West Sound Wildlife Shelter & Sanctuary

(written on March 14, 2018)

Most of us can all relate to finding a baby bird that has fallen from it's nest.  Instinct is to save the bird!  It's actually the wrong thing to do.

If you find a fledgling, it should be left alone or at the most placed in a nearby shrub. Keep people and pets away so the parents will continue to care for it until it can fly. Placing fledglings back into nests is typically only a short-term solution, as they will quickly re-emerge.

This is really hard to do when there are a ton of little kids running around, and if they know about the baby bird, you know they will not leave it alone - which means that the baby bird's parents will not be able to care for it and it will most certainly die.

So then you are - yet again - faced with a choice.  Most people will try to save the bird (or whatever animal it may be.) and give it the best chance of survival.

While we lived in the Parkwood Terrace in Bremerton this little birdie fell out of it's nest way up high from over the second floor apartments.  Leaving it on the group wasn't an option with all the kids and pets.  Returning the bird to it's nest... that also wasn't an option ... unless Spiderman was your friend...

So that left trying to rescue ... Cara started to call around, I believe we did too and Cara came back saying that West Sound Wildlife Shelter would take the bird.  So we rushed it out there.

I was impressed with the place.   You could hear the rehabilitating animals in the various enclosures.  We did ask if we could walk around to see, but we were told we couldn't do that.

So when I saw that they are planning on expanding - and in one of my favorite little towns - I couldn't help but to be excited.

NEW HOME FOR WEST SOUND WILDLIFE SHELTER

YES PLEASE!!!  We have a small free "zoo" back at home in Chippewa Falls called Irvine Park, and it was someplace that we visited often when we lived in Wisconsin.  I don't know if it'll be free or not, but it'll definitely be something that we'll be checking out in 3 years or so when it opens!

Sadly, the little birdie didn't live :(   We did call and check on it but it had been sick or had gone too long without eating.