(raccoon squeaking) - I think I wrote down in a journal in first grade that I wanted to be a vet when I grew up.

(Mariah laughs) Yeah, I've always loved animals.

- [Pamela] This is the fulfillment of that childhood dream.

However, Dr. Mariah Beck is no ordinary veterinarian, and this is not your typical animal hospital.

It's where the wild things are.

- I never know what's gonna walk in the door.

Last year, the clinic intook 200 species of animals.

- [Pamela] What might look like a puppy is really a coyote cub from an orphaned litter of four.

A raptor with a broken wing is examined.

A turtle is waiting for its shell to mend.

Raccoon kits have to be weighed.

(raccoon chirping) (animal vocalizing) Whether furry, or feathered, there are creature comforts here at the Wildlife Clinic of Rhode Island.

Dr. Beck says there are multiple ethical questions to be grappled with each day.

- Deciding, you know, releases, when something's ready for release, if it is viable for release, which things should be euthanized, which things should be treated, how far to push the medicine with a wild creature that's, you know, very stressed every time you're handling it.

- What do we have here?

- Oh, there was a bunny that was running in my parking lot.

- [Pamela] Patients are brought daily from concerned Rhode Islanders and animal control officers.

Dr. Beck and the staff care for 6,000 mammals, birds, and reptiles a year.

Most of the team is volunteer, specially trained to handle those born to be wild.

Assignments include getting baby squirrels that have fallen from the nest to nurse formula from a syringe.

Others patiently feed worms to days old hatchlings.

- [Volunteer] Hey, there.

There you go.

- [Pamela] In addition, the staff includes some 40 volunteers spread out across the state, people like Kristin Fletcher, who is a home rehabilitator.

The work requires education and experience, before receiving a permit from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

- We have to have our own private facilities approved by the state as well, that they are away from, you know, other people, and pets, and whatnot, so that it's quiet, and then you never raise a single animal.

So they will be raised as groups.

The law is that if you don't have trained and licensed individuals that every wild animal and bird that's injured, orphaned, not able to survive in the environment would need to be euthanized humanely.

- [Pamela] So Fletcher got the state training and licensing, and for many years she has brought wildlife into her house.

- I was always an animal person, and even as a kid, you know, preferred my pets.

My daughters found a squirrel after I think it was Hurricane Bob on the ground, and I looked and looked and looked for a place to bring him, and back then, there really wasn't any place to bring them.

- [Pamela] There are times Fletcher has had as many as 30 cottontail rabbits at once, like this baby bunny, that need to be fed three times a day.

But their stay is always temporary.

It is illegal for anyone to keep wildlife as pets.

- We're very careful about that, and that's part of the training to be a wildlife rehabilitator, because your goal is to release a wild animal back into the environment.

You don't want them thinking that it's good to hang around with humans, and so, you don't spend time petting them, or talking to them.

You provide them with what they need.

- [Pamela] Fletcher also has a bat cage in her heated garage, where she rehabilitates these winged mammals.

About a dozen years ago, it was illegal to rehabilitate them, but she says the state realized bats were getting a bad rap.

- So many animals do, and- - Because?

- Because they're at night, and certainly Bela Lugosi didn't help their cause any at all- - With "Dracula."

- Exactly, they all eat bugs.

(bat chirping) - [Pamela] Bats protect humans by eating enormous amounts of insects, which help ward off lethal diseases, such as West Nile virus and Eastern equine encephalitis.

Bats also assist farmers as natural pest killers.

- It's a male, big brown bat.

He was actually caught.

He caught his wing on the outside shutter of a home in Coventry, and was there for several days.

- [Pamela] Fletcher has another job.

She is also executive director of The Wildlife Clinic.

It too is a volunteer post.

There's a lot of people who would say, you know, "Oh, I love animals, but hey, there's a lot of wild animals, "circle of life."

Why is it so important to do this?

- We are, as humans, so responsible for a lot of the negative impact that we see here, and certainly worldwide.

There's less habitat.

There's just, you know, there's no open space.

Wildlife is forced into closer proximity to us, and there's lots of dangers associated with humans.

They're either hit by cars, or they hit our windows, or the tree is taken down where the nest is, or construction is happening, and nests are removed from, you know, roof lines.

- [Pamela] And Fletcher says humans do other things that result in a reduction in the number of songbirds.

- Certainly pesticide use is killing bugs.

So many of these birds eat bugs.

There's just so much out there that if we can either raise healthy animals and birds and release them back into the environment as breeding adults, it's a bit of a way of trying to correct, you know, those numbers dropping.

If we do nothing, you're just going to see those numbers continue to drop.

- [Pamela] Dr. Beck also sees efforts for wildlife survival as vital to the environment.

(raccoon chirping) - We're not only contributing to that individual life and kind of making that individual life better, and more humane, and more comfortable, and healed, and we're also contributing to the population, and the ecology, and the ecosystem of our, you know, local Rhode Island wildlife.

- [Pamela] While working to ensure Rhode Island wildlife doesn't become endangered, the clinic itself almost faced extinction last year, because it needed state funding.

The Wildlife Clinic is dependent upon it, as well as grants and donations to provide the food, medication, treatments, and the many specific cages necessary for recuperation.

The clinic works with the Department of Environmental Management to stabilize wildlife populations and monitor for rabies, bird flu, and other diseases.

- If animals start failing based on that, we'll be on the front lines of getting these animals in, so that, you know, we can make that determination, and then report to the state wildlife biologists.

- [Pamela] These coyote cubs will be vaccinated before being returned to a large forested area.

By law, the clinic has to release the animals within a mile of where they are found, and caretakers say the reward is in setting them free.

- The whole team here, you know, works so hard to bring every individual that we intake back out into the wild.

- Releases always make me cry, because it's happiness that they're gone, but the concern about what the environment holds for them.

- [Pamela] For Fletcher and the others who are devoted to their work at the clinic, it's a calling, a call of the wild.

- Some people would call it crazy, but commitment sounds much better, I think.

(Kristin laughs) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) - Next up, we take you to a museum of sorts