 degrees. What to do? By now it was 7:30 p.m. I left a message, and hoped the mother rabbit would return.
Our backyard bunny encounter piqued my interest in the Mercer County Wildlife Center, which is located on the grounds of the Mercer County Correctional Facility in Hopewell. The center is not open for public tours but some important changes are brewing.
The purpose of the wildlife center, explains Diane Nickerson, director since 1994, is to help injured or abandoned wild animals, often those that have been hurt by contact with humans. "I quit my well-paying marketing job in the late 1980s to do this work," Ms. Nickerson says. She smiles. "Now I enjoy getting up and going to work every day."
She runs a bustling operation. Each year the government-licensed center responds to 10,000 calls and cares for 1,600 animal patients. It is staffed by Ms. Nickerson, two part-time staff members, a cadre of volunteers and four veterinarians, who also volunteer their time.
Begun in the basement of the Mercer County Correctional Facility in 1984, the center moved several years later to its current location on the facility’s grounds. Now, Ms. Nickerson reports, money has been raised to relocate. After county government selects a site, construction can begin. The MCWC will move to a location where the public can visit and view the animals. Ms. Nickerson expects the relocation to move forward this year.
The main building houses a lab where medical procedures are performed. Small animals recuperate in the "mammal room," which on this day houses squirrels, a family of baby rabbits in an incubator, a litter of woodchucks (the mother was trapped by a homeowner and the babies left to fend for themselves), baby raccoons and an opossum.
"Can you bottle-feed the baby woodchucks?" Ms. Nickerson asks a volunteer, explaining that woodchucks push away hard with their feet when feeding, so the bottle needs to be almost forced back into their mouths.
The diets for each animal are complicated mixtures of powdered wildlife baby formula that can be made five or six different ways, suitable to the needs of various animals. Numerous other species-appropriate ingredients are added to each mix. Insect-eating birds? No problem. A specialty company sells bugs as food to the center.
On to the bird room, where volunteers are feeding and cleaning cages. Oops! After we enter, a mourning dove escapes from its cage. "Is there a good or bad way to do it?" a volunteer asks. "One, two, three," responds Ms. Nickerson. Two volunteers chase the fluttering mourning dove, and one successfully grabs it and eases it back into its cage.
The most common injuries to birds brought to the center are cat bites and falls out of nests. Sixty percent of all the animals accepted at the facility are successfully rehabilitated for release. But 80 percent of animals injured by cats do not survive.
We head outdoors to view some animals that are closer to their release dates. A waterfowl enclosure holds a pond for ducklings who are old enough to swim, but not quite old enough for release. Ducks, Ms. Nickerson says, literally have to be thrown back into the river for their release. ("We make them go away. Free food why would you ever go anywhere?" Ms. Nickerson says.) Just beyond, a fawn plays in a small field of tall grass. In a few days, she may choose to join with one of the herds that roam near the center, but for now she hangs close like the ducks, happy to be well fed.
Also along the border of the field are pens housing hawks and owls that are not releasable due to permanent disabilities. Most of these animals are in training to be, or are already, "education animals," for use in some of the 150 presentations a year that Ms. Nickerson makes at local schools and other locations.
One of the most common disabilities for birds is to have been raised as "pets" by humans, depriving them of the ability later in life to survive on their own. Nickerson points out a red-tailed hawk that has been "imprinted." This bird was taken from its nest and raised by a human and now it thinks it is human.
"Everyone thinks that is funny," says Ms. Nickerson. But it is not funny. Not when a human-imprinted red-tailed hawk (with its large beak and talons) tries to protect what it thinks is its territory from humans or when it tries to mate with a human.
Ms. Nickerson also points out the pen of a beautiful great horned owl. She has a permanent injury and is not releasable. "She is the most miserable creature ever created," Ms. Nickerson observes. She does not work well as an education bird, so she is used as a surrogate mother to orphaned great horned owl young. "She teaches (her adoptees) to hate us," says Ms. Nickerson, smiling.
Important as the rehabilitation of animals is, says Ms. Nickerson, "the really important part of our work is education." The human population in central New Jersey is increasing, and one of the reasons people move here (often from more urban areas) is to be closer to greenery and wildlife. But, she explained, there needs to be a greater awareness that "we are part of an ecosystem."
A typical story Ms. Nickerson relates is of a mother who recently called the wildlife center because a family of Mallard ducks was nesting against her basement window. The mother said her young daughter "was afraid the ducks were going to eat her." The girl’s mother wanted the ducks to be cared for at the center.
"I told her no. I told her to go to the library, get a book on ducks and use it as a learning experience," Ms. Nickerson says. Shortly after, the mother called back to say that the ducks were fine, and her daughter was no longer frightened. Everything had worked out.
"The way (the center) can really make a difference is in helping people learn how to coexist peacefully" with wildlife, Ms. Nickerson says. Humans can help by accepting wildlife that they find on their property. This may involve putting a bird back in a nest or leaving an animal alone for a time to live in your yard. "Check trees for nests first if you are cutting branches, keep your cat indoors and slow down" when driving, Nickerson adds.
The morning after I called the MCWC about my backyard rabbits, Ms. Nickerson returned my call. No, don’t move them, she advised, doing so could decrease their chances of survival. If the mother is nearby, she will come back at night. "Criss-cross some yarn across the top of the nest," Nickerson says. If the yarn is undisturbed the next day, then bring the rabbits to the center.
I went to check on them after the phone call. They had already died.
"I’ll tell you something that might make you feel a little better," Ms. Nickerson says when I called back, somewhat anguished, to report the outcome. "Eighty percent of rabbits don’t live to breed. Rabbits are born mostly to be food for other animals. I don’t know how ecologically conscious you are," she says, "but if you want to, you could throw them into the woods. They would make a nice meal for some other animal."