06/14/2026
Charles N. Gordon Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, Inc.
HOW TO SAVE A LIFE DURING BABY SEASON.
This time, it’s the life of a rehabber.
I know this will mostly only reach our followers, and so we are preaching to the choir here, but maybe you can pass along an important list of "Don'ts" to those around you.
DON’T ASSUME that because you know that a rehabber loves animals that they can take more. We know that you desperately want to help the animal you have found. So do we. But if we took every animal in need, there would be carriers and crates stacked to the ceiling and no one able to care for them. There just aren’t enough of us.
DON’T GUILT US. People who become rehabbers are givers, caregivers, empaths, helpers. We are volunteers who have given up everything, our family, our free time, our sleep, our money, our sanity, to save these animals. The HARDEST thing about this work is learning to say no. It kills us all inside not to be able to help, to save. The idea of an animal needing us and we can’t take it haunts us. HAUNTS us. Long after you have forgotten about it. Trust me on this.
DON’T MAKE US FEEL WE AREN’T DOING ENOUGH. There is a reason the su***de rate in the animal profession is the highest of any. We are giving our all to breaking point. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH OF US, it’s not that we aren’t each enough. Some can take one litter, some can take 20. Each number is different, but trust that we are ALL maximizing. ALL OF US. It is not as easy as it looks on the internet.
DON’T THREATEN US. There are too many animals in need and not enough rehabbers to save them. Full stop. Telling us if we can’t take an animal it will be euthanized is not fair. It is abusive. Find another alternative or try to figure something out. It cannot all be on us. We are already doing more than almost anyone else to try to be a solution.
DON’T IGNORE THE TRUTH. Just because an animal in need has come to you and you are desperate to help it, doesn’t mean that there aren’t ten other people who feel exactly the same way who have already called us that day. Who have cried and pleaded. Who need us to be the hero. Your situation isn’t any more or less deserving than all of those other people’s who are trying to find help.
DON’T YELL AT US. One more time for those in the back. Rehabbers are all exhausted, feeling inadequate. Pushing ourselves. Judging ourselves. Trying to be superhuman because we love these animals. Volunteering to do this at our own expense. Telling us we don’t care because we can’t help you is a gut punch some of us can’t survive. We will each hit a point where it’s too much and we want to give up. If you make us quit because you are the last straw, that is even fewer animals who will be saved and another tragedy.
DON’T ASSUME that you know everything about what another person is going through. We can never know. Some people only post the positive. Some don’t have time or energy to post. Some want to be brave. Just because people don’t show their struggles doesn’t mean they aren’t there, real, or privately completely overwhelming.
And perhaps the biggest of all:
DON’T DROP OFF ANIMALS IF WE HAVE SAID NO. Saying no to intakes is THE hardest thing for us. We are rehabbers. We can’t look at those faces and not do something either. Drop offs are a criminal level of disrespect. We are all recognizing our limits, sometimes too late. Forcing more on us can break us. If we have mustered the emotional strength to close for quarantine reasons and you unknowingly bring us babies who are sick, and we lose 50 more we have already brought through because you didn’t listen when we said no, you cannot possibly understand the devastation that brings.
Someone who ignores the limit and drops off six babies anyway and then goes home and goes swimming, or has a barbeque, or goes to sleep, or sees their family, or goes on vacation, or does any of the things that all of us give up because we want to help these babies DOES NOT GET TO CALL THEMSELVES A HERO. They did ten minutes of work and just gave a rehabber months of anguish. The only thing we can control is the feeling that we are deciding what we can take on. We make the choice. Taking that away is the most abusive thing you can do to a rehabber. It can ruin their marriage, their life, their health, or their desire to do this. This is not hyperbole. We are all drowning out here this time of year.
I am not whining or complaining. I don’t usually post with this tone, but, I am trying to shed light and give inside perspective on the reality of the field out here. Unless you have lived through a rehab season as a rehabber, with the relentless demands and phone calls, with the expectations others (and you) place on you, you simply cannot understand from words alone.
We are here, sweating in our gowns and gloves at all hours of the day and night, sitting alone holding a baby we fought with day after day, hoping, trying, fighting right with them, doing everything we could, but watching the life ebb away anyway. We are crying but we don’t have time to grieve. Our heads know we did all we could, but our hearts don’t, our doubts don’t, our anguish doesn’t. But we have to go on because there are more mouths to feed and more cages to clean more phone calls to pick up but we don’t have the right answers. There is the constant pressure of having lives in our hands. Every decision means a potential to make a mistake. We are all fragile right now, we are all exhausted, we are all maxed out. We are all incredulous and terrified that it’s only June. We need help and we need kindness and understanding.
And a note to the other rehabbers who are in the same boat: Please, let's try to hold each other up. Not attack each other, not resent each other. We are each where we are and we are all there for the same reasons: to save these lives. Can we love and support and respect each other? Can we trust that we are all giving all we can and doing all we can. And tell each other we understand, and that it’s enough. We see you, we honor you, we are grateful to you. Hang in there and let’s try to love each other so we can continue to love these precious animals.
