Writings in the Sand

When Nature Needs Help

I know this is dangerous ground, but I gotta say it - I don’t believe the stuff I see on the internet.

Specifically, I don’t believe all these baby animal rescues.

It’s not that I don’t believe that occasionally, a human finds a baby animal that could have fallen out of some tree nest/home or maybe was snatched and dropped by some raptor or other predator. I am saying that it doesn’t happen as often as these viral videos would have you believe.

For instance, I have seen three separate women claim to have found a bumblebee which was rendered flightless by the absence of one or both wings. These bees are found on the ground by middle-aged, single women who apparently climb through the undergrowth with their cameras looking for abandoned creatures. The fuzzy, fat bees are taken home, housed in some elaborate bee version of a doll-house, fed sugar water and petted by their “rescuers”. Then, they die.

The internet is overrun by videos of tiny, unidentifiable, naked, baby animals plucked from the grass and taken home by well-meaning passersby. These rescuers are well-equipped with medicine droppers and some kind of milky formula mix which turns out to be just the right thing to feed to unidentifiable baby animals. The babies, who everyone thinks are puppies, grow into unexpected types of animals (mostly squirrels).

Let me say that I do believe that some baby animals are rescued now and again by caring humans. But, I also think some baby animals get unwelcome help in falling from trees by over-zealous rescuers.

There, I said it.