Are you an animal rescuer type?

[anna!]

This morning we found two teeny tiny (eyes closed, no fur) possums on the footpath on our way home from breakfast. Apparently the RSPCA is coming to pick them up sometime, and in the meantime they're in a box next to the computer, squeaking. So, so cute.

I just can't leave injured/abandoned/sick/baby animals if I see them in my travels, I have this need to rescue everything. I would've cried all day if I'd left these possums where they were. It makes me feel like I did the right thing when I bring these animals home, but at the same time it's pretty emotionally taxing!

When I was a kid we ended up with like, 8 cats, birds, snakes, lizards, mice, rabbits.. most of which the 8 cats caught and brought inside!

What do you do? Can you walk on by without giving it a second thought, or do you stop and interfere?

 

[Strawberry_lovemuffin]

Yeah, I'll rescue anything. I just couldn't live with myself if I didn't. I've even rescued mice out of my cats jaws before :D

I haven't found anything in need of rescuing for quite some time, but donate money regularly to the Lost Dogs Home where abused and injured animals often end up.

 

[ozbreaker]

I stop and save things.. I don't normally look after them myself after the initial rescue though..

Ie i've stopped to take turtles off the road a few times and also an echidna (on election night ) about 4 years ago. Echidna's are spiky to pick up. don't! I only tried as it was in the middle of the road at dusk and i knew it was odds on to get squished or cause an accident. It took 10 minutes of coaxing and waving cars around it and realising it only wanted to run on the road rather than off it before the silly thing would leave the road properly!

I once spent a whole morning chasing a sick pecalin that was reported hurt with my wildlife rescuee former neighbour.

I'll help the annimal but won't hold onto it as a) i don't know enough to care for them properly when ill, and b) i'm not home enough to care for them so i'll just pass them onto someone that can and that has the knowledge!

 

[eze451]

if its not a dog, im not touching it..... only animal i like really, the rest annoy me and i find them stupid..... even though dogs arent the brightest, they are too happy and pumped up not to love...... plus i have one of my own which helps

 

[lostpunk5545]

Pretty much yeah. As a vegetarian I feel ethically obligated (and can't stand the thought of animal suffering ).

Although as an environmentalist I would find it hard to rescue something such as a baby asian minor bird. I would probably leave it to die on its own (let nature take its course) rather than kill it.

About the only thing I've had the chance to rescue was some type of bird. Baby out of nest - abandoned and what not.

I tell you I would make a bad parent. Fucking stupid bird, gave me shit all day long with its constant whining for food. Oh well I stuck it through and raised it then released it (gradual weanings away from a cage). But I can't imagine having to look after something that takes years to get over the crying for attention thing That and human babies scare me - they look all alien and shit.

*Edit* Anna those baby possums sound really cute, cherish the experience while you can

 

[- l - u - c - e -]

I am a huge animal lover. There is no way I could just walk past an injured animal without feeling guilty.
If it was dead, then I would be a different story, I would probably just sit there and look at it, depending on how it got killed. If it was road kill, I'd probably just spew lol.
Depending on what animal too. I hate mice and things like that, there is no way I would bother trying to rescue it.
If it's anything cute I would spend my whole day trying to rescue them. They are so gorgeous!

 

[diegoblunt]

just wait until those possums grow up and start scratching around on somebody's roof ..

i would have picked them up .. but in general, im more concerned about helping humans who are not-so-well off ..

 

[cuddlefish]

Yeah, I'm a rescuer. Kinda ties in with my profession too. I've raised a baby bird once and I'll definately consider doing animal-care again when I have my own house (and no dependent human children). The saddest situation I was in was when I was cycling out on a rural road and I saw a wallaby get hit. When I went back to check the pouch there was a little baby pinky inside. It was 6am on a Saturday and the nearest building I could find was a Kingdom Hall of Jehovas Witness! Thankfully there were people there and they got ont he phones to try to find some wildlife people (not like I could take it home on my pushie), but being satruday morning, most of them were shut! Took ages to find some people who would come and I coudn't stick around, so the Jehova woman promised she'd phone me to let me know what happened. She never did though.

Other than that, I'm constantly catching animals trapped inside and releasing them; usually lizards but occasionally a possum. I think it's just the way some of us are.

smiley

 

[Timbo]

My fiance and me are carers for wildlife and have wallabies and possums coming and going all the time. We are caring for a cute possum at the moment who was abandoned by its mum, so so cute :D

I love any animals as long as they are not spiders, even spiders i like as long as they don't come and crawl on me. I figure some animals don't want attention and i expect the same in return.

 

[kooky_swanky]

I rescued a spider from my housemates room last week, he was going to spray it but I intervened. Other than that I don't really come across injured animals these days.

When we where kids, our house had a big (2m by 2m) window which birds would knock themselves out flying into so we'd look after them till they flew off.

 

[Pop Popavich]

Yeah I've held up a a fair amount of traffic before to help out a dog that got hit after being stuck on the median strip of a main road. Everyone else was just driving around (except the one dickhead who drove over it) while the dog was trying to drag itself off the road with the 2 legs that were still working. I drove it down to the vet, but found out later that it had to be put down.

There have been heaps of other times me and friends have gone out of our way to help animals, but this was probably the most upsetting.

Of those of you that do stop to help injured animals, would you/could you put it out of it's misery if you knew there was nothing that could be done?

 

[up all night]

I rarely come across sick or injured animals but I would definitely help if I could. Maybe not so much for baby birds [mostly because chances of them surviving is so small] but definitely for other animals.

I hit a possum when driving home one night and was so distressed. I called plazma and apollo and they laughed at me for being upset. Fuckers.

 

[Samadhi]

i'll save anything. My cat falcor was part of a litter that were found in a heshen bag by the local creek. We now own a dog (Marius ) that we found wandering around the local service station. He was soaked, emaciated and all he wanted was a cuddle. We left our phone number with the servo person, who had called the RSPCA, but we never heard anything, so he's ours now... it's awesome, he's a purebred doberman... awww :D

My mum was constantly saving possums, birds, etc. We had the local wildlife contacts and my mum kept special food, etc that you feed sick animals with via a dropper. It's rubbed off on me now

 

[muzby]

I hit a possum when driving home one night and was so distressed. I called plazma and apollo and they laughed at me for being upset. Fuckers.

it was one less creature in the world smarter than they were. i guess they were happy cause you were helping them to slowly work their way up the chain....

 

[muzby]

i'm quite happy to say i saved the neighbours cat (even though i hate cats..)


it had eaten poison and was on my driveway.. i kept it warm and took it to a vet where it was apparantly about to die (the vet couldnt even get a temperature reading on the thermometer..)

the response from the neighbour??? "oh, i was wondering where that cat went..."


fuckers... (oh great... now up all night has ME saying that...)

 

[Miss Peks]

Once I had just gotten off the train to go to work and I could hear this tiny tiny meow coming from the bushes. So I did a little investigating and found a little kitten which wasn't very old at all.

I took it to work and put it in a little box in one of the offices, trying to feed it cat milk and some other cat food throughout the day. By the end of the day I had found someone who was able to take it home (I couldn't because my dog would eat it for breakfast!), and today that cat is alive and healthy!

 

[katmeow]

My sister has always been the animal saver at our place.

She once went on a school excursion to paddy's markets & bought a kitten cos she thought some Asian people were looking at it hungrily. She told my parents she found it in the gutter on the way home from school. We weren't allowed to keep it.

She also did work experience at the RSPCA - and came home with Leo - the deaf & hyperactive Jack Russell - he was on death row for puppies. My parents let us keep this one.

My dad thinks it was the worst thing he ever got sucked in to. After a few years of being bipolar (tail wagging one minute, latched on to your hand the next), Leo came to an early end when he attacked the vet and she had to go to hospital for the bites to her hand.

I rescued a skink from a larger lizard when I was nine. I kept it for 3 weeks before it passed on to skinky heaven. I cried.

 

[Raz]

I'm pretty much with ozbreaker...I'll help in an immediate way, but I don't know enough about animal care to actually nurse an animal back to health myself, nor do I have the time or dedication. But I'd certainly try and make sure it got to someone who could help it if possible.

Maybe I'm still traumatised by when I was a kid and me and my niece and nephew rescued a bird with a broken wing, had it resting comfortably in an ice cream container in the kitchen, and then the house cat came and grabbed it and ate it under one of the beds....

 

[shorza]

During our journeys through Spain, my girlfriend and I found 3 dumped kittens in a side alley. Two of them were shivering, and crying. It was awful.

I went back to the Hostel we were staying at and asked a worker if there was anything like a RSPCA we could call. I was pretty muched laughed at, as there are millions of stray cats around.

All we could do was bring some milk and bread for them, pat them then leave them.

Did we do the right thing? or were we just delaying the inevitable?

 

[Raz]

^^^Probably just delaying the inevitable, but it's also probably the only kindness they would have gotten along the way and it's not like you could take em home with you...