Helping wildlife … and veterans
Breanna Frankel knows it takes patience to make friends with a Great Horned Owl. And over time, she developed a rapport with one named Mini — “a good relationship,” Frankel said, “built on food.”
Mini arrived at the Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife (CROW) on Sanibel Island, off the coast of Fort Myers, with a chunk of a wing missing. The injury upset the bird’s natural balance, according to Frankel, CROW’s rehabilitation manager. Now, Mini sometimes leans against Frankel’s neck or chest, seeming to cuddle.
“That’s not love,” Frankel said. “it’s Mini leaning on Breanna to keep her balance.” Frankel is the only one at CROW who can interact with Mini this way, but it took months for Mini to trust her. A hair dryer has now strengthened their relationship. Mini likes to be blown dry after getting wet and learned how to make it happen. Great Horned Owls secrete an oily substance from a gland that waterproofs their feathers. If their feathers were soaked, the owl would be unable to fly. But that doesn’t work on Mini’s amputated wing. It doesn’t get waterproofed. One time when it got wet, Frankel decided to blow-dry it. Mini’s enclosure is partly covered and partly open to the sky. When it rains, Mini may run out in the rain and then come back looking for Frankel to blow-dry her feathers. (Maybe she’s a wise old owl indeed.)
Besides being displayed to educate us, Mini is a valuable resident of CROW because she is an effective “foster mother” to orphaned baby owls. When caring for young ones, she’s so protective that no one can enter her enclosure, not even Frankel.
I learned this and more during Frankel’s 35-minute presentation about owls – the kind of presentation about various animals made most mornings at 11:00 o’clock at CROW.
One of the “take home facts” I’ll remember is about an owl’s ears. Perhaps you think those two things sticking up atop the owl’s head are ears. They are not. They are just tufts of feathers revealing an owl’s emotions. The owl’s ears are actually holes in each side of its head. Unlike ours, they are not symmetrically placed directly across from each other. One is higher than the other. The higher one hears things above the horizon and the lower ear hears sounds closer to the ground.
CROW is a very busy place. Mini was one of 4,760 animals among 160 species treated at CROW last year. Most of them are injured for an unknown reason. Some are hit by cars. Some are birds that fell from a nest. Some are attacked by another animal. At the time of my visit this spring, CROW was treating 215 animals and had treated more than 1900 since the start of the year. At that pace they’ll exceed last year’s numbers.
As a teaching hospital with an on-site dormitory for veterinarians in training, CROW is “dedicated to saving wildlife through state-of-the-art veterinarian care, research, education, and conservation.”
The visitor center gives viewers a peek of that medicine in practice on large screens. The screens show what’s happening live in six areas of the center, including the “in-take” room where injured animals arrive and are examined.
To visit the CROW visitor center on Sanibel, the fee is $12 for adults, less for children. For an additional $13, you can be guided through the grounds to an aviary, a large cage where birds are practicing to fly again, large water tanks with sea turtles, a pelican compound, an area of shallow pools with ladders to encourage mammals to climb, and other animal habitats. You can visit the animal hospital as well.
Among the informative exhibits in the visitor center is a poster with a quote from the well-known anthropologist Dr. Jane Goodall that reflects the purpose of the CROW organization. It reads: “Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, will they be saved.”