• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

'Mortals' on the mend

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

Intern Laura Kintz holds a juvenile opossum with a spinal injury at Fellow Mortals Wildlife Hospital in Lake Geneva.

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

Intern Elizabeth McCarthy feeds a formula to fledgling American Robins in a nylon mesh cage in the bird nursery at Fellow Mortals Wildlife Hospital in Lake Geneva.

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

All creatures great and small are cared for at Fellow Mortals Wildlife Hospital in Lake Geneva.

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

Two 3-week-old cedar waxwings eat fresh blueberries in the bird nursery at Fellow Mortals. Most of the birds in the nursery are fed every 30 minutes for 12 hours each day.

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

This beaver has been a resident at Fellow Mortals for 10 years. The mother was shot and killed in Janesville when it was only 5 days old.

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

Wildlife biologist & rehabilitator Karen McKenzie holds a 6-8-week-old gray squirrel at Fellow Mortals. Squirrels are fed every four hours.

GENEVA TOWNSHIP — Yvonne Wallace Blane believes all creatures deserve the same care, attention and love as humans.

"For some reason, people don't think we both (humans and wildlife) are physiologically similar and physiologically have the same responses to trauma," she said. "And for some reason, we don't receive the same level of care."

Wallace Blane is the founder of Fellow Mortals Wildlife Hospital, W4632 Palmer Road. She and her staff of three other wildlife rehabilitators and a handful of summer interns work almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week caring for injured and orphaned wildlife—treating their ailments and preparing them for release back into their natural environment.

Fellow Mortals emerged out of tragedy.

Wallace Blane, who along with her husband, Steve Blane, managed a mobile home park in Delavan, ran over a nest of baby bunnies with a riding lawnmower.

She called local veterinarians. She called the humane society. She was hysterical because she could not find help for the tiny creatures.

The couple nursed the surviving rabbits back to health, raised them and released them back into the wild.

Word of their success spread. They got calls from people in the community to care for other injured and orphaned wildlife, and they offered their services as they could. But the couple learned what they were doing was illegal and that they needed to be licensed to rehabilitate wildlife.

Wallace Blane, a paralegal at the time, dropped her plans to go to law school and became a full-time wildlife rehabilitator. Steve Blane kept his full-time job. The couple turned their Delavan home into a wildlife sanctuary in 1985.

"We never intended to get big," she said. "We wanted to care for what needed care, whatever creatures came our way."

The couple took in about 50 animals in their second year in operation.

"We had a fawn in the bathtub and hummingbirds on the kitchen table," Wallace Blane said. "It was crazy."

The couple changed as the wildlife rehabilitation field changed. They incorporated Fellow Mortals, named from a poem written by Robert Burns, as a nonprofit organization in 1991. They took in more and more animals and soon spilled out of their home.

The couple started building a standalone wildlife sanctuary and hospital on an old Geneva Township farm in 2000. They built in phases as money—all personal investments and private donations, no government funding—was available, and they continue to add on as needed and as possible.

Fellow Mortals now stands as a haven for wildlife wracked by tragedy.

The hospital includes an admittance area, an examination room and laboratory, a clinic, an isolation room, a recovery room, a food preparation area and several rooms and habitats designated for specific kinds of wildlife.

Four licensed wildlife rehabilitators and three to five summer interns work almost around the clock to care for the more than 2,000 creatures that are taken in every year.

"We're like nurses in the human world," Wallace Blane said. "Consistent care is better."

The hospital accepts injured and orphaned wildlife from Rock, Walworth, Racine and Kenosha counties in Wisconsin, and Lake and McHenry counties in Illinois.

It serves such a large area because there are few, if any, facilities like it in the region, Wallace Blane said.

The hospital accepts a diverse population of creatures. The rehabilitators regularly see birds, including ducks, owls and hawks, and mammals, such as rabbits, squirrels and opossums. They also have cared for pelicans and beavers.

The injured animals most often suffer from broken limbs or head trauma, like if a bird flies into a window. The orphaned animals typically are abandoned because their mothers were killed by a car or a dog or cat getting into the nest. Many of the creatures that end up at the hospital also are dehydrated and malnourished.

Rehabilitators work tirelessly—splinting broken legs and wings, feeding malnourished babies and socializing orphaned youngsters—to prepare animals for release back into the wild. Many are released, but some, including a female beaver whose mother was shot and has grown up without siblings, remain at the sanctuary for years because they could not survive in the wild.

Fellow Mortals strives simply to make an impact on the lives of animals, who really, are just like us.

"We talk a lot about release, and we'd love to see all of our animals ready for release, but after 16 hours a day of work and care, we're all about getting them from day-to-day and knowing we're making a difference in each of those little lives," Wallace Blane said.

"It's the simple things. We have this little opossum we're working with. When she came to us, she couldn't stand up; she had been attacked. But now, she's able to drink milk; she's getting better," she continued.

"I see her here—she's safe, comfortable and cared for. That's the reward for all this."