It’s a typical summer afternoon at the Hope for Wildlife rehabilitation centre. A snapping turtle dozes on an operating table, heavily sedated, while Dr. Mikaela Jahncke super glues metal hooks along the sides of a two-inch crack on her shell, the result of an unlucky collision with a car. Pulled together by surgical wire, it will hopefully heal over the next few months.
In an isolation room nearby, an eagle sits quietly in the dark; he was discovered on a road, unable to fly, the cause a mystery. Two dozen litters of baby raccoons mew and tussle with their siblings in the nursery upstairs. A young seal flashes his head out of a pool to assess the view, then dives away; he was found skinny and alone on a beach, suffering from pneumonia.
A call on the hotline, answered seven days a week, results in an imminent arrival: A chipmunk, badly bitten by a cat, is on its way.
Every year, the team of staff and interns at the centre in Seaforth, N.S., treat 7,000 patients like these, nursing roughly 250 different species back to health, and returning most of them to the wild.
They care for starlings with broken wings, bobcats caught in snares, porcupines and crows poisoned by lead pellets, and the occasional malnourished seal pup. They nurse orphaned goslings and beavers into adulthood, and repair the cracked shells of dozens of endangered turtles.
Evidence of nature’s remarkable resilience inhabits every enclosure, recovery unit, and nursery on the 21-acre complex, located 40 kilometres along the eastern shore from Halifax.
A deaf and blind barred owl is cared for at Hope for Wildlife.
Hope Swinimer is the founder and director of Hope for Wildlife rehabilitation centre, which she opened 25 years ago in Seaforth, N.S.
“Every animal out there will blow you away with its intelligence, the way it communicates, what it endures, and its passion to survive,” says Hope Swinimer, a certified veterinary practice manager who founded the rehab centre in 1997.
For Ms. Swinimer, those years have also highlighted the similarities between her own species and the ones she saves each day: the negative effects of trauma, the benefits of play, the way loneliness can derail recovery but social support can hasten healing.
In recent decades, science has expanded our understanding of the emotional lives of non-human animals – and not just the ones that hog our sofas and purr for their dinner. Research suggests that octopuses have personalities and elephants experience a version of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Chronic stress in wild animals causes both behavioral and physical changes, much like in humans. And like humans, animals exhibit an impressive ability to adapt to adversity, and recover.
Spend enough time with wild animals, Ms. Swinimer says, and the lessons that humans can learn from the natural world reveal themselves: take only what you need, keep your footprint small, trust your instincts, value your companions. Wild animals, she says, “are at peace with their own natures.”
Scientists are still figuring out how this research can inform humanity’s relationship with nature. In this regard, Ms. Swinimer and her team are put in their place almost every day. For instance, she asks, would nature, which requires moderation and reciprocity, rank human intelligence as the most valuable? She’s doubtful.
“A human being might starve to death before they figure out how to get that nut out of that shell.”
At Hope for Wildlife, no injured wild creature is turned away, not even pesky red squirrels. “Why care about a squirrel or a starling?” says Ms. Swinimer. “It is about the health and well-being of the entire ecosystem. You are either a steward of the natural world or you are not.”
Imagine, she says, if a child brought in an injured squirrel and was told, “No, that one is not important.” What message, she asks, would that send? That we think we can pick and choose what nature needs?
Besides, she points out, the centre is usually repairing the damage that humans cause by colliding with the wild world in careless, and sometimes deliberately cruel, ways.
Ms. Swinimer is explaining her philosophy of giving every animal a second chance when a furry example interrupts her mid-sentence. She’s in her apartment above one of the centre’s buildings when something bangs at the sliding doors to her deck – and bright, brown eyes peer through the glass. “Excuse me for a minute,” she says, “I need to get Brook’s lunch.”
Brook the otter was just a baby, weighing less than a loaf of bread, when he arrived at the centre in the spring of 2023. He was rescued by an elderly couple who found him in a ditch after watching their neighbour toss away what they thought was a dead rat. He was barely breathing, and Ms. Swinimer cared for him personally; young otters, like beavers, need a proxy for maternal care to survive.
A fox cub, one of only two cubs from a litter of four that survived the deadly avian flu.
Late last fall, he was given a soft release into the lake next door. For a time, Ms. Swinimer would dangle her feet in the water at the dock and Brook would sit beside her. She sees him less often now, but he still shows up occasionally for lunch. On this afternoon, he is devouring a raw chicken breast from the overflowing bowl Ms. Swinimer placed on the deck. “I am hoping he will find a girlfriend,” Ms. Swinimer says, “and that will be that.”
The staff often watch with wonder as animals make surprising recoveries, adapt to injuries, and build social connections with new companions. Ms. Swinimer still remembers her very first orphaned otter pup playfully sliding down a hill during the first snow, even though he’d had no mother to show him how. And the bobcat who came in with a snare wound so tightly around his body that it had pierced his stomach lining; Dr. Jahncke operated for four hours, stitched him up, and, a few months later, he was released into the wild.
Hope Swinimer gently comforts a young fawn at the animal rescue centre.
As Dr. Jahncke observes, what animals need in a crisis is often the same as what humans require: expert acute care and patient-centred recovery. She’s seen how chronic stress can stall an animal’s rehabilitation, recalling the young fox, who paced and cried in his enclosure, with a wound that wouldn’t heal. When the staff moved him to a quieter location, gave him places to hide out of sight, and made him search for his food rather than serve it to him on a plate, he settled down, accepted his medication more easily and was soon released.
When they don’t have to compete for food, Ms. Swinimer says, even the loner types welcome each other’s company. Among the collection of couples, a pair of geese – Bruiser and Catya – sunbathe with the ducks.
Bruiser was sent to the centre after he knocked down an elderly lady at a park; each spring, he and Catya now appear to appoint themselves doting grandparents over a flock of ducklings.
Meanwhile, in a large enclosure, Frankie and Ben, the foxes, are keeping their distance as they adjust slowly to life together. “If you lived alone for seven years you wouldn’t want some man just moving in either,” quips Ms. Swinimer. They are among the centre’s permanent residences, animals who, for various reasons, can’t be released back into nature. Frankie came in with severe head trauma and is now virtually blind, and Ben was shaken by a dog, and requires medication every day to prevent seizures.
There’s also Jessie, an orphaned bobcat. He was found by a hunter who tried to raise him as a pet. After a child fell on him and broke his back, a vet seized Jessie and sent him to the centre. He survived against the odds, but is so tame, he couldn’t exist in the wild.
Jessie lives in a large enclosure full of trees, a space he shares with a brain-damaged bobcat – nicknamed Neanderthal – who was run over by a snowplow, and now stares blankly at approaching humans. “This isn’t normal,” Ms. Swinimer says. “He should be hissing at us to stay away.”
Neanderthal’s a wait-and-see case – brain injuries have uncertain outcomes, even with the expert care offered by Hope for Wildlife.
Neanderthal, a bobcat who suffered brain damage after being hit by a snowplow, is being rehabilitated at Hope for Wildlife.
The centre, which is funded entirely by private donations, has the equipment of a high-end animal hospital – an ultrasound and digital X-ray, as well as machines to test for lead and analyze blood. In the food-prep room, the fridge is stacked with labelled plates full of mice, fish and meat for the carnivores, seeds and veggies for the rest. The centre is staffed by two vets, and a rotating team of interns who are provided housing nearby; three triage centres around the province also receive animals in crisis.
The staff are careful not to handle the animals more than necessary, or talk loudly around them, as they need to maintain a fear of humans to go back to the wild. They can eat lunch, however, with Buddy, the eagle, who appreciates their company in his enclosure – from a distance.
Buddy, a bald eagle, suffered a broken spinal cord, head, and wing trauma after being hit by a car.
As Dr. Jahncke points out, the staff often provide care without knowing what happened to an animal – their pain and need is enough to respond with patience and empathy. For her, it’s a reminder that people are the same, with their own hidden stories.
Working here, “makes us better people,” says Ms. Swinimer. Perhaps, she says, “it even helps fix something broken in the human.”
Ms. Swinimer worries that humans have lost the same instinctive intelligence she observes of wild animals, replacing it with obsessive ambition and a never-ending chase for more than we need.
Compared to constant human striving, the otter is content with a big fish, and the beaver with its humble log. “The essence of nature works so beautifully together,” she says, “and we have gone too far the other way.”
Yet interactions with visitors to the centre show her that people are keen to connect with nature and contribute to its restoration. Ms. Swinimer was recently approached in a restaurant by a couple who had brought in a hawk with a damaged wing. When he healed, he was released on their property. “It was the most amazing experience,” they told her. “Two years later, we still see him flying around.”
“Never underestimate nature,” Ms. Swinimer says.
As proof: by the end of July, the seal pup who had pneumonia has been successfully released back into the sea, now a healthy 40 kilograms. The turtle is still resting, her crack beginning to heal.
The staff never figured out what was wrong with the eagle; they suspect he might have ingested some kind of toxic material. “Maybe he just needed a rest,” Ms. Swinimer says. In any event, after two attempts to get him flying again, he soared over a two-metre fence and disappeared.
Ben has been observed sleeping in Frankie’s cubby, and while Frankie isn’t joining him, Ms. Swinimer notes that she hasn’t kicked him out either.
As for Brook, Ms. Swinimer hasn’t seen him for weeks. She imagines him making babies somewhere in the lake, his belly full of fish, just as nature intended.