Alpine Wildlife Rehab

10/07/2025

💚💚💚

08/07/2025

Parent your kids.

08/07/2025

Capture Myopathy kills! And it often “appears” the animal is comfortable but it is not

Yes, they’re cute, but don’t do this! Baby animals picked up by people think that they’re about to be eaten. In nature, most baby animals are never, ever picked up at all. When they are, it’s only by their own mothers. Even newborns, who may not be able to see what’s going on around them, can instinctively tell that something is very wrong when they’re picked up, and they instinctively believe that they are about to be predator food.

Stressed baby animals don’t always look stressed. Most will become very still and quiet, paralyzed by fear, and might even be mistaken for being comfortable. But this stress is serious for these delicate little ones. It can compromise their immune systems, impair their growth, or even cause their hearts to fail.

Baby animals are also very susceptible to the nastiness on human hands. We might think our hands are clean, but the germs we carry every day can be deadly for newborn baby animals, whose immune systems are still developing. (You wouldn’t want wild animals getting their germs on YOUR brand-new baby, would you?)

Please have respect for wild animals and give them space to raise their young freely and without fear. If you absolutely must pick up a baby animal (such as to bring it to a rehabilitator) please promptly put it somewhere warm, dark, and quiet and try to handle it as little as possible.

29/06/2025

Never ever feed a baby bird you find. Spread the word, save a life!

Please NEVER syringe-feed a bird

We are seeing an alarming number of birds coming into our care after well-meaning members of the public have syringe-fed them water, and in one tragic case, milk. Sadly, none of these birds survived, despite our best efforts.

Birds have very delicate airways, and syringe-feeding (even just water) can cause them to inhale the liquid, leading to aspiration pneumonia or drowning. This is extremely painful and almost always fatal.

Pictured is the entry to the airway of a jay. The opening to a bird’s airway, known as the glottis, sits at the back of their tongue. Even a tiny drop of water spilling into this passage can be fatal.

Birds do not need to be given water via a syringe - especially not baby birds. They get the fluids they need from proper food, and their hydration should only be managed by trained professionals.

If you find a bird that you think needs help:
* Keep it warm, quiet, and safe
* Do not feed it anything
* Call us immediately

We know you’re trying to help, and we appreciate your kindness, but the best way to help is to leave the feeding and fluids to trained rehabbers. Please share this message to help prevent more unnecessary suffering.

Thank you 💚

29/06/2025

A great article from Save Arlington Wildlife

Ok guys, so you may have seen the Boston Globe article on rats "spreading a deadly disease" that is a big threat to health of humans. Once again, the media tilted toward fearmongering about rats. And of course, other outlets are picking it up.

As someone who has actually read the study in full and interviewed the lead researcher/author of it only a few weeks ago for my book, I am going to clarify a few things.

- Lepto is not new in Boston among rats and has been around for awhile. Its rates might be becoming a bit more prominent with climate change but it's not like some new development that it's here.

- The study primarily found that rats are spreading the disease....among each other. But even with increases in their populations, the proportion of Lept has stayed more or less steady.

- The study found rats usually stick to very small geographic locations within their family groups and rarely stray from it. So the disease strains (in this case Lepto) remains relatively contained.

- The problem is when we disrupt/destabilize those rat populations, they force migrations of rats and they mix with other populations, creating new strains of the disease.

- What are some types of disruptions that cause this? Construction (according to the researcher). But also: aggressive poisoning and culling campaigns destabilize their populations and force migrations.

- That's right, the very things used to try to control rats, can be exacerbating the chances of facilitating disease and making public health threats they posed much worse. (Again the researcher spoke to me at length).

- Just to quickly underscore the last point: one study out of Chicago found rats with anticoagulant rodenticides in their system were more likely to have and transmit Lepto than rats that didn't. Another study from Vancouver found aggressive trapping of rats led to increased rates of Lepto among rats.

- Despite the threat of the headlines, the researcher told me repeatedly that the vast majority of people are at no real risk for contagion. That rats don't pose real threat.

- Let's be clear: the study was only able to find ONE person with Lepto that could be linked to a rat population--but even that case could not definitely be confirmed to be from a rat. That person was unhoused and living in a homeless encampment.

- Since the unhoused are less likely to seek medical care and have the resources to do so, it is possible more people in encampments are affected than we know. But obviously there's not a pandemic of Lepto wiping out encampments or felling people in them.

- To return to what the researcher told me, and what I posted about very recently, the demographic that have more valid risks of contracting rat-related diseases are the homeless and low income people living in substandard housing conditions where rats are entering their homes.

- The researcher was adamant, as am I, that this means we should be doing more to address these social inequities and shore up older infrastructure and crack down on slumlords.

- I would say this also means we should care more about housing the homeless (really housing folks, not just shoving them in sh*tty motels), if we care about the people truly vulnerable to rat-related diseases.

Do we want less rats? Let's remove our bird feeders (esp this time of year), only take trash to outdoor barrels right before pick up and divert your food waste from that trash as much as possible. Remove other attractants.

28/06/2025

So many baby birds die every year from people feeding them incorrectly. NEVER feed a baby bird unless you are trained!

26/06/2025

Important PSA. These devices are breaking limbs of wildlife.

24/06/2025

Important Animal Welfare Notice!

Please be reminded that if you trap, have trapped, or plan to trap- any healthy wildlife, on your property- it is illegal to trap and relocate wildlife in Massachusetts. The animal must be released right where it is trapped.

There are deterrents you can use to try to minimize the presence of wildlife on your property, as trapping a single or two animals, does not resolve the presence of wildlife.

If you have used a private licensed problem wildlife agent for the purpose of an animal eviction, please know that relocating that animal is also unlawful by such agent, and such agent will euthanize the animal, unless they release it where it is.

Not only is that wildlife agent responsible for that animal, if they’ve set the trap, but that wildlife agent should be monitoring the trap (with you) very routinely- especially this time of year, when dehydration may set in quickly, and could lead to the animal’s death.

Leaving an animal inside a trap for more than an hour (at most on a day like today), is extremely and dangerously harmful for that animal.

Stress, from being trapped, can significantly contribute to the acceleration of overheating for an animal.

We do not come onto private properties to remove healthy wildlife from traps that have been set by licensed wildlife agents or homeowners.

We will however, investigate cases where an animal suffers due to being left inside a trap to suffer- whether trapped legally or illegally. This may be considered animal cruelty and we take this very seriously.

MassWildlife officials also find such to be ‘unacceptable and prohibited’. The licensed wildlife agents with whom we often work, parallel this position.

We are not on shift today due to the Juneteenth holiday- but we responded to a call for a healthy raccoon inside a trap. We advised the caller of the above information- and we will certainly be following up to ensure our advisement was followed in a timely manner so to prevent any animal suffering.

Please share this information with anyone you know who may be trying to handle nuisance wildlife on their own.

Again, we are within a stretch of hot weather, that can quickly exacerbate peril for a trapped animal.

Thank you!

[Photo: file photo of raccoon inside a trap].

15/06/2025

This poor boy was found in a huge log fire by Leominster Fire Department. Miraculously sustained no injuries. He is doing well in rehab- being very VERY feisty (which is actually what we want for raccoons- this will keep him safe in the wild) and due to his story and spicy nature, we named him Fuego 🔥

14/06/2025

💚

Please be patient...
All of us rehabbers are struggling fiercely right now. The number of calls we get daily are overwhelming.
📍If we don't return your call it's either you didn't leave your phone number, voicemail was too garbled to understand your number, and sometimes we simply forget because we are doing a million things trying to save the lives we are currently working on.
📍Why didn't we answer the phone to begin with? Probably because we were wrestling with a baby raccoon who knows that we are not their mom, or tube feeding an opossum, or our hands are covered in p**p, blood, maggots or all of the above...
📍We are tired, we are frustrated and the days are not getting better.
EXAMPLE: This week alone I have:
☑️Received an animal dying because someone decided that Google could help them raise the baby squirrel themselves and ended up killing it
☑️Received a call from someone who has kept an animal since April and just now wants to surrender it
☑️Was told someone was bringing an animal over and never showed leaving me wondering about the wellbeing of the animal
☑️Had to euthanize a 5 week old raccoon because someone cut down his nesting tree and paralyzed him due to a broken spine
☑️Spent HOURS triaging and cleaning maggots from an animal only to have to euthanize him the next day
☑️Received some baby opossums that were poisoned because someone treated their lawn with toxins.
☑️Had someone show up without calling to tell me about their daughter had a raccoon for a few days and showed pictures of them hugging, kissing, dog playing with the baby raccoon and then told me that they didn't want it euthanized when everything they did would make it have to be tested for rabies...
And that is just the tip of the iceberg...Since I don't want to write a novel, but the list goes on an on... WE ARE NOT PAID!!! Misfits Rehab is deep enough in debt I have contemplated closing the doors but then another animal call comes in and I can't say no... And I can't refuse taking an animal to the vet just because it's too expensive. And I'm not going to compromise the proper foods just because they are expensive.
I'm trying my best but this is a very frustrating time of year. So please give us patience, give us grace. Call another rehabber if you don't hear back right away. We might have an animal emergency or a family emergency... Life happens. We are trying our best.

07/06/2025

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