mdhugo.com – Living life in Bellevegas!

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for animals. A few weeks back I decided I needed to volunteer somewhere to relieve some stress from work and the rest of life. I was looking through the volunteer ads in Craigslist and came across an ad for a wild animal rehab center looking for assistance with their upcoming baby season. The timing couldn’t have been better. I filled out the application on a Friday and was called on Saturday by the volunteer coordinator. We talked for about 20 minutes about what to expect, why I wanted to do it, and what my experience with animals was. I was asked if I could start last Thursday (February 11th). My shift would be from 7 to 11pm.

When Thursday came around I was a little nervous. I am not the most outgoing person in the world and doing things like this on my own aren’t something I am usually comfortable with. I decided to get over it and go help some animals. When I arrived I was greeted by two very friendly, helpful volunteers. They gave us (two other new volunteers) a quick tour of the building which was a retrofitted Sonic, pretty cool. The animal load is pretty light at the moment, a few racoons, some beavers, some squirrels, and a super friendly opossum.

I was very impressed with the organization of the clinic. Every animal has strict diet that gets them all of the nutrients they need as well as keeping close to with what the will eat when they are released back to the wild. It really made everything less overwhelming.

We started off by cleaning several squirrel cages and feeding them their dinner. The clinic has two shifts per pay so the animals had eaten in the morning. After taking care of the squirrels we moved on to the raccoons. They are really cool animals. The ones at the clinic are late babies from last year so they stayed at the clinic over the winter. Some of them like to stick their hands out of the fence and let you shake it. Very cool. The beaver cages didn’t need much cleaning so their food was just replenished. We moved on to the indoor animals including my favorite, an opossum. It is such a sweet and cool animal.

I am really looking forward to my time helping out at the clinic. Great bunch of people who care deeply about the animals and getting them back into the wild.

The URL for the clinic is: http://www.wild-life-rehab.com

I will ask if I can get some pictures next time.

Stay well.