Tough turtles taken home
TONY AMOS

A green jay, cerulean warbler, two baby black-chinned hummingbirds, a hedgehog, a screech owl baby, a great kiskadee trapped in a warehouse, a 200-lb loggerhead sea turtle entangled in rope, the bed of my truck doubling as an operating room, five big loggerheads released from the beach and a trip in a gleaming white cabin cruiser to release twelve ridleys as well as Puff Daddy and a loggerhead.

These have been just some of the patients coming and going and events happening at the ARK recently. With the year not yet half over we have taken in 350 birds and more than 60 sea turtles (in addition to the 30 or so that spent the winter at the ARK waiting for the water to warm up and shrimping to stop offshore).

Green jays are rare nesters in this area and the fledgling we got last week had been knocked out of its nest by the strong thunderstorms of recent days in Mathis, injuring its head. The beautiful migrant cerulean warbler was a huge hit with birders at Paradise Pond when it was released after recovering at the ARK from flying into a window.

Born free COURTESY PHOTO Guy Davis holds the hawksbill turtle Puff Daddy before sending it back to the sea.

The great kiskadee was also released there after a comedic but successful effort to capture it from an industrial warehouse in Corpus Christi. The hummingbird babies are a first for the ARK.

It would take 45,000 of these tiny animals to make up the weight of the loggerhead sea turtle we rescued from Aransas Bay last week. Thanks to Lighthouse Keeper Rick Reichenbach, his boat, his strength, and that of two fishermen, we hauled that massive turtle aboard. It's a floater and cannot dive.

Of five big loggerheads sent back to sea from the Gulf beach in May, one decided to come back in and was recaptured. A week later, 12 ridleys that the ARK had head-started from tiny hatchlings were taken five miles out to sea on a brand-new 40-foot Cabo cabin cruiser and released into a windrow of Sargassum weed, feeding grounds for young ridleys. At a nearby platform we released Puff Daddy, a hawksbill that has been with us since 2004. PD had a collapsed lung and underwent unconventional but successful acupuncture and homeopathic treatment performed by Dr. Rick Shaeffer. Volunteer Guy Davis who had become Puff Daddy's "guardian" over the years did the release.

Gulf bound COURTESY PHOTO Capt. Chris Fox at the helm of the 40-ft Cabo cruiser heading out to release sea turtles for the ARK.

The ARK is grateful to Chris Fox of Fox Yacht Sales for donating the use of the Cabo.

Dr. Tim Tristan, who extracted a massive shark hook from the jaw of a 130-lb loggerhead using my truck bed as an operating table (see last week's column), also performed surgeries on three other sea turtles this week. All are recovering at the ARK now and will be released soon. The ARK is grateful to our consulting vets who donate their services and to folks like Rick, Guy, Chris, the Friends of the ARK group, and especially our regular volunteers who toil every day at the ARK to keep the animals fed and their cages and tanks clean.

We are overwhelmed these days with the number of animals being treated at the ARK. It is baby bird season and our special volunteer, "Baby Bird Lady" Barbara Rochester, has just about a full house, as does the ARK itself. If you find a bird that has fallen out of the nest, please put it back if you can locate and reach the nest or put the bird in a tree, especially if you see or hear the parent birds fussing nearby.

We are the only licensed animal rehabilitation group in the Coastal Bend that will do baby songbirds and are reaching the point where we will have to say "No". Our volunteers simply cannot travel to Corpus Christi, Rockport, Kingsville or other surrounding towns to rescue animals. In the past three months I have put 7,000 miles on my truck making such trips.

So please don't get upset with us if we cannot take a bird (and we are not taking any mammals in this year). Register your complaints with the state and federal wildlife agencies that, despite their names, do not deal with the major problem of helping injured or misplaced wildlife, nor do they provide any financial support to those who do.

Tony Amos is a research fellow at The University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas and director of the Animal Rehabilitation Keep (ARK).