Oh, it is so cute and tempting to buy...that cute little yellow chick or fuzzy duckling.  But, please remember to GET STUFFED.  Buy your children a stuffed animal instead. EAch Spring season tiny bundles of fluff are purchased, but when they grow up they are 'dumped' onto local lakes, ponds and streams with no chance to survive. You are not giving these animals their 'freedom' but rather you are giving them days and weeks of misery and pain and eventual death since they do not have the skills to survive in a natural habitat. So, please pass up that display of live chicks and ducklings and GET STUFFED instead. It's the right thing to do.

View our photo gallery of rescues and they might make you smile. Some of the critters that you see pictured have become an important part of East Valley Wildlife's education program...Lisa's Creatures. This is an invertactive program for children where they can meet different animals 'up close and personal'. Some are domesticated animals like guinea pigs, chickens and ducks...other animals in the program are more exotic like a patagonia cavy, a cuscus, and a fennec fox.  The program is designed to give children an intimate look at wildlife, teach respect, and offer information about taking care of pets. The program is available through Gilbert, Arizona Parks and Recreation.   

Baby bird season has begun in the Valley of the Sun, here is Arizona. Many of you from the area will notice the great activity in recent weeks of nest building, singing and other signs that the volunteers of East Valley Wildlife will soon be very busy. East Valley Wildlife, also known as EVW, has been in existence since 1989. Since that time our organization has rescued, rehabbed and released more native birds and small mammals than we can count. We also try to educate people about what to do if they find an injured or orphaned animal. Part of the education process also involves identifying when a baby bird or small mammal is truly an orphan. Often the bird is on the ground, but still being fed by the parent birds. Sometimes, when a nest blows out of a tree it is possible to replace the nest, with no harm to the fledglings inside. Often a baby bird falls from a nest. The best rescue is when you can replace the baby back into the nest. One of the fallacies is that a bird will not return to a nest if a human has touched it. This is not true. If the nest can be safely replaced in the tree, near the original site, that is better than having a volunteer hand-raise the baby birds. Likewise, people find baby cottontails/rabbits near a burrow and think they have been abandoned. The mother cottontail only returns to the burrow infrequently to feed the babies, usually in the early evening. There is no reason to remove the babies unless the burrow is in danger. Visit our website at www.eastvalleywildlife.org to get help with bird identification.