Luann Lasusa, right, a Willowbrook Wildlife Center volunteer, mixes a special formula for raccoons while staff members prepare lunch for animals temporarily living under close supervision. -- Volunteer Rose Prince places stray raccoons into animal holders before cleaning out a temporary living area that houses six stray rodents at the Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn. -- A stray fox is weighed after being assessed by the staff veterinarian at the Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn. The fox, found injured on the side of a Naperville road, was placed in intensive care. -- Preschool students look on as a Willowbrook Wildlife animal keeper feeds a baby raccoon. -- Michele Rosado, a volunteer assistant at the Willowbrook Wildlife Center, rushes an injured duck to the intensive care unit.
For the giant snapping turtle, the laws of nature don't change just because the whims of man built a busy road between where she is and where she needs to go.Each spring, the snapping turtle needs to leave the small creek where she lives in a DuPage County forest preserve and get to a nearby riverbank where nature dictates she will lay her eggs.
Based on her size, she has been working well within nature's system for quite a few years.
But the odds were not in her favor this egg-laying season.
With single-minded purpose, the snapping turtle began to make her way to her egg-laying grounds.
But in a collision between nature's will and man's, the snapping turtle was run over by a car or a truck too busy to notice the small drama of life crossing the road.
Dazed, hurt and bleeding, the snapping turtle sat in the middle of the road until someone was alert enough -- and brave enough -- to stop to help.
A snapping turtle is not exactly the kind of animal one takes home to nurse back to health.
Grumpy during the best of times, this snapping turtle was hurt and angry.
Her head repeatedly telescoped out of her shell with alarming speed as she snapped her powerful beak at anything that moved.
Snapping turtles don't let go when they bite; this one was big enough to cause serious damage if she made contact.
But fortunately for the turtle, the person who found her knew exactly where she needed to go.
It wasn't very long between the time the snapping turtle was so rudely introduced to the damage man can cause and the time she was delivered to the very place where man could provide assistance.
The Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn is the only rehabilitation center for wildlife in DuPage County.
Operated by the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County, Willowbrook handles more than 4,000 animals a year.
Dealing only with native wildlife from DuPage County, Willowbrook is a haven for critters caught in the intersection of nature and man.
As people have extended their living spaces by building more roads, houses and shopping centers, the squeeze has been put on the local wildlife.
It isn't always easy, and sometimes not much of a priority, for people to learn how to live with the wildlife that still insists on acting as if the back yard or the highway or even the pond on the golf course is still home.
'This time of year is especially busy because there are so many baby animals out there now,' said Katie Brown, Willowbrook's wildlife veterinarian.
'It's warming up and everybody is outside, people and animals.
There is a lot more interaction between people and wildlife this time of year.'
Sometimes the interaction is benign: homeowners who feed the squirrels or, thinking the baby raccoons have been abandoned, decide to raise them by hand.
Sometimes, the encounters are a little less friendly: the Canada goose who ate something that appears to be killing him, birds who fly into windows, opossums hit by cars.
And often, an encounter is the last thing an angry homeowner wants to deal with.
Willowbrook Center gets plenty of calls from people who want to know how to get rid of the raccoons that prowl their yards, the opossum stuck in the window well or the skunk nesting under the porch.
'You can certainly understand their frustration,' said Willowbrook supervisor Marcy Rogge.
'You pay a lot of money for your beautiful house out in the woods and some critter makes a nuisance for you that sometimes is destroying your property.
'On the other hand, the animals don't know that your house isn't theirs.
From their point of view, it's part of nature and the wild for them.
That's why so much of what we try to do is to educate the public about wildlife and what they can do to minimize our impact on them and vice versa.'
AN EARLY START Beginning very early in the morning, the bell rings all day long at Willowbrook's back door, each chime signaling yet another human-critter crisis.
The trick for the Willowbrook staff is to minimize contact with the animals as much as possible, while at the same time trying to provide assistance.
A far more difficult trick is to try to convince the public that sometimes the best thing to be done for an animal is to let the laws of nature take effect.
'One of the most common things we see is when people think a mom has abandoned her babies or when a baby bird has fallen out of its nest,' Rogge said.
'They bring the bird in and say `It can't fly.' Well no, it can't. That's how baby birds learn: They try to fly out of the nest and they fall.
In that case, the best thing a person can do is just to pick the baby bird up and put it back in the nest.
'Everybody always thinks that birds will reject the baby because they'll smell a human on him.
But birds don't smell.
If I can get just one person to put the bird back instead of trying to `save' it, we're getting the message across.'
And most of the time, Rogge points out, baby animals aren't abandoned at all.
A parent might have been scared off or may be foraging for food.
Three years ago, Willowbrook started a program with nesting boxes.
When people bring in abandoned babies, the Willowbrook staff gives them a wooden nesting box with instructions to take the box and the babies back to the exact spot where they were found.
Usually, within 48 hours the parent returns and reclaims the babies.
If that doesn't happen, according to the Willowbrook staff, then it is generally safe to assume the parent is gone for good.
'What's hard, though, is convincing people that it's OK to let nature run its course,' Rogge said.
'Maybe a predator will get the babies or maybe they'll die after being left alone.
That's OK. That's what is supposed to happen.
Sometimes that's a very difficult thing for people to accept.'
Already on a recent morning, the center has taken in a baby grackle, two baby rabbits, a raccoon, two Canada geese and six ducklings.
They've been quickly evaluated by an intake person and then looked at by Brown, who makes the determination on whether an animal can be helped and whether the center can accept it.
For example, Willowbrook is prohibited from accepting skunks or bats because of the high chance of rabies.
Non-native birds and unprotected species such as starlings are not accepted.
The center is also beginning to restrict the number of raccoons and mallards it accepts simply because there are so many of them.
Those animals that can't be helped are either returned to the wild by the people who brought it in or taken in a back room to be euthanized.
That will eventually be the fate of a small crow that appears to be physically deformed and is unable to walk or fly.
It may also be the fate of a flock of baby mallards that someone hatched in their home a day or so ago.
'Birds are different.
They imprint in the first 48 hours,' Brown said.
'If they imprint with humans, that's what they think they are.
They will never be able to last in the wild.
But they will never be tame enough to be pets.
The best thing we can do is to put them to sleep.'
A chime at the back door brings Brown out to examine a tiny baby opossum.
Someone found it abandoned in their yard.
According to Brown, it's a common occurrence with opossums, which travel on the mother's back.
Sometimes one falls off, and sometimes one is rejected because of injury or defect that humans can't detect.
This tiny animal has an eye infection that may or may not be serious.
Brown cleans the eye and feeds the baby.
She puts it in a warming bin to wait a day or so and see how it fares.
And though the snapping turtle is very, very angry, she makes Brown very happy.
Turtles are her favorite animal and one she doesn't see very often.
With the help of an assistant, she lifts the enormous turtle onto the examination table, keeping a plastic tub over its head.
Gently, Brown cleans the crack across the turtle's shell.
It's surprising to see the wound oozing blood.
But Brown doesn't believe the injury extends into the turtle's tissue.
There may be further internal damage, but Brown will have to wait and see.
After manipulating the edges of the shell back together, she will eventually mend the crack with a fiberglass patch.
She expects the turtle will stay at the center for a week or so before being returned to the wild, hopefully near the spot where she was found.
PERMANENT RESIDENCE Though not quite a zoo and yet more than a forest preserve, Willowbrook Wildlife Center tries to walk the line between appreciating wildlife and maintaining a distance.
Education is a vital part of that process, Rogge said.
'The first thing we want to do with any animal is somehow domesticate it and turn it into a pet,' she said.
'That just doesn't work with wild animals, it's not in them.
Because even when we do think we've turned them into a pet, their true nature always comes out.
And then what becomes of the animal? That's the part that's really sad to see.'
Which is why even though Willowbrook puts a priority on getting animals in and out of their building as quickly as possible, there are a few critters that will never be able to leave.
Visitors can see 80 animals and more than 30 different species on display in Willowbrook's building or on the grounds.
A walk through the nature trail takes patrons past several large raptors, including a bald eagle, that were too injured to be returned to the wild.
Two huge raccoons that were raised as babies in someone's home were brought to Willowbrook when they grew to be too much to handle.
The animals could obviously not function on their own in the wild, so they live in a cage on the grounds where the staff brings them food.
Inside the building, there is an extremely noisy blue jay.
Unfortunately, he was so domesticated as a baby that he does not know how to make blue jay noises.
He can only produce human-sounding whistles -- and the cry of a baby.
Out in the wild, the blue jay would be a target of his own kind and perhaps of humans or other predators.
The law prohibits putting animals that are being rehabilitated on display.
However, the law doesn't apply to the dozens of abandoned infants Willowbrook hand-feeds during the year.
A long glass wall affords the public a look at the tiny animals as they sleep and play and feed in their cages.
Every couple of hours a volunteer hand-feeds the babies and makes sure they are not experiencing any problems.
But while the children watching wide-eyed at the window coo at the baby squirrel guzzling from the tiny nipple, the volunteer doesn't make a sound.
In a room full of adorable baby animals, there is not a word spoken to the animals.
No petting is allowed.
'Boy, we tell the volunteers right away to try not to talk to the animals at all,' Brown said.
'You don't want them to get acclimated to human voices and think that's a normal thing.
You don't want to get attached to the animals and you definitely don't want them to get attached to you.'
Once the babies leave the infant room, they move to an adolescent nursery that is even more isolated.
Eventually, all rehabbed animals move to an outside area where they can get re-acquainted with the weather and the smells of the world.
The staff has almost no contact with those animals, other than to bring food or clean.
There is no human hustle and bustle.
This is the final step before they are released to the wild.
'That, of course, is our ultimate goal,' Rogge said.
'We know it isn't better for them to be here than to be out where they belong.
We just try to get them to the point where they have a fighting chance.
I figure it's the least we can do.'
To keep its mission clear to the staff and public, the Willowbrook Center keeps a running total on the number of animals it sees and the number of animals released back to the wild.
Thus far this year, the center has seen 1,547 animals.
Of that number, 216 were healthy animals that were returned to the wild by the public.
Of the rest, 84 were treated at the center and eventually released.
Of the original 1,547 animals brought to the center's back door, a total of just 300 found their way back to nature.
'That doesn't seem like a very high percentage,' said Willowbrook administrative specialist Susi Pihera.
'But that's the way nature works.
And you have to remember that a lot of the animals brought here were in very dire situations.
In the case of a car meeting a rabbit, the rabbit's odds aren't real good.
'What we like to focus on is the 300 animals that might not have made it if we weren't here.'
EDUCATIONAL EFFORT Over the course of a year, the Willowbrook Center averages about 12,000 calls, and more than 60 percent are animal-related.
DuPage County residents call upset because a flock of crows are attacking cottontails.
They call because of an opossum stuck in their chimney.
They call because they want to know how to get rid of the raccoons.
Education is a vital component of the center's mission.
Upon entering the building, visitors are greeted with dozens of educational pamphlets offering such advice as 'Living with Skunks in DuPage County' and 'Nature's Limits and Willowbrook.' A life-size mockup of the front porch of a home shows how to put a cap on your chimney to keep out curious raccoons and why decals on your windows could save a bird's life.
Children can practice making animal tracks in a sandbox or put on a puppet show.
'We get a lot of calls from people who want to know how to get rid of raccoons, for example,' Pihera said.
'They want to know what kind of trap or poison they can use.
We tell them that it's illegal to trap wildlife, even if you think you're doing it humanely, and it's illegal to relocate wildlife, even in the forest preserve, unless you have a license.
In extreme cases, we can refer them to people who do that sort of thing, but that's not the solution to the actual problem.
'Our mission in the bigger picture is to learn how to coexist with wildlife.
The real solution is not to get rid of the animals, but to do the things that you can do to minimize problems.
Things like making sure your garbage is removed and cleaning the spillage from the bird feeder.
Making sure to remove the attraction is a much better solution than trying to get rid of the raccoon.
If he doesn't have a reason to come there, he won't. But that's all part of the education process in trying to get people to think about the problem in a bigger way.'
Willowbrook's education program starts at the pre-school level.
More than 500 school groups a year either visit the center or invite Willowbrook to make presentations at the school.
Several times a week, volunteer raptor educator Ron Skleney and naturalist Sandy Fejt bring a selection of raptors that live at the center to the schools.
The birds, which include a great horned owl and a red-tailed hawk, were brought to the center with injuries so severe they weren't able to fly again.
But they afford children a chance to see the animals up close.
'It's so important to reach the kids at a young age so they get an appreciation of the awesomeness of these creatures,' Fejt said.
'They are so curious.
If you can develop a love and respect for wildlife at this age, then hopefully, you can minimize the chances that they will interact negatively with wildlife as they grow older.'
Willowbrook is staffed primarily with a continually rotating group of volunteers.
Here, volunteers are given hands-on experience with the animals, and they are expected to interact with the public.
Volunteers feed the animals, clean cages, answer questions and talk people through their wildlife encounters.
There are volunteer programs for kids, for adults and even for families to work together.
'They are our unpaid staff, and we couldn't operate without them,' Rogge said.
'We have more than 120 steady volunteers a year, and they are so invaluable to what we're trying to accomplish.
Our nesting boxes, for example, were made by volunteer groups.
'It also becomes part of our educational mission because they are so passionate about what we do here that they can't help spreading the word throughout DuPage County.'
***
WILLOWBROOK'S FOUR STEPS TO CAREFUL ANIMAL RESCUE 1. Take a deep breath and say to yourself three times: 'Probably the best thing I can do for this animal is to leave it alone.'
2. Is the animal:
* Clearly injured? Call Willowbrook at (630) 942-6200.
* Sick? Call your police department or DuPage County Animal Control at (630) 682-7197.
* An injured nestling unable to move well on its own? The nest should be close by. You may return the animal to the nest or place it as close as possible to the nest.
* An older uninjured youngster? Leave it alone and leave the area.
Assume the mother is watching; you might scare her away.
3. Remember any animal brought to Willowbrook automatically has a limited chance of survival.
Letting nature take its course and leaving uninjured young alone is almost always the best action to take.
Willowbrook is for those native wild animals that have been hurt by people and will die without help.
4. When in doubt, call Willowbrook first.
To volunteer at Willowbrook, call (630) 933-7681. ***
AT A GLANCE How to volunteer Willowbrook Wildlife Center is sponsoring an open house for interested volunteers from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday.
The wildlife center is at Park Boulevard and Fawell Avenue in Glen Ellyn, just east of College of DuPage. ***
BY THE NUMBERS 1,547 Animals taken in by the Willowbrook Wildlife Center through May. Of those, 216 healthy animals were returned to the wild by the public and 84 were treated at the center and later released.
