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Share your wildlife habitat story

Jackie to the rescue - by Karan K.

I live on a small acreage in North Central Florida where wildlife abounds. My home is surrounded by Live oaks, pines and Sweet Gum trees. It is a natural habitat and virtual forest.

One of my greatest pleasures is watching all the critters go about their business while my little dog Jackie sits with me. Usually she stays right with me but on this particular day she took off running to the barn and disappeared behind it.

When she did show up she went straight into the house and jumped on my bed where she began ruffling the covers, making a nest. I followed her to see what she was up to, and to my surprise she was making a place for her new "baby." The baby, however, was a baby Marsh Rabbit. The eyes were not open yet so I assumed it was dead and started to scold Jackie, but the rabbit responded when I picked it up to remove it. I looked the rabbit all over and there was not one bite or mark on him (by this time I knew it was a male). Not even slobber from my dog’s mouth.

After finding a safe, warm place to put the little guy I went to the barn and looked around to see if I could find the nest. I found what I thought could have been a nest but there were no other babies to be found. I did notice a rather large Rat Snake, looking well fed. I thought the snake might of eaten the other babies so there was no way I would put the orphaned baby back out there. The little guy was turned over to the Wildlife Care Center, a non-profit, and is now being nurtured and cared for until he can be released back into the wild.

Thanks to Jackie for saving the rabbit even if she did think it was one of her puppies.

A change of mind - by Sissy B.

When I think about the wildlife in my habitat I classify them into categories, such as cute, adorable, acceptable, tolerable and scary. I place snakes in the scary category and mice in the tolerable. When fate would have it and I had to rescue a mouse, it really messed with my tolerable category.

One morning while sitting on my deck I kept hearing a noise that sounded like water dripping into a tub of water. I dismissed the noise thinking it was nothing, but when the sound continued I decided to investigate. There was only one place where water could be standing -- in an old bucket that hangs off the railing to catch rainwater. Peering into the bucket, to my surprise there was a little field mouse jumping up and down, trying to get out of the water.

I hate to say this, but I laughed at the sight of this and thought of the old analogy of "looking like a drowned rat," only in this case, a mouse. I yelled at my son to come out and empty the bucket of water away from the house. The little critter scampered away without hesitation. I know you think this is the end of the story, but it goes on.

A few days later, after a heavy rain I heard the same noise again. I went to look and, yup, there it was. It appeared to be the same mouse jumping up and down in the bucket of water. I just could not figure out why this was happening again, especially after the near-fatal experience before. As I was looking, something wrapped around the support under the deck. It was a snake lying in wait for the mouse. Apparently, the mouse was getting away from the snake and fell into the bucket of water.

This time, when the mouse was released it did not scamper into the woods as before, but lay there exhausted by the ordeal. It was so adorable and helpless, thus changing mice from category tolerable to category adorable.