Animal Lovers League

10/01/2024

Chloe is getting acquainted with the feline part of her new family. Here she is with BeeBee. Great progress :-)

09/22/2024

Beautiful day to catch up in the garden. I've got a new supervisor on the job.

09/18/2024

The Animal Lovers League mourns the death of a great friend and lover of animals, Susan Palmirotto. Her beloved 10-year-old dog, Chloe, has been adopted by the Animal Lover's president. Chloe will be showered with the love and attention that Susie always provided her. Susan's family and multitude of friends will miss her so much, and she will live on in all the happy memories.

05/26/2024

Do you know who the turtle mutilator is? It may be a kid who doesn’t know any better. It may be an adult who thought it was harmless. It may— in the worst-case scenario— be someone who knows how bad this is, but enjoys doing it anyway.

Someone in Hixson has been painting local box turtles. A kind person has cared enough to get help for two of them. One didn’t survive. This one, seen here after the finder spent a lot of time carefully removing the paint, is much luckier and should be okay.

Turtle shells aren’t dead like your fingernails. They are living tissue, like your own flesh. They are full of blood vessels, nerve endings, and skin. They can get hurt and infected. They can absorb toxins. When they are covered in paint, it blocks their ability to create vitamin D from sunlight and it can poison them. It also removes their natural camouflage, leaving them very open to predation by dogs, coyotes, and other predators, and it may even impact their ability to reproduce, since box turtles use coloration to identify mates and members of their own species.

It is not a coincidence that someone found multiple turtles with paint on their shell in one neighborhood. It means that someone nearby does this whenever they see a turtle. If that person is you, please stop. You may not mean harm, but you’re causing it.

Thank you to the finder for helping to safely remove the paint from this beautiful girl’s shell.

12/23/2023

Friends, fellow rescuers, rescue groups! Please help us find this man's service dog, lost in Glen Cove. Cross-post everywhere, by now someone has picked him up. Call Glen Cove Police 516-676-1000 or message me. Let's get him home for Christmas!

11/06/2023

We receive dozens of calls every year about raccoons who have become “scary” or “annoying” after being fed by humans. Because For Fox Sake is not authorized to remove or relocate nuisance animals, these calls were referred to nuisance wildlife operators, who under state law are required to kill them. This happens all over the country and leads to the death of thousands of innocent animals every year.

While you may be fine with raccoons getting used to your hand-outs, your neighbors are likely to disagree. Raccoons who approach humans for food are often mistaken for being rabid, or they may cause damage to a neighbor’s home by breaking into trash cans and attics. This is a death sentence for the animal.

In general, feeding wildlife isn’t a good idea. But, if you insist on giving a hand to your local trash pandas, please do so in broad daylight when they’re nowhere to be seen and NEVER feed them directly by hand. For the safety of the animals, don’t let them figure out that you’re the source of their snacks.

10/21/2023

Seeing chipmunks scurrying around? You might be tempted to catch and relocate them to prevent the little holes they might make in your lawn. Please don’t! Relocation isn’t a humane solution, especially this time of year. A chipmunk spends the entirety of fall collecting an enormous stash of nuts and acorns for its underground larder. When winter arrives, it retreats to its burrow and eats only food it was able to store in the preceding months.

When you relocate a chipmunk, you take it away from its hard-earned stash of winter food, leaving it to starve. Chipmunks relocated to new areas are also often chased away by competitors and left without any space for warmth and safety.

Please leave your chipmunk neighbors in peace! They mean you no harm and are simply trying to survive.

10/21/2023

Now that we have skunks returning to Long Island, this is an important read...

Well-meaning home owners often relocate skunks because they’re bothered by occasional whiffs of musk. It may seem like relocating an animal is a humane form of pest control, but it’s unfortunately not. Every year, thousands of mother skunks are taken away from their babies, who are left to die brutal, painful deaths by starvation. Skunks are extremely sensitive animals and doting mothers, so this separation is also very traumatic for the adult.

The mama skunk isn’t likely to make it, either. A skunk relocated to unfamiliar territory, particularly during breeding season, is likely to die of exposure or starvation, or to be killed by rivals. She may also spread or catch diseases, some as serious as rabies, without showing any obvious symptoms.

Because of this, many states including Tennessee have laws prohibiting the capture and release of skunks anywhere besides the property where they were found. Please see the coexisting section of our website for tips on humanely repelling nuisance wildlife.

10/02/2023

Another benefit of leaving the leaves we don't often realize...the animals and birds who need them.

If you’d ever seen how quickly our raccoon patients can devour twenty pounds of acorns or forage through six inches of fallen leaves for bugs, you’d understand exactly why there’s no need to “clean up” the gifts trees leave us in autumn!

Many native animals in our area cannot survive winter without the bounty of nuts, acorns, and other seeds falling from trees in fall. These high-fat, high-protein foods help animals like deer, raccoons, opossums, turkeys, and even bears fatten up before the annual famine, while animals like squirrels, chipmunks, and jays depend on storing enough to last the entire season. When we bag them up and send them away to be composted or burned, all of our wild neighbors miss out!

Fallen leaves are also essential for the survival of wildlife in winter. Turtles, frogs, salamanders, and beneficial insects and microbes need the warmth and shelter they provide, and scavengers and predators, in turn, need to eat these smaller critters to make it through winter.

Even branches and twigs that fall from trees are very important. Brush piles and fallen branches act as shelters for many mammals, including raccoons, turkeys, opossums, skunks, rabbits, groundhogs, quail, and songbirds. Bear in mind that— while leaving brushpiles alone is generally fine here in Southeast Tennessee—it may be unsafe in certain seasons and areas due to fire risk, so check with your local authorities to be certain.

If you must “clean up” whatever your trees are dropping this time of year, please sweep or rake them into a pile but leave them alone without burning or shredding them. You can be a savior for your local wild animals simply by letting trees do what trees do!