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As a teen and young adult, I was blessed with the opportunity to live with and get to know a woman who was a licensed wild life rehabilitator. Because I was already an animal lover myself, I was eager to learn everything she could teach me. Thanks to her influence, I was given the gift of knowledge and of a new perspective. I saw the sacrifices she made to give these hurt and abandoned animals a chance to heal and grow. Little did she know she did the same for me.

I came to live in her small downtown home when I was 17. Even though it had three bedrooms, the house always felt small to me. It wasn't until much later that I realized that it wasn't small, it was just full. Not only were there 6 people living there, but a whole plethora of animals. There were dogs and cats and ferrets and even a chinchilla. Sometimes there were diapered lambs living in dog kennels in our sun room and bleating their complaints to the gimpy winged crow who shared the same room. In the back of the house there was a chicken coup. And once, we even had a cow in the basement.

In addition to the domesticated animals roaming about, you might find baby barn swallows peeping loudly to be fed on the dining room table or, a tiny gray squirrel climbing the woman's son like a tree in the living room. There were infant raccoons that let you cuddle them like real babies and held onto their own bottles when you fed them. She even helped me to save a baby rat from certain death, when I discovered it, poisoned, on the side of the street. I was amazed when she didn't hesitate to leave her job at the veterinary clinic to come pick the rat and I up. Once she was back at work, she even asked the veterinarian she worked for to treat the poor little critter.

The most difficult lesson for me to learn, during my stay with her, was the importance of returning wild animals to their natural habitat when they were strong and healthy. I almost always cried when I knew the baby I helped care for would be released. To me, it was abandonment. It nearly broke my heart to turn and leave them and after the first time, I found reasons not to go with her when it was time to release.

Then one day, a friend, who was also a wildlife rehabilitator, had gone out to the wildlife reservation to release raccoons that were ready to return to nature. As she opened the kennel doors to release them, she was horribly attacked by an adult raccoon. It tore at her face with the same claws I had affectionately watched it use to wash its food, and left her with scratches and scars all over. Anxiety from being transported, and the gleeful squeals being emitted from the other raccoons as they escaped confinement, may have been part of the reason the animal attacked. I was horrified to hear that the same critter she had nursed back to health and hand fed only that morning, had so viciously turned on her. The impact this event had on me forever altered my view of the soft cuddly critters I had grown so attached to.

No matter how cute they are, wild animals are just that, WILD! They were not designed, nor intended to be pets. They operate on an instinctual level that is a vital part of their survival in the wild, but can be dangerous in captivity. Even when raised from babies by humans, wild animals retain the instincts that are part of their genetic make up. We do them a disservice when we expect wild animals to behave like tame pets. Not only is it unlikely that they will be able to maintain their ability to ignore natural instinct but, if we do succeed in controlling the animal's behavior, then we have only succeeded in destroying what nature intended. Thus, we show our own human instincts to dominate and control.

Learn more about this author, Holli Ireland.
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