All Creatures
The Great and Small Are Finding Their Way out of the Woods and into Backyards
By Lisa Gregory
At first, Frederick resident Susan Ledford thought it was a big black dog. “It was down the street, like five houses down,” she says. “And it was in front of the neighbor’s SUV. So, I went to check its collar.”
As she got closer, however, she realized, “It wasn’t a dog,” she says. It was a bear.
The juvenile black bear was making his way around her Monocacy Meadows neighborhood near East Street. “The yearling bears become active in the springtime and may be seen in outskirt neighborhoods as they are seeking out their own territory,” says Sgt. Maggie Hill of Frederick County Animal Control.
In recent years, efforts to protect black bears have led to their growth. “The population’s starting to increase to a point where people are starting to notice them more than they had in the past,” says Jonathan Trudeau, game mammal section leader with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife and Heritage Service. “It’s a combination of more people and more bears.”
Photo courtesy Carla McFarland
For those coming face to face with black bears, “I tell everyone just really appreciate and enjoy the experience,” says Trudeau. “Black bears are dangerous, but they’re not grizzlies. They’re much more likely to flee an area. If the bear knows you’re there, just talk to it calmly and make yourself look a little bit bigger. Then just back away slowly. The most important thing is to ensure that you never corner a bear. Because the last thing you want to do is make it feel trapped. So, always ensure that it has a way out.”
Black bears are not the only wildlife Frederick County residents are encountering more frequently these days. “We have more and more animals coming from Frederick every year as Frederick becomes more and more developed and animals become displaced,” says Maureen Smith, president of Second Chance Wildlife Center in Gaithersburg.
In 2021, according to Smith, 155 of the wild animals admitted to Second Chance were from Frederick County. In 2022 that number grew to 220. And, in 2023, the number was 291. “An 88 percent increase in just three years,” she says.
Animal Control has seen its numbers rise, as well. In 2010, the agency reported 356 injured wildlife animals, a number that grew to 537 last year. During the same time period, reports of sick wildlife increased from 120 to 316.
“A sick animal may be suspected of having rabies or have obvious hair loss or discharge from the eyes, nose, mouth, etc.,” says Hill. “While an injured call may be an animal hit by a car or has an obvious injury such as a broken wing.”
“We see a lot of injured raptors,” says Barbara Stastny, a veterinarian at Opossum Pike Veterinary Clinic in Frederick, one of only a few veterinary hospitals in the state licensed to treat injured wildlife. “When you drive up Route 15, you’ll see the red-tailed hawks sitting on the light posts because the area is mowed, and it is easier to catch prey in the short grass. They’ll sit there and go swooping down for them. And when they do, they’re getting hit by cars.”
Photo courtesy Chrissy Szemere Miller/Szemere Photography
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
Those called upon to humanely remove wildlife and help prevent intrusion are also seeing an increase in activity, including squirrels, birds, groundhogs and bats, among others. “Before all the building and construction and housing started going up, and animals started losing their habitats and looking for places of refuge, I actually had to go out of the county to do my work,” says Tim Ryan, owner of ABC All Wildlife Removal, who has been in the business for nearly 25 years. These days, he says, there is enough local business.
Individual stories of wildlife encounters are many. Besides the bear she initially thought was a dog, Ledford has come across other wildlife, including in Downtown Frederick. “I was going to lunch with some friends,” she says, “and a deer came running up the sidewalk and was so frightened it ran itself into a parking meter post and ended up breaking its leg.” The deer was euthanized.
Cynthia Rowan found a red-eared slider turtle in Downtown Frederick. “Nowhere near water,” she says. “We relocated it.”
Other wildlife fall victim to intentional human cruelty. Linda Webb came upon a dead male and baby Canada geese hit by an automobile on Guilford Drive, near Walmart. “People will purposefully hit them,” says Webb, becoming emotional in recalling the story. “The poor momma was pacing back and forth honking for her mate. It was very devastating to watch.”
But there are happier endings as well. Carla McFarland was driving home on Ijamsville Road with her husband and daughter when they spied something on the side of the road. A very odd-looking something. “It was like the creepiest, ugliest little thing ever,” she says with a chuckle. “I couldn’t figure out what it was. I knew it was a bird just not what kind.”
Photo courtesy Second Chance Wildlife Center
She knew it needed help as it sat on the hot pavement on a sweltering July day, squawking very loudly. The family picked up the baby bird, later determined to be a blue heron, and took it to Frisky’s Wildlife and Primate Sanctuary in Woodstock. “He seemed calmer,” McFarland says of the bird’s arrival at Frisky’ s, “like he knew it was going to be OK now.”
For wildlife rehabbers, their work is often a labor of love. “There’s not a lot of financial support for wildlife rehab,” says Colleen Layton-Robbins, founder of Frisky’ s. “We ask every person who brings us an animal to please consider making a donation to help pay for that animal’s care. Maybe one out of 10 people are willing to do that. The rest of the expense comes out of our pocket.”
SUCCESS AND CAUTION
But despite the challenges, including the heartbreak when a wild animal does not survive or cannot be released back into the wild, there are many success stories, even some unusual ones, like the eastern rat snake with a white bulge in its belly. “There was a huge hole in its skin and a foreign object in the stomach that had poked through,” says Second Chance veterinarian Kelsey Lance. “The snake obviously couldn’t eat with that object lodged in its stomach. It had probably been there for months.”
Lance performed surgery on the snake. “I removed an object, which turned out to be the head of a gearshift knob for a manual car,” she says. The snake recovered and when Second Chance posted about the incident on its social media, there was much interest in the gear shift knob by car enthusiasts. But Lance wasn’t interested. “It’s on my shelf of treasures,” she says with a grin.
While the person who brought the snake in for care did the right thing, other wildlife can suffer unduly as a result of a lack of proper knowledge and information. “A couple of years ago I had somebody bring me birds,” says Layton-Robbins. “They were giving the baby birds milk every two hours. It’s a bird, not a mammal.”
Photo courtesy Chrissy Szemere Miller/Szemere Photography
It is always best to refer to the experts, says Christine Hajek, founder of Gentle Friends Farm Animal and Wildlife Sanctuary in Mount Airy. “I think the most important precaution is to contact somebody who is licensed and knowledgeable before you take any steps.”
Much like Layton-Robbins, Hajek finds the lack of knowledge and information distressing. “One of my favorite animals is the fox,” she says. “It’s very normal in springtime when the foxes are having their kits, they will hunt morning and night. But if mom had a bad hunt at dawn, she is got to feed those fox kits and she’s going to keep hunting until she’s successful. And I’m always amazed at the lack of education and understanding about that. The fear reaction that people have [is] when they see a fox during the day so it must have rabies and they need to kill it.”
Often it is best to just leave nature alone, says Clarissa Harris, a wildlife response manager for the western region for DNR’s Wildlife and Heritage Service. “Nature takes care of its own,” she says.
A good example is fawns, says Hill of Animal Control. “When fawns are just born it is completely normal for the doe to leave them alone and only come to nurse them twice a day,” says Hill. “This is because the fawns cannot run quickly to escape predators yet and they also do not have a very strong scent that would attract predators. So, the fawn is actually safe left alone and mom is nearby, and once it is strong enough to follow mom they will go on their way.”
Photo courtesy Chrissy Szemere Miller/Szemere Photography
Not everyone abides by this advice, however, Hill adds. “We get calls every single year from well-meaning folks who found what they consider an abandoned baby deer and brought it inside their house or put it in their car or inside a dog crate. We have to then educate these folks and explain to them how to return the fawn right back where they found it. Wildlife will always be better off in the wild.”
This is true for fledgling birds as well. Many people see them and become concerned when they remain on the ground and do not fly away in a timely fashion. Not to worry, says Stastny. “A fledgling has just left the nest,” she says. “It’s going to take it a few hours, [maybe] half a day, to learn how to fly well enough to get away.”
PEOPLE CAN HELP
But sometimes human intervention is needed. “If the animal appears to be struggling, if there is an apparent injury, very apparent—you know, blood, things like that—or it’s laying on its side when it’s not supposed to be … it definitely has something wrong with it. Then we encourage folks to give us a call,” Harris says.
Special concern regarding wildlife encounters are people “being exposed to disease, rabies being the one major disease that is very prevalent in our area, especially in our raccoons, our foxes [and] our skunks, which we call our rabies vector species. So, we encourage folks to not handle wildlife,” she says. “We may ask them to quarantine the animal, put a bucket over it or put it in an enclosure so that it can’t get away and we can find it. But we don’t encourage people to handle it in any way.”
Not all care even needs to be hands-on. There are indirect and proactive ways to assist wildlife, such as limiting the use of artificial lighting. “Birds migrate at night,” says Luke Macaulay, a faculty member and a wildlife management specialist with the University of Maryland’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. As such birds and even bats can become entrapped in areas of bright lights, circling endlessly, depleting energy stores needed for migration and even colliding with buildings and infrastructure.”
Photo courtesy Carla McFarland
This can be a problem in city streets or suburban neighborhoods. “In the spring and fall, lights like city lights and other lights in people’s homes that are bright and shine up into the air can cause a lot of confusion for these birds,” says Macaulay.
Lights Out Baltimore attempting to change that. According to the nonprofit organization, more than 7,000 birds have been found dead or injured since monitoring Baltimore streets began in 2008. Lights Out Baltimore’s goal is to reduce the use of decorative lighting in the city, especially during migration months.
Other proactive efforts may be as personal and simple as confining or restraining your pet dog or cat. “If you have a bunny nest in the yard, put your dog out on a leash for that period of time when that nest is there,” says Stastny. “Or, if you have a fledgling in your yard, you can put the cat in the house for a few hours.”
Efforts big or small, direct or indirect, all matter, says Hajek, in helping preserve the natural world around us. “Can you imagine a world without wildlife in it?” she asks. “Because I can’t.”