Wildlife rehabilitation expert Patti Stangel: “Good luck. God bless. Long life.”

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By LeAnn R. Ralph 

COLFAX  —  Whenever Patti Stangel releases an owl, a bird, a badger — or any of the other wildlife she rehabilitates — she always says, “Good Luck. God bless. Long life.”

Stangel, of Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release Inc., spoke to the Merry Mixers at their June 2 meeting.

Stangel’s wildlife rehabilitation facility is on 830th Avenue, Colfax, and prior to coming to the Merry Mixers meeting at the Grapevine, she had fed her hatchling hawks and owls.

She feeds them every 45 minutes to an hour and a half.

Because of the avian influenza outbreak, several game wardens tried to tell Stangel she had to put down the baby hawks and owls. 

Bird flu is a neurological disease, so once they get to the point where they cannot stand up, “then there’s a problem,” Stangel said.

With avian influenza circulating, Stangel said she has to quarantine all birds that come in to the rehabilitation facility.

After Stangel receives baby birds, she puts them in an incubator. Then they go into a cage, and then they go into an outside cage.

Once they are outside, she feeds and waters them but does not talk to them, and she does not allow any of the volunteers to interact with them.

“The less contact they have with us, the sooner they can go,” Stangel said.

Stangel brought posters with her to the Grapevine of the two eagles she has been able to release.

Over the years, she has taken perhaps 200 birds to the University of Minnesota Raptor Center for rehabilitation.

One of the eagles had been found near Eau Claire, the other was found on state Highway 40 near “the stone cut” south of Colfax after being hit by a car.

“I can’t believe I got to release two eagles in two years,” Stangel said.

Crazy

On Memorial Day weekend this year, Stangel said she received more than 200 telephone calls about wildlife.

In the two days leading up to her presentation at the Grapevine, Stangel received another 125 calls.

“It’s been a crazy year so far,” she said, “I never know what I’m going to be doing from one day to the next.”

To help preserve her sanity, Stangel said she has implemented a new policy this year. If people call but do not leave a message, she will not be calling them back.

When Stangel is able to answer the telephone, she is often speaking with people who are upset about injured wildlife — or wildlife they think is injured.

Like the gentleman who had called on Wednesday, the day before Stangel visited the Grapevine.

The man was calling about an eagle he had seen on the Red Cedar. The eagle was in the water, but then it got out.

Since the Red Cedar is about 100 miles long and flows from Sawyer County to the confluence with the Chippewa River southeast of Dunnville, that’s quite a lot of territory.

Stangel said she spent a significant amount of time trying to determine where on the Red Cedar the man had seen the eagle.

The man said the eagle had gotten out of the water, and Stangel said it was entirely possible the bird was fishing.

Then the man said there was a nest and another eagle flying around overhead.

Eagles protect their nests and will protect each other, Stangel said.

In the end, Stangel never did figure out what exactly may have been wrong with the eagle, if anything, and at any rate, the man had seen the eagle on Saturday but then waited until Wednesday to call her.

“It gets frustrating when people cannot tell me where (they saw the animal) or what is wrong,” she said.

Baby bird

Then there was the woman who called about a baby bird.

The baby bird was on the ground after a wind storm, and the lady, who had five children and was pregnant with her sixth, was “crying her eyes out,” Stangel said.

The woman called Stangel because she felt bad for the baby bird.

When Stangel asked what kind of bird it was, the woman replied, “It’s got feathers.”

After spending a certain amount of time trying to get the woman to calm down, Stangel explained that the baby bird could be a fledgling.

When birds hatch out of their eggs they are hatchlings. When they are in the nest they are nestlings. And when they are learning to fly, they are fledglings, she said.

Stangel said she tells people that fledglings are like freshmen in high school who think they are freshmen in college.

“They take the leap of faith, and then they run,” she said.

By running, the baby birds are strengthening their leg muscles, and through contortions of their wings and bodies, they are strengthening other muscles and are strengthening their wings and shoulders, Stangel said.

When Stangel has fledglings, she helps them exercise by letting them perch on her finger and then holding their feet with her thumb. When she moves her arm down, the fledglings move their wings up, and when she lifts them up, they move their wings down.

The woman who had called about the baby bird called back a day later, and the baby bird had left.

Robins

Stangel also received a call from people who insisted they had found a baby robin.

They were sure it was a robin because they had “checked the book” and had “checked the Internet,” she said.

So, Stangel told them she would meet them at 29 Pines.

When she opened the box, it was not a robin they had found, but a starling.

Starlings are an invasive species and are considered to be a nuisance bird because they are so aggressive, they will force out native species of birds.

Another woman called about four baby robins that were on the ground.

The neighbor children had taken one of them, and she was not sure what to do about the rest.

Turns out the woman was located in Milwaukee — and she called Stangel at 10:30 p.m.

Fawns

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that deer have tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Stangel said the state Department of Natural Resources is not allowing her to take fawns this year.

“They are afraid that either we can give them COVID, or they can give us COVID,” she said.

There are some measures Stangel could take so she would be able to accept fawns, but compliance with DNR restrictions would cost $500.

Stangel said if she has an extra $500, she would rather use it to buy food for the animals already in her care.

Running the wildlife rehabilitation center costs between $3,000 and $4,000 per month, she said.

“When you see a fawn, give it 24 hours because momma will come to move them,” Stangel said.

“The stronger they get, the farther she will move them. If you touch a fawn, no big deal. Just wash your hands,” she said, noting that it is a myth that if you touch the fawn, the mother will not take care of it.

“They are one of those animals that if they look at you, they imprint. I probably imprint as much as they do. The hardest part for me is breaking that bond,” Stangel said.

Last year, Stangel took care of 1,600 animals at Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release.

So far this year, Stangel has released three owls, but then immediately got in three more, so that she still has 17 owls.

She also has had 14 baby squirrels to take care of. She was just able to release six of them, leaving her with eight.

Baby squirrels, Stangel said, think you are a tree and will climb right up your legs and up to your head.

Bunnies

Now is the time of year when people are starting to see an abundance of baby rabbits as well.

People do not understand that the mother rabbit feeds her babies in the morning and then leaves the nest for the day, and then comes back later to feed them again, Stangel said.

Baby rabbits, like fawns, are born without a scent, so the mother, who does have a scent, moves away from where the babies are so the predators will not find them, she said.

“She stays away to protect them,” Stangel said.

People find a nest of baby rabbits, and they think the mother has abandoned the babies, or cats and dogs are starting to find the baby rabbits, which means the babies are starting to get their scent, she said.

“After three weeks, (baby rabbits) are independent of mom,” Stangel said.

“I tell people, she’s going home to get her pearl necklace and her lipstick because she’s getting ready for her next date,” she said.

“In six weeks, (momma rabbit) will have another whole bundle. This goes on from spring until fall. So when I get a bunny call, I think, ‘here we go again,’” Stangel said. 

Many of the telephone calls Stangel receives are from children.

“I love it when they call me back and tell me what they did and that it all worked out fine,” she said.

Stangel covers a 20-county area and says she has the only bird permit from Hudson to Wausau.

“I’m lucky if I get two to three hours of sleep a night,” she said.

In the beginning

Many years ago, Stangel owned Patti’s Restaurant on the south side of Eau Claire.

One of the veterinarians at Oakwood Hills Animal Hospital was going to be doing eye surgery on a screech owl and wanted to know if Stangel would come and take pictures.

While she was at the vet clinic, a customer who came into her restaurant every day, John Owens, came into the clinic.

She asked him what he was doing there, and he said the screech owl was “his owl” and that he operated White Pine Wildlife Rehabilitation.

Stangel offered her services to take photographs for Owen. She went out White Pine, and in not too long, “I was hooked. I’m not married. I don’t have children. This took the place of that,” she said.

After she left the restaurant, Stangel said she became even more involved with volunteering at White Pine and had the thought, “maybe I can do a little good.”

Then John and June decided to close their wildlife rehabilitation operation.

“I went home and cried for a couple of days,” Stangel said.

But then, it dawned on her that she had obtained her wildlife rehabilitation license, so she called the appropriate state and federal agencies to find out what she needed to do to start her own rehabilitation facility.

Since she lived in Eau Claire, she needed to find someplace out in the country.

“I’ve been in Colfax now for 11 years. Everyone has been so wonderful. Colfax is such a nice community,” she said.

Fundraising

One of the members of the Merry Mixers asked Stangel how she funded her wildlife rehabilitation efforts.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Stangel said she was able to hold fund raisers, but of course, she has not been able to do that for the past couple of years.

There is no government funding for wildlife rehabilitation. 

Stangel said she has applied for grants and has gotten a few.

“For the first nine years, I applied for grants, and I was told I was not humanitarian enough,” she said.

Last January, Stangel received an $11,000 grant from the Eau Claire Community Foundation. She is planning to build a 50-foot cage for raptors that will have a containment cage and double doors and locks.

The raptors will be able to start out in the confinement cage, where they will not be able to hurt themselves more, and then they can eventually be released into the larger cage without having to be physically picked up and moved, Stangel said.

Most of the funding Stangel needs now comes from donations.

In addition to financial donations, people can also donate sunflower seeds, nuts or cracked corn, if they wish.

“I’m here to help anytime. If I don’t answer the phone, leave a message.” Stangel said.

Stangel can be reached at 715-832-1462.