The curious young raccoon pushed its agile front toes through the cage's mesh and looked at me quizzically as if to say, "Are you going to feed me?" If food was on its mind, it was out of luck. The timing of my recent tour of the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network's (WCN) new headquarters in Goleta did not coincide with its feeding schedule.
Besides, I did not know how to prepare or administer the proper kind and amount of food to the little masked mammal. These are among the skills the nonprofit rehabilitation center on North Fairview teaches its volunteer helpers.
"We try to give animals a second chance," says my guide, Julia Parker, animal affairs director. The state-certified facility, which opened here in 2012, primarily tends to injured or orphaned songbirds and seabirds, which amounted to roughly two-thirds of the 3,000 animals received in 2014 by the center. Mammals, skunks, and raccoons totaled about 130 last year, an average number says Parker.
