AREA COUPLE TAKE WALK ON THE WILD SIDE; JOHN AND CAROLYN WATKINS NURSE ANIMALS BACK TO HEALTH

John Watkins regularly wrestles with Yonah, a young American black bear.

Don't try this at home, he warns animal lovers. Yonah's a little more than a year old and weighs about 200 pounds. In another year or so, the bear will be fully grown, weighing in at about 500 pounds. While Yonah might not intentionally harm anyone, it's hard to make a bear understand "uncle," Watkins warns.

Yonah, whose name means "bear" in Cherokee, is one of three wild animals recovering at John and Carolyn Watkins' 180-acre farm in Bollinger County.

"I can handle him now, for a little while," said John Watkins, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator and surgical assistant to two Cape Girardeau heart surgeons. Soon, though, the bear will be too big for the wrestling matches.

The Watkinses have had Yonah since January, when he was rescued from a Mississippi County house where he was being held illegally. In addition to Yonah, they are also caring for a young bobcat rescued as a cub from a Bollinger County barn and a white pelican whose wings were pinioned, rendering the bird incapable of flight.

The pelican will be heading to a new home at the St. Louis Zoo in a few weeks, Carolyn Watkins said. The bobcat will be released to the wild once the weather is warm enough for it to be able to find food and shelter.

Yonah's future is a little more difficult. The Watkinses hope he'll find a home at a zoo.

They have taught the bear how to find food. "He knows where to find the blackberries and how to turn over rocks and look for bugs," John Watkins said.

The bear can't be released to the wild, he explained, because he's not afraid of people. "He'll walk up to somebody, and that might scare them, and then what will happen?" he asked.

They don't want the bear to wind up in a cage.

"If the Department of Conservation has to place him in a cage, it'll break my heart and we'll ask them to let us keep him," Carolyn Watkins said.

She hopes Yonah will go to a zoo or some type of facility where he'll live in as open an environment as possible.

"He needs to be with other bears so he can have a mate and have other bears to play with and hopefully have young of his own," she said.

That's what the Watkinses want for all of the animals they foster: A chance at life in the wild, where they belong with their own kind.

"I don't pretend that I'm going to turn my deer loose and they're not going to get shot by a hunter," John Watkins said. "I've given them their chance in life."

The Watkinses were wildlife rehabilitators before there was such a thing in the state. He started in 1969 before licensing was required, and when federal and state laws went into effect he got his license through the mail.

"It's not that easy now," he said.

With his medical background, he can perform a lot of veterinary duties, and if the animals need surgery he assists Dr. Karen Bangert, a Cape Girardeau veterinarian.

In a few weeks the Watkinses will begin sharing their home with dozens of abandoned or injured baby critters. Spring and summer are their busiest seasons.

"Once we had 30 raccoons at a time," Carolyn Watkins said, adding that it's not unusual for them to foster 100 animals through the spring and summer.

Carolyn Watkins, an artist, bottle-feeds and cares for the babies and youngsters. "I'm a full-time mom," she jokes.

John Watkins takes care of the larger animals.

They try not to make pets of any of the animals, but it's not easy; Some bonding is bound to occur while bottle-feeding a youngster, he said.

"We raise them as much as we can the way their parents would raise them in the wild," he said. "And then we release them back into the wild where they belong."

The animals are released once they're well enough, or simply old enough, to make it on their own.

Foxes, skunks, raccoons, owls and other small animals can be released on the farm, and the animals come back to visit from time to time, particularly if they can't find food, John Watkins said.

Several years ago they rehabilitated Artemis, a barred owl, from life in a bird cage to life in the wild. When Artemis made his first kill, he brought it to the window to show John Watkins, and after the owl went back to the wild he returned periodically for visits.

"He'd come up to the house, but his mate never would," Carolyn Watkins said. "You could hear her off in the trees, kind of calling, and he knew it was time to get back."

"He was a character," John Watkins said fondly.

Larger animals or predators, like coyotes and bobcats, are released at wildlife reserves like Mingo Wildlife Refuge near Puxico, he said.

The Watkinses rely on instinct to teach the animals much of what they need to know. They try to make sure to release deer, for example, at a time when they'll be able to join up with small herds. The wild deer will help the released deer learn where to find food and shelter from the cold, he said.

The animals know when they're ready to leave, Carolyn Watkins said.

"You can see it: They start getting restless and start pacing in the cages. You just know it's time," she said.

There was a coyote that didn't want to go but finally did. And there was another that had no qualms whatsoever about saying goodbye.

"She ran out of the cage and jumped in the lake and swam away and never looked back," Carolyn Watkins said.

She worries what will happen to the animals once they are released, but he is a little more pragmatic.

John Watkins said: "There's no guarantee that 100 percent of anything will survive. A large number of the animals that are raised in the wild don't survive to adulthood."

In the meantime, it is a wonderful life, he said.

"We went for a walk in the woods one day and turned around and we had four dogs, a fox, a raccoon and a bear just walking along with us," he said.

TIPS FOR HANDLING INJURED WILDLIFE

Baby foxes, deer, skunks and other young critters are awfully cute, but wild animals make lousy pets, John Watkins warns.

State and federal laws require those who house wild animals to be licensed, and inspectors regularly check the animals' quarters to make sure they are in top condition.

It's tempting to take a wounded or abandoned animal home, but doing so could do more harm that good for you and the animal.

Watkins offers this advice:

*Observe the animal from a distance to make sure it is injured or has ben abandoned.

*Do not pick the animal up or try to touck hit "You can end up getting yourself hurt or hurting the animal more," Watkins said.

*If the animal does need help, call the Missouri Department of Conservation office in your county. If you can't reach the conservation agent, call your local sheriff's department, and dispatchers will get in contact with the agent, who will take care of the animal.