The last resort: Greenwood seeks to prepare animals kept illegally for life in the wild

Catherine Wolfe, left, and Patty Dellinger prepare to give a sick raccoon named Walter antibiotics at Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. The center cares for sick, wounded and abandoned wildlife and attempts to reintroduce them to the wild.

Walter tries to hide her face as Susan Honeycutt leans through the top of her cage with a handful of cotton swabs.

Cuts and bruises dot Honeycutt’s hands and wrists; she’s chosen to forego the heavy cowhide, elbow-length gloves that might protect her from this young raccoon’s bite, even though it was Walter’s crushing jaws that left a nasty purple bruise on Honeycutt’s pinkie the day before.

So far, Walter has spent most of her time alone while staying at the Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Longmont — state law requires that incoming raccoons remain in quarantine for at least 21 days to reduce the spread of distemper.

Non-profit Greenwood is Colorado’s largest wildlife rehab center, treating some 3,000 birds and mammals every year, most of them the kind of common species — songbirds, squirrels, raccoons and foxes — that don’t attract the attention of large carnivores or raptors. Animal-care areas of the center are not open to the public.

Today, Animal Care Manager Honeycutt and a few volunteers have interrupted Walter’s daytime slumber to administer antibiotics for an upper respiratory infection.
“We’re about to give her a very rude awakening,” Honeycutt says.

Honeycutt believes that Walter, like many of the animals that end up in Greenwood’s care, is an abandoned pet. Authorities found Walter, disoriented, wandering down a sidewalk in Boulder. Now the staff and volunteers at the Greenwood Center will attempt to prepare Walter to live on her own and release her into the wild.

Honeycutt, her head and both arms leaning through the top of the cage, moves in with a vial of antibiotics. Walter offers only token resistance, shoving her snout through the wire of the cage’s side to avoid the medicine.

“She should be snarling and attacking me, which makes me think she was a pet,” Honeycutt says. “She’s being very nice, now watch her take my thumb off.”
Honeycutt removes an uncapped marker from Walter’s cage.

“Oh, we had a little party last night, she probably wrote a love letter. Anything’s a toy, you know,” Honeycutt says.

“I know why people have them as pets, they’re incredible, but when breeding season comes and all those hormones start flowing, (raccoons) are just nasty,” Honeycutt says.

Honeycutt has seen a variety of wildlife end up as pets, including raccoons, birds, foxes and even the occasional skunk or coyote. When natural instincts make these animals unruly or even dangerous, many owners’ quick solution is to let the animal go.

But animals that have been raised in a domestic setting often struggle because they never learned to navigate, find shelter, forage for food or defend themselves from attack like their wild counterparts.

Once Walter is healthy enough to interact with other raccoons, she will move in with another group the Greenwood Center has been rehabilitating over the last few months.

When the staff at Greenwood feels that Walter is prepared to survive on her own, they will release her within 10 miles of where authorities picked her up.

Two of Walter’s future roommates, Trouble and Prada, now huddle in an empty wooden enclosure in their large outdoor cage. Like Walter, animal control officers picked up Prada starving on the streets of Boulder.

As Honeycutt approaches, Prada lets out a quiet snarl and retreats to the other side of the cage. Honeycutt estimates that when Prada arrived, she was at less than one third of her ideal body weight and her coat was matted and mangy. Yet she may be more ready than Trouble to live on her own.

Beneath Trouble’s silky, well-groomed coat lies a healthy layer of fat. Trouble’s owner raised him in captivity before turning him over to the Greenwood Center. The owner told Honeycutt that Trouble ate out of a bowl and often slept in a bed with his son. And that may mean trouble.

“He is a totally healthy ‘coon, but he has no fear of humans,” Honeycutt says. “In reality he is actually going to be a harder case because he is so well taken care of.”
The Greenwood Center staff will teach Trouble to forage by hiding food in the cages and eventually using branches and logs to recreate natural environments including hidden food.

“I love raccoons. They are probably one of my favorite animals, so mischievous,” Honeycutt says. “But eventually the wildness is going to come out and you can’t live with them.”

Honeycutt points out that with limited resources, authorities and wildlife-rehabilitation centers are more likely to put wild former pets to sleep and concentrate on taking care of orphaned birds and animals. In addition, it’s against Colorado law to keep most wildlife, including squirrels and raccoons, as pets.

“When somebody takes in a pet raccoon the likelihood of it ever being released in the wild is probably 10 percent,” Honeycutt says. “If you take one in you had better be ready to euthanize when you’re done with it, because that’s what’s going to happen to most of them.”

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