Raging Rehbbers

I was thinking about this even before the untimely passing of Mikayla Raines, but her story just drove the point home further for me.

Rescue people are intense.  And they can be crazy.

No, I'm not calling Ms. Raines being crazy.  I'm talking about all of the rehab and rescue folks, people who should, ostensibly, have the best idea of what she's going through, who cheerfully decided to dog-pile on and drive this woman to her grave.  I'm really not surprised.

Unlike zookeepers, who work together as part of a team, and therefore have each other to fall back upon for support even in the darkest of times (and who are able to, you know, take a day off now and then because someone else can cover the section), or veterinarians who work out of a hospital as part of a practice, small-scale rescue and rehab people are typically alone.  All of the pressure and stress of their role falls squarely on their shoulders, they have to make the decisions themselves, so when something goes wrong, they feel like it's all on them.  They literally hold powers of life and death over various creatures, who may either be returned to the wild,. kept in human care forever, or die based on the decisions that their caretakers make.

It's enough to wear a lot of people down.  I've also seen it really turn some people bitter, hostile, and angry at the world, convinced that they are the only "good guy" (usually good gal), the only person who really cares about animals, and everyone else is either a villain, an idiot, or an idiotic villain.

A small zoo that I worked at over a decade ago wanted to hold a "Pet Awareness" day, themed around exotic pet ownership, seeing as many of our animals were former pets.  We had talks and demos focused around a variety of animals, from chinchillas and cockatoos to Burmese pythons and green iguanas, and we invited someone from a local reptile rescue to join us to give talks.  My idea was that we would talk about the challenges in keeping some pets, encourage visitors who wanted pets to do their research, and consider animals that were more in line with the resources and level of care they had available.

This lady did an angry rant at every visitor about how anyone keeping a pet reptile was a monster - I had three at the time, but never mind that, this lady had a veritable warehouse of them - and that even a leopard gecko was beyond the abilities of all but experts such as herself.  After she (finally) left, she sent a long, handwritten letter detailing all the things that she though were wrong with our reptile collection, based on her observations, which did not go behind the scenes or into any real depth.  I was shocked.  Most of the stuff she wrote was so amateurishly incorrect, based on old husbandry folklore.  We were wrong for keeping desert reptiles... on sand?  For not having a pool big enough for our leopard tortoise to swim in?  She had lots of opinions and lots of rage, and not much room for else.

At another zoo, we wanted a tarantula for our education program, and I decided to look into adopting one from a rescue that had one a few counties over.  I was sent an application which, if I'd printed it off, would have weighed several times what the spider did, and would've squashed it if dropped on it.  I'm pretty sure that there was a question to the effect of, "Have you ever stepped on a spider of any kind, or any reason, regardless of what age you were?  If so, roll up this application and beat yourself with it."  We did end up adopting the spider, but man, that was a lot of paperwork and testimonials and references...

Later at that same facility, I was told by volunteers that there was a woman at the main gate with an owl to see me.  When I arrived, I found a rehabber that I was sort of familiar with holding a cardboard box, telling me she had a great horned owl for the zoo.  I peeked inside and saw an owl, standing among what I later confirmed were several partially eaten drumsticks of fried chicken.   When I told her that I wasn't in a position to take in yet another rescue owl at the moment - no room at the inn, as we already had several - least of all in the middle of a busy Saturday, she put down the box, pulled out the startled owl, and began waiving it around, yelling to anyone in earshot about how it was going to die if I didn't take it, look into its eyes and say I didn't want to save it, etc.

So yeah, I've seen what being a rehabber or rescuer can do a person working it alone, or as part of a very small team. The simmering, self-righteous fury - and how it can be directed , unleashed upon someone who they disapprove of, sometimes with tragic results.  If they can make someone else the bad guy, the person who doesn't care, who fails the animals, than that means, to them, that they can still be the good guy, who's doing everything right.