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Lessons from the Hotline
 Lessons
from the Hotline
by Lori Hinton, Volunteer & Education Coordinator
Over the holidays, our regular Hotline &
Rescue Specialist took a brief reprieve, during which I manned
our switchboard. A person learns many things while working
the emergency
wildlife hotline, and the first lesson I learned was never
to assume that simply answering the telephone for a 187-acre
wildlife sanctuary was easy.
The day becomes a virtual patchwork quilt
of interruptions. You pick up one piece of cloth hoping to
get it sewn in and completed, only to be given two other pieces
to handle. Not only does the individual working hotline field
hotline phone calls, but he or she also greets a host of visitors
who are dropping off injured animals, making gift shop purchases,
supplying us with greatly appreciated donation items, vendors
making deliveries, or new volunteers seeking directions. Despite
the myriad of these other duties, the main responsibility
of our hotline operator is to field calls from those seeking
assistance with an animal.
Often what is on the other end of the telephone
is sad news. I would like to share one such story in the hope
that it will inspire you to spread our message of respect
and help educate others about some of the things that befall
animals — situations that can easily be avoided with
a little compassion and some advice and assistance from WRR.
This was my call: Four tiny wrens had been
caught in a glue trap left under some hedges beside a home.
Two of the little ones had already died and two were not faring
so well and needed to come to our veterinary clinic. Unfortunately,
they too did not survive. We see many such patients day after
day who have been injured in their struggle to free themselves
from the weaponry launched against what humans deem "vermin"
and "nuisances." These unfortunate lives are caught
in the cross-fire and suffer a grim fate. Once in the grip
of snares, glue traps, and other means of capturing wildlife,
the animals often die from suffocation, dehydration, starvation,
and self-amputation.
Despite all of the cruel efforts of some inhumane
people and all of the difficulties we humans have imposed
upon those animals who are so bravely adapting to an urbanized
landscape, there is still goodness in the world. For example,
there were the people who found the wrens and called WRR because
they wanted to help. Every call about an orphaned or injured
animal is made by a compassionate person who wants better
for that animal. Each person who reports a coyote caught in
a snare recognizes the inhumanity and is reaching out for
help on behalf of that animal and much of the goodness that
we see comes from our selfless and seemingly inexhaustible
volunteers who help us rescue and transport the many sick
or injured animals like these wrens. As human beings, we need
not become a nuisance to wildlife but rather protect and honor
their lives. Please help us to spread our message of respect
and reverence for all life.
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