Slideshow: Wild ex-pets serve as lessons to city slickers | The ...

Edgar the raven is a videogame nerd ? he mixes normal caws with imitation laser-gun noises.

Rufus the one-eyed bobcat is the size of border collie, but he nuzzles Dale Gienow?s shoulder like a happy kitten.

Kootenay the bear, spying visitors, stands up and starts shimmying like a furry John Travolta.

?He?s like a person. He?s just a character,? says Gienow, who founded Muskoka Wildlife Centre with his wife Jody.

Many of the animals at this 60-acre rescue facility on Highway 11 south of Gravenhurst, Ont. are uniquely socialized to human beings.

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But Gienow won?t let anyone forget it: ?the big message is that wild animals don?t belong in your home. They belong in the wild,? he says.

While that may seem obvious, it?s not obvious enough. Edgar, Rufus, Kootenay, and approximately one-third of the Muskoka centre?s wards are ex-pets or were otherwise raised in captivity, the botched results of human attempts to tame them.

They are too wild for captivity, and too tame for the wild ? and if they hadn?t come to the Muskoka Wildlife Centre, most would have been destroyed.

As city slickers from the GTA foray into nature on summer canoe trips and cottage visits, provincial officials and experts like Gienow want every Ontarian to remember that keeping wildlife as a pet is not just illegal.

It is also dangerous for humans and incredibly cruel to the animals themselves, as the stories of many of the Muskoka centre?s wards attest.

Edgar, Gienow says, came from someone who found him as a chick and tried to raise him in a parrot cage in a Toronto apartment. His past owner was clearly a videogame fanatic: ravens are master mimics, and Edgar to this day loves to make electronic shooting noises.

He did not love living in a cage. When the bird came to the Muskoka centre, he was almost bald from stress ? it took months of living with another raven for Edgar to stop pulling out his own feathers.

Kootenay is another example. The black bear was confiscated by British Columbia?s wildlife department from a family who was letting him sleep in the same bed as their children, says Gienow.

Officers tried to rehabilitate Kootenay by introducing him to other cubs, but two months later, ?the other cubs ran from them, and this guy ran right up on top of their shoulders. They knew then they couldn?t release him.?

Under B.C. law, which is similar to Ontario?s, wildlife that cannot be rehabilitated in a set period of time must be euthanized.

Kootenay, luckily, found a home at the Muskoka centre instead.

?When he first put behind a fence, all he did was pace all day long, the poor guy. Because he just wanted to be in your lap,? says Gienow. Kootenay was eventually introduced to Kokanee, a mountain lion cub, who are constant companions to this day.

Gienow is full of cautionary tales: Rufus, the bobcat, was declawed with nail clippers on the kitchen table of a woman who was raising him for the pet trade, he says. (The cat?s eye was lost to a battle with cancer.) One turtle?s jaw grew in deformed because an owner tried to feed him chicken and beef. Gienow once helped rescue a snake that took baths with the previous owner?s toddler. He later saw the same snake eat a full grown deer, whole.

?Most of the animals that are raised in homes are affectionate to people. But that?s what makes them dangerous,? says Gienow. ?We?re just not designed to play with those kinds of creatures.?

The centre does derive some benefit from these follies. For one, the animals generate revenue by appearing in film and TV. Luna, a tiny saw-whet owl, can be seen beatboxing in a recent Telus commercial.

But primarily, because the animals are so well-behaved around humans, many travel with the centre?s educators on outreach missions to serve as examples of how to appropriately deal with found wildlife.

Which is: do not take animals home under any circumstances, and do not try to ?rescue? any found baby animals unless you are certain their mother is dead or permanently gone.

?People need to do the research. We get a disproportionate number of what we call wildlife kidnappings every year,? says Gienow, when well-intentioned humans ?rescue? a baby animal they find in the forest. Some species leave their young, returning periodically to feed it.

Gienow obviously loves the centre?s wild (or half-wild) wards, beckoning them with noises and calling them ?sweet pea.?

But they aren?t pets.

?I work with every animal you can think of,? he says. ?And I have a dog in my home.?

Source: http://thetorontopost.com/news/slideshow-wild-ex-pets-serve-as-lessons-to-city-slickers/

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