Critter Nurse

Look, class...it's time ALL of you stopped being so modest. To quote the great Jewish scholar Rabbi Hillel, "... if not now, when? I know that a lot is going on in your fascinating lives that your handsome, intelligent, and modest webmaster would love to write about, but first, you have to let him know about it! Carolyn (Taylor) Powell     Take Carolyn (Taylor) Powell for example.  I didn't even know that she had moved from Charlotte, and that was two years ago!  And if I hadn't stumbled across an cute old picture of her holding a possum, and started asking questions...I would never have known of the lifeshe's living down in the Sunshine State!   Here's what she wrote:

" After retiring from nursing I became a licensed rehabilitator of orphaned and injured wild life. I am licensed to rehab baby squirrels, bunnies, opossums, chip monks, flying squirrels,turtles and about any other little critter you find without a Mom needing help. You must have a federal permit to rehab raptors which I do not have. That in itself is a full time job of different skills. In N.C. we could not rehab any rabies vector species ie: bats, coons, foxes etc. but the S.C. girls could.

Opossoms

Bunnies

 We were all members of the same organization called ARC, stands for Animal Rehabilitators of the Carolinas. We had to take classes on rehabbing and attend many workshops and seminars etc. with other rehabbers including Vets, Vet techs,  Zoo people and many more. It was a full time job all volunteer. You got paid in seeing the wee ones get well. The little opossum improved with a good diet just for opossums and became the mascot for a Rehab center many months later. Part of our mission was education of the public to not capture wild life unless they knew it was abandoned or unless it was injured. Most of the time even if a baby squirrel falls from the nest the Mother will retrieve it if given a chance. You would not believe the calls we get all day on our hot line in Charlotte about found little animals or ones hit by cars etc. We take them all. Cats are a serious  problem for wildlife. They kill more baby birds just learning to fly and baby bunnies they take from the nest and I wish people would keep their cats inside at all times. They really are denting our wildlife. We also encourage people not to make pets out of wildlife. They are so cute and loving when babies, but they grow up to be wild and need to be wild. It is a big task to convince people the animal should be wild and free.

I did this full time before having to move here.  Sun City Center is a retirement community and I

am on the golf course. I have a golf cart but it is for riding my dog to the dog park daily. Everybody has a dog, we have a private park divided into two sections, one for the big dogs and one for the little ones. We have everything you could possibly ever want or need, look us up on the web, Sun City Center Florida and take a look. There are several people here from North Carolina as well. (I do not play golf)

While taking care of baby animals,( you might find 15 baby squirrels on heating pads on my kitchen table in little nursery boxes), I also was showing my Bearded Collie Dog, I started showing dogs while in high school and my Mom always said I would make better grades if I studied as hard and long as I spent grooming and showing dogs. I did not make great grades, Bs and Cs were good enough for me, made the honor roll one time and Mrs. Bridges thought it was the other Carolyn W. Taylor's grade and not mine. Once in a while her grades got mixed in mine and I loved that, she made straight As.  She died years back, she was also a nurse and worked at Charlotte Memorial Hospital as it was called then. "

-Carolyn Powell

View from Carolyn's porch

Wow!  Nurturing the spark of life in God's small creatures. It takes a very special person to do that!

-Ed