2020 Spring Newsletter | Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue

Our first intake of baby season were these two orphaned gray squirrels.

BOMP Corner - Casey O'Connell Joins the SCWR BOMP Team

SCWR's BOMP team is excited to announce that our very own Casey O'Connell had joined our Barn Owl Maintenance Team! Casey started with Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue in May of 2018. He was initially hired on as seasonal help during baby season, but our team quickly learned what a valuable asset he had become to the organization. Not only was he enjoyable to work with, he held a true passion for wildlife and was very attentive to the needs and varying conditions of the animals. He was then hired on full time as an Animal Care Assistant.

After his first year with us, our barn owl maintenance program continued to grow and we needed to find additional help. While the work did not require a full time position, we needed to find someone who was dedicated to SCWR, mindful of the owls' well-being and an honest and trustworthy person to send to do work on our clients properties and in their vineyards. Executive Director, Doris Duncan, thought that Casey met all of the criteria and asked that he come and train with her in the field.

Casey described his first training session as eye opening and he enjoyed learning everything that goes into finding the right spot to place a barn owl box. Casey is now trained and a fully fledged member of our BOMP team and we could not be more exited to have him. His favorite part of BOMP is searching properties and vineyards for the perfect spot to install a new box and the feeling of confidence you get knowing that an owl will likely occupy the box.

All About Opossums!

Virginia Opossums are our number one intake every year and 2020 will be no exception. In 2019, SCWR received over 350 opossums in need of care, down from 2018 having more than 400! The main reason that number is so high every year is due to their large litter count. Opossums, whose babies are known as joeys, can have up to 22 offspring in a single litter! While the large litters are immediately decreased due to the limited number of nipples available from their mom, most litters have between 8-12 joeys that survive to live in their mother's pouch. Being our only native marsupial to North America, opossums are born after just 14 days!

At the moment they are born, they travel up their mother's abdomen into her pouch and spend the rest of their gestation period fused to their mother's teat. The tiny newborn opossums are completely hairless, weigh less than a gram, their eyelids have not yet formed and their arms and legs are not fully developed. For the next two months, the opossums do not leave their mother's pouch while they continue to develop and grow. Once the opossums reach this age, they are old enough to detach from their mother's teat and venture outside of the pouch for short periods of time. The corners of their lips are still fused and they begin to open their eyes. At 75 days, they have a full coat of fur, their lips are completely separated and their eyes are open. At this age, they are able to maintain their own body heat and can leave the pouch for greater lengths of time. By day 80, the joeys begin to show interest in solid food and begin to respond to their mother's clicking. At day 90, the joeys are much more independent, often running along side their mother in the wild and weaning begins to take place. By day 120, the now juvenile opossums are fully independent and have left their mother to survive on their own in the wild. In the wild, opossums survive independently, only pairing up to mate. Being omnivores, their main diet is insects, small rodents, fruits and vegetables. Opossums are most known to benefit humans by controlling tick and rodent populations.

Intern, Hannah McComber, learns to tube feed opossums. This opossum is about 80 days old and is starting to show interest in solid foods.

With so many varying stages of growth, the rehabilitation process of an orphaned opossum is very unique compared to other mammals. The earliest stage we are able to successfully raise and release an orphaned opossum is at 60 days, when they are old enough to detach from their mother's teat. Since joeys swallow their moms teat into their stomach when they eat, the opossums raised at this stage need to be tube fed multiple times a day by staff, interns and volunteers. Once they reach the age where they would start to leave their moms in the wild, the orphaned opossums in our care graduate to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Community where they learn to forage for food and survive on their own. Once the opossums reach 500 grams, they are ready for release! So far this year, we've received 26 orphaned opossums in care with that number expected to rise drastically throughout baby season.

A small joey napping on a warming sock while waiting for it's feeding.

Currently, we have a very unique case that has required a lot of specialized care and attention. On March, 23, 2020 we received an injured female opossum that was likely hit by a car. During her intake exam, we found that she was carrying several pink infant opossums in her pouch still fused to the mother's teats. We also found that the mother had a jaw fracture in need of surgical repair and an irreparable eye injury that meant her eye would need to be removed. Since the joeys are not old enough to safely be removed from her pouch, treating the mother's injuries made it that much harder due to the fact that they would not be able to survive under anesthesia for a significant amount of time. On March 27th, the mother underwent surgery to repair her jaw fracture. Since then, the mother has been able to eat a much more stable diet and the babies are thriving inside of her pouch. The video below shows an exam that took place on March 30th where all of the opossum joeys are alive and appear to be well taken care of by their mother. Once the joeys are old enough to come out of the pouch for a significant amount of time, surgery will be performed on the mother to remove her eye. The goal is to keep the mother and all of her joeys in care together until the mother is healthy and they are able to be released back into the wild.

Photo (left): Dr. Dan Famini works quickly to repair the jaw of a mother opossum carrying infants in her pouch. Video (right): A post surgical exam of a mother opossum pouch with infant opossums inside.

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