THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 20, 1997 TAG: 9701200276
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 78 lines
When Jamerson Hook reached into the cage, the large red-tailed hawk stepped awkwardly on his glove, favoring a broken leg and a wing that never will heal properly.
The full-grown hawk with fierce brown eyes collided with a car or truck two weeks ago in the Lake Smith area. It's a typical injury this time of year because the hawks find little else but road kill to dine on - and they're often not fast enough themselves to avoid passing cars.
Things are pretty quiet right now, but it won't be long before wildlife rehabilitators in Hampton Roads will once again be swamped.
They're all volunteers, many of them with full-time jobs, and their homes or yards are often refuges for sick or wounded animals. Some rescue and rehabilitate hundreds of animals each year - and need baby sitters for their animals if they leave town for a day.
Help may be on the way. This Wednesday, the Virginia Beach Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals will begin linking rehabilitators in several cities with volunteers who will be trained to take over some of the work.
The commitment is a significant first for the well-established animal shelter and the loose network of volunteer rehabilitators.
Sharon Adams, executive director of the SPCA, said the biggest need is for people who will pick up the animals and transport them to rehabilitators or to veterinarians. ``The rehabbers get so frazzled and so used up, they can't handle any more,'' she said.
Margaret and Waverly Traylor, who live in the Birchwood Gardens area of Virginia Beach, rescued and rehabilitated 635 animals last year, mostly squirrels, possums, raccoons and bats.
``We just can't say no to animals that are suffering,'' Waverly Traylor said.
All of the rehabilitation is done by volunteers who spend years learning how to handle different kinds of animals, most of them specializing in particular types of animals.
The apprentices could work with rehabilitators as assistants or train to become licensed themselves. That can take several years of training.
The Beach SPCA hopes to recruit potential rehabilitators for all South Hampton Roads cities that are looking for assistance.
``We get hundreds of calls, probably a thousand or more in the spring and summer,'' Adams said. ``Dozens and dozens of mammals, squirrels and possums and raccoons, hundreds of ducks and geese, some raptors, songbirds that have encounters with cats and billions of bunnies.''
Virginia Tavenner, who lives in the Deep Creek section of Chesapeake, says in the spring there are sometimes 40 to 60 calls each day, mostly about baby birds in back yards that seem to have been abandoned. Usually they aren't, she said, but are just waiting for parents to return to their nests.
In Hook's back yard overlooking Broad Bay, the hawk resides in a cage next to a ferocious-looking but quite subdued great-horned owl. Part of the owl's right wing had to be amputated after colliding with a vehicle.
By the time Hook got to the hawk, its injured wing had begun to set the wrong way and could not be reset.
It will not be able to be released and will spend its days, along with the owl, at the new Sandy Bottom Nature Park on the Peninsula.
Friday, for the first time, the brown-eyed hawk was standing on one leg and flexing a taloned foot as though ready for flight.
Soon, baby owls, born in early spring, will be falling out of nests and the cycle will begin again.
``Sometimes we're so swamped we just don't know which way to turn,'' Hook said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot
Jamerson Hook of Virginia Beach is helping to rehabilitate this
red-tailed hawk that suffered a broken wing and leg after it
collided with a vehicle in the Lake Smith area two weeks ago.
Graphic
TO HELP
Anyone interested in working with or becoming a wildlife
rehabilitator is invited to attend a workshop sponsored by the
Virginia Beach SPCA at 7 p.m. Wednesday at 3040 Holland Road. Call
427-0070 to register.