Special Cases

I know they are sometimes very smelly, but skunks are an extremely useful, unique, and even amusing species. We do get a lot of skunks in for rehabilitation and release.  They are omnivores and quite self sufficient little individuals and our survival successes for rehabilitated skunks is very high

Skunks, like otter, marten, mink, weasel, wolverine, fisher and badger are members of the Mustelia or Mustelid family. As a whole the species which fall within the group, are bold, fascinating, amusing, and little understood by mankind.  Because Mustelids are naturally courageous, when you receive them as orphans they are easy going and fairly unafraid.  This makes it much easier to work with them than it is with many more naturally timid species.

Most mustelid species are fairly uncommon in heavily populated areas, so they do not come in to the CEI in large numbers.  Ideally, with orphaned wildlife, one really wants to have more than one orphan of the same species so that the orphans recognize themselves for what they are, moose, or coyotes, or raccoons and don’t grow up thinking that they belong to another species because they have never encountered their own! But sometimes raising a single orphan is unavoidable.

OTTERS  

The CEI has taken in, raised and released many otters. This is a story of three of them:

These otters came to us at less than 48 hours old. The mother had given birth to them under someone's house and the householder didn't want the otter family there, so he moved them.  Baby otters are very helpless, their eyes don't open until they are almost a month old. So with a homeless, helpless family, exposed at the water's edge, the parents had no alternative other than desert the cubs. The orphans were brought to us. Like bears, otters stay with their parents for eighteen months, but in that time they have to learn swim and to hunt live fish.  Our otters, the ones in the picture, stayed with us for 18 months. With the complete run of the CEI's 160 acres of woodland, prairie, and sloughs, they soon learned to hunt fish, ducks, and frogs in the sloughs and hunt mice and pocket-gophers on the prairie. They met other predators, like coyotes, and after 18 months were ready for release. Again the British Columbia Fish & Wildlife Branch helped us out with permits and the release site selected for them was the same as for Paddington. We released them successfully in September, when the salmon were running.  Luckily for us a retired American Marine Colonel, Colonel Dan Smith, arranged for their release and flew them down to the west coast, then into the release site using a Twin Otter airplane!  THANK YOU COL. DAN SMITH!

BEAVER

This is the story of the first baby beaver to come to the CEI. He came as result of a policy in the City of Calgary to eradicate beavers living within the city along the banks of the Bow River. His parent's lodge was destroyed, and he was made homeless at a few weeks old and weighing less than a pound. Some kind people found him and took him to the 11Ave.S.E. emergency animal clinic, and from them he came to us.  He was so small and made the most pathetic little noises, like a human baby, everyone's heart went out to him.  I had to telephone a lady in Illinois, who had had a lot of success in raising baby beavers, to get the recipe for his formula.  Part of this recipe included pureed willow and we broke about 4 food processors trying to puree willow!  Finally we were given a commercial food processor, the kind used in a Bar,  that didn't break down and pureed willow branches perfectly. 

But you can see why we have a very long wish list...we never know what animal is going to arrive on the doorstep and what it is going to require to survive.  Beavers, like otters and bears, also stay with their parents for eighteen months, and this being our first baby beaver, we didn't have an over wintering place built for him.

However, he took matters into his own hands (or teeth), started logging, and constructed a beaver lodge inside the Main building at the CEI. As a result, we spent that winter working around a great pile of willow and poplar with straw and mud filling in any gaps between the logs. Our cat, Zeus, was particularly put out about this!   The following year the beaver went to live on the CEI sloughs, and then, as is natural for beavers, he moved away to find himself a wife.  Since then, we have had many baby beavers and have built a special pond for them to over winter in.