Early Friday evening I rescued a baby squirrel who had fallen from a tree in my yard. I had been watching it for some time in the tree as it was making a very distressed call. When it fell, I first called my county animal wildlife provider and had to leave a message as it was around 5pm. Then I called my vet who provided me with Flint Creek's information. Again I had to leave a message. My county wildlife provider claims a 24/7 service. Flint Creek claims they have office hours until 6pm and will respond in a timely fashion.
Flint Creek did not respond in a timely fashion to say the least. It has a detailed flow chart on its website about care of rescue critters for up to 6 hours. I heard nothing from them Friday evening at any time. And I had to rely solely on the information from their website that only listed for care for 6 hours. I ended up going to bed praying the little one would even make it through the night.
It was not until a sent them an e-mail Saturday morning at 7:30AM pointing out their lapse and questioning their attention to wildlife care, and at the time thinking my rescue had passed away, that they finally responded - about an hour later. Then I was given information about keeping the little one warm only - and that seemed to ease some of its discomfort.
I was given an "appointment" to drop off my critter and told about the donation policy as was mentioned in another Report. I fully understand the need for both disclaimers up front as they are a privately funded organization that has high overhead and animals to keep safe.
I dropped off my critter and it was examined and declared dehydrated, about 4 weeks old and probably had been without its mother for 3 days. I also was told to watch for others as there are usually litters of 2-3.
Then I was harangued about my e-mail. Dawn expected me to apologize for daring to call them out on a lack of timely response that they claim through their voicemail and website to provide. I had an animal in distress and she was more concerned about an e-mail. She gave me a story about messages being "routed" to a different "mailbox" and they didn't discover that until 10P. It only barely crossed her mind to call at that hour, which she never did. She never apologized to me for the delay in responding to my messages. And she told me to take any additional animals I found to another wildlife rehabilitation facility in the future.
I'll gladly take them there. I've used them before and they are great to work with.
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