OUTDOOR CORNER: CALL OF THE WILD WILL RETURN YOUNG ANIMALS TO HOMES

Every year, during late spring and early summer, conservation agents receive numerous calls concerning juvenile wild animals. It is a natural reaction that most people, especially young people, want to take home adolescent animals when they come in contact with them. Baby animals are so cute and seem so helpless that it is a normal response.

Although juvenile wild animals look cute and harmless they can be very dangerous. Any wild animal can bite or scratch a person. Any time you are bitten by an animal you are at risk from numerous diseases. The most feared disease is rabies.

Any adolescent mammal can carry and transmit this disease to people. Young animals often have mites, ticks, fleas, flukes, roundworms, tapeworms, distemper, and tuberculosis, as well as respiratory and skin diseases that can be transmitted to humans. Many of these can also be transmitted to domesticated pets.

Often people who come in contact with baby animals think the animals have been lost or abandoned by its parents. This is usually not correct. Parents of wild animals rarely abandon their young. Caring for young animals is difficult, consequently they may be separated from mom for a short time but not abandoned. Therefore, their best chance of survival is to leave them in the wild. Mothers will rejoin the youngster and care for it.

One of the most common calls received is what to do with immature birds. It is not true that baby birds once touched by human hands will be abandoned by its parents. If you find a young bird that has fallen out of a nest, return it to that spot, if possible. If you cannot return it to the nest, leave it, and its parents will care for it. Birds will continue to feed and care for their offspring long after they leave the nest. The best thing you could do to help young birds survive is to keep pet dogs and cats away from them, if possible.

In Missouri it is also illegal to take animals from the wild as pets. When wild animals are kept as pets, there are several problems that may arise.

Immature animals require a specific diet that is difficult to provide. If you are fortunate and the baby animal does survive, then you must decide when to return it to the wild. Animals that have been raised by people do not usually have the ability to survive in the wild. If you keep wild animals until they mature, they often become dangerous to handle and difficult to control.

If you really want to help wild animals survive, it is best to leave them in their natural habitat where they are free to live naturally.

Gary Newcomb is a Missouri Department of Conservation agent in Cape Girardeau County.