Summer Internship at Centre Wildlife Care

May 14th, 2022

Centre Wildlife Care is a non-profit that provides care for injured and orphaned wild animals. Centre Wildlife Care sees over 2,000 animals every year, most of which are during the summer months! We also have some educational animals that are unable to be returned to the wild due to permanent injuries or medical conditions that are used for educational programs. I have volunteered at Centre Wildlife Care since August of 2021, but decided to intern full time over the summer. We spend most of our time feeding and cleaning up after our messy animals! As a volunteer, I learned how to care for animals like baby squirrels and birds. Baby squirrels need to be fed by hand, and they're lots of fun! In order to be an intern, you have to get your pre-exposure rabies vaccines and attend a special training session so you can safely work with species that sometimes carry rabies, such as raccoons and foxes. On the first day of my internship, I was bottle feeding baby raccoons and tube-feeding tiny baby opossums. Baby opossums are not able to suckle, so they have to be fed using a tube. It was a bit scary, but also very exciting to learn! I work from 4 PM - 11 PM, so I get home late every night, but I'm really enjoying the work so far!

If you ever find an orphaned or injured wild animal, please call Centre Wildlife Care at (814) 692-0004 or visit our website at https://centrewildlifecare.org/. We are located in Port Matilda, PA. We can't always take animals due to space, so please call before you bring anything. We also have guidelines for the safe capture and handling of wild animals on our website if you do need to bring something in. And finally, never feed any orphaned or injured wild animal you find! You wouldn't take an injured person to a restaurant, you would take them to the hospital! So don't do that to a wild animal, especially a baby. Centre Wildlife Care has species-appropriate food that you can't get commercially, so let us do what we do best! The most important thing is to get the animal to us, or another wildlife rehabilitator as soon as you can.

Mo, our squirrel educational ambassador

Baby raccoons