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Help Us Help the Critters!

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Contributed by: Donna Ralph on 12/16/2006

Dear Santa,
We're finishing up our year and already trying to plan for 2007. We are Ellicott Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, a nonprofit located in Ellicott, east of the Springs. We rely on donations to feed and care for our critters, and to provide services and educational programs in our State, with most services provided in El Paso County.

Frankly, donations have been terrible this last year and we're a bit concerned about 2007. Our number 1 priority is quality care to the animals - this means food, medical care, and outdoor housing. This all requires funds and we are stretched pretty tight.

Another priority is community education. This happens via telephone, Internet, and us doing educational programs on our days off work (yep, we work regular jobs - we're all volunteers at EWRC) and visiting schools, Easter Seals, Salvation Army, daycares, nature centers, and other places to educate people on how to be better environmental stewards. Our programs are free to folks that can't afford them and dirt cheap for folks that can.

Santa, we hope your budget is bigger than ours. Here is a sample of our wish list and we know some of it might sound extravagant but we simply can't do it ourselves and these things are important.

WE NEED A TRANSPORT VEHICLE!!! A newer, RELIABLE, automatic with air conditioning for moving animals to and from veterinarians, and to and from educational programs. We get called out to some really faraway places with not a person, gas station,or phone in sight,to pick up injured critters, and our old personal vehicle is on its last leg. (We are not qualified to rehab cars!)

NEW DIGITAL CAMERA - Nothing fancy, just something easy to use. Mine is about dead, picture quality is terrible, and the camera is everything we do on our web site, www.ellicottwildlife.com as well as our Power Point programs for edu programs and how we keep people posted on the process of the animal they found while it is in rehab; I e-mail digital pix of the critter's progress.

Speaking of PowerPoint and edu programs - we don't have a laptop or a projector, either, and some places that ask for programs have budgets like ours and don't have the equipment, either. Visual aids are important and although we bring live, nonreleaseable raptors to programs, we like to begin with a PowerPoint. Kids stay more focused and retain info longer with powerful visual aids. Can you help us with a new laptop with PowerPoint and/or projector?

ANIMAL FOOD! This is our #1 priority and somethingthat's REALLY hard to find funding for, since you can't exactly put your name on this "project." The raptors, corvids, fox, and coyotes cost between $4-$9 per day to feed, and they don't eat what we do! We must order LOTS of frozen rodents to feed them. The other critters consume large quantities of fresh produce, nuts and seeds, formulas, commercial foods, and bugs. We have a better than average success/release rate at EWRC and we attribute this to the fact that we never skimp on the quality of food (or medical care, or housing.)

HOUSING - Santa, our raptor flight is very nice and gives the birds a great place to exercise. We'dlike to add 50 feet of flight space to it and this will cost us about $6000-plywood, welded wire, poles and built by us volunteers. Again, definitely not in our budget but maybe the elves can help....

CASH/CHECK - So we can buy the things we need; food, medical, pay the phone bill....

Santa, we do the best job we can. We want the best for these animals that are victims of our cars, power lines, development/habitat loss, poison, etc. There are so few licensed wildlife rehabbers (stress, burnout, financial) and we love what we do, but because of the above problems demand for services grows each year.You might be facing a tough year too and maybe our list is a bit overwhelming, but a bag of good bird seed, case of paper towels, gift card to Wal-Mart, or a bag of old towels would be as much appreciated as the other items!

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CONTRIBUTOR INFO

Donna Ralph

Colorado Springs , CO

Donna Ralph has posted 372 stories and 2 comments since joining on 10/9/2006. Donna Ralph 's average story rating is 4.77.

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