FOSTER PARENTS FOR FURRY FRIENDS

What do you do when your dog or cat appears on the front step with a squirming baby bird or half-dead squirrel clutched between its teeth?

Wildcare, a newly organized animal rehabilitation program, has the answer and the volunteers to nurse sick, injured or orphaned wild animals back to health.

The non-profit volunteer organization is an offshoot of the Fort Worth Nature Center’s rehabilitation program, which is being phased out due to lack of funding and facilities.

Naturalist Sandy Murray, who heads the Nature Center’s rehabilitation program and organized Wildcare, began enlisting volunteers earlier this year after it became obvious that the center’s three naturalists could not nurse the more than 700 animals left on the center’s doorstep last year.

Since Wildcare was formally organized in October, about 30 volunteers have taken small, sick animals into their homes with the hope of treating the animals and eventually releasing them back into their habitats.

Murray says she envisions a day when the program will move out of the homes of individuals and into a facility similar to Arlington’s Phoenix Bird Rehabilitation Center, a non-profit organization developed by biologist George Stewart of the University of Texas at Arlington.

“Most of the animals we see have been shot, trapped or orphaned,” says Murray. “About 90 percent of the exotics we get (such as tigers, panthers and bears) come from people who thought a wild animal would make a good pet.”

Naturalist Tom Wood says the center will continue to accept injured animals but will place them in volunteers’ homes.

For more information, contact Murray at the center.