- Will you consider this?

Many people have a soft spot for nature, especially the four-legged kind.

And if you remember "The Beverly Hillbillies," Elly May Clampett, well, my guest could give her a run for her loving of wildlife.

Stay right here.

(gentle upbeat music) We all know that spring brings new life of all kinds, trees, grasses, flowers, and babies, all kinds of babies.

And what started as a wildlife rehab for those babies has grown into quite an operation now.

Joining me is Buddy Montgomery, Jordonna Kidd, and Carla Presnell from the Critter Cove over in Knox County.

Welcome, ladies.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Happy to be here.

- So let's talk about what the Critter Cove is.

And you're the founder, so take it away.

- Well, we take in injured, abandoned, and orphan baby wildlife and adult wildlife and we basically raise them up, get 'em ready to go back out in the wild, fix their injuries, get 'em vet care, food, water, shelter, and try to get 'em back out in the wild if they're adults.

It's quite the operation.

We end up with quite a few babies over the season.

- [Christine] And your season runs from when?

- Usually it starts anywhere from mid-February to March, and we're just now ending in October.

- Okay, gosh.

And then, we have two volunteers, or staff, volunteer staff.

How did you guys get involved with this?

You love the four-legged kind, right?

- Yes, I've always wanted to help rehab animals.

And I saw an ad in the paper.

They like to post ads for help all the time.

So I answered and I'm here ever since.

- All right, and you, Carla?

- I was licensed and I was rehabbing out of my house for about 18 years.

And I finally gave it up just because I just didn't have the time and the room at home anymore.

So I was out of it for a while, and then people kept calling me and someone had some baby squirrels that they needed to find a place for.

And they said they'd already contacted Critter Cove and would I transport them.

That was the first I'd heard of Critter Cove.

And I went over and talked to Buddy and Andy and found out what was going on and said, "Let me know," and I've been there ever since.

- Okay, so these babies that come to you, people bring them to you?

Like, the squirrels fell out of a tree or something?

- Yeah, yeah, after a storm we get lots of calls of squirrels that's fallen out of a tree.

Or like if a tree falls on a mother raccoon or a mother fox, or something like that, and then the babies are orphaned.

So people will call us either we'll go pick 'em up.

Or if we can't get to 'em, we'll try to get the people to tell 'em how to get 'em and bring them to us.

- And you've been doing this for how long now?

- This is our seventh year.

- All right, and you kind of started just a little at a time, and then you ended up buying 33 acres?

- Well, yeah, actually we bought the 33 acres and we thought, "Well, we got time to build different pens and shelters that we need."

Little did we know the first year we got slammed.

So my husband has built all the pens, all of the rehab areas that we have.

And it's been an ongoing process, and we're like two years behind on our building right now.

- Wow, okay.

You have that many?

- We've had that many.

- Yeah, so you said right now, so this is October, you think you have about 120 animals that you're taking care of?

- Right now, even with all the babies being released, we're taking care of 120 animals twice a day, yeah.

- Feeding them?

- Feeding them.

- And this is all volunteer, you're a 501c3?

- Mhmm, yeah.

- Yes.

- Okay, Jordonna, what goes into a day?

When you show up to help out, what do you have to do?

- Well, we start by first starting the meat.

We have a Crock-Pot of meat for the animals every single day that's cooked.

We do laundry, we clean the pens, we gather all the bowls.

We make sure that the whole entire working area, the pens, are clean before we put the food down.

Then we prep the food.

Each animal gets their own type of meal depending on like the squirrel, possum, or raccoon.

And then, we make sure they have fresh bedding every day, mopping, the same usual stuff that you do at your home.

But the pens we make sure that they're clean.

- Okay, so like squirrels like nuts?

- Yes.

- But raccoons kind of like anything or do they?

- They're a little picky.

- Well, some of our spoiled ones, yes.

But basically like with the baby squirrels, we start everybody off on formula.

And the formula we get is geared toward that specific species.

- [Christine] And how did you learn about that?

- Actually a friend of mine that had a wildlife menagerie, he did all the big cats and stuff like that.

He told me about this new place and they do milk for lions, tigers, bears, possums, raccoons, squirrels, every different kind of animal you can imagine.

So we started ordering through them 'cause we can get it in big 20-pound buckets and it makes it a little cheaper than the little two-pound cans.

- And you bottle feed them then?

- We bottle feed the coons and foxes.

- [Jordonna] We syringe feed the squirrels.

- We syringe feed the squirrels.

It's a matter of what animal it is, whether you're gonna bottle feed, syringe feed.

We've got little nipples that go on syringes.

I mean, it's a lot to learn.

When you're gonna volunteer, I make sure that they come out early so I can get 'em going and train them.

'Cause they think you just come out and feed them.

No, there's so much more to it, so much more.

- Cleaning.

- Okay, so, Carla, you used to be with the zoo?

- Yes.

- And so you knew a lot about the four-legged kind of animals.

And then, how did you get involved with Critter Cove?

- Actually, when I went back to school, I worked as a vet tech for a while and decided I wanted to go back and finish my education.

So I ended up getting my master's in wildlife management and ecology.

Couldn't find a job with the state and ended up at the zoo.

But I wanted to do part of my thesis research with wildlife rehabilitation.

I had just discovered it and I wanted to know more about it.

So I got my license in '93 initially, and was doing it out of my home, as I said, but very small scale because I was living in town in the middle of Canton.

So I had animals that went to work with me.

No one ever knew what was under my desk at any given time, 'cause they could hear noises.

I've been known to stand in a lecture and every 15 minutes stop to feed a baby bird.

And so I've just always had that background with animals.

And, finally, it broke my heart to give up the rehabbing, but I knew I just couldn't keep doing it out of my house.

So I can meet that passion by going to Critter Cove now and not have them in my house anymore.

- Right, because you've made that delivery, which is a special delivery.

- Yes, that first delivery.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

So were you always a wildlife kind of person?

- Oh yeah, well, animals period.

I mean, I've grown up around animals.

I'd always bring stuff home and ask dad if I could keep it.

And, of course, he'd always say no.

So now I can make my own decisions and I can keep anything I want to, at least for a period of time till I get 'em back out to where they're supposed to be.

- Right, so once you rehab them, or raise them if they're babies and everything, then what is the next step for the critters?

- Well, as they grow up, we start 'em out inside in incubators or wherever they need to be in little, small cages.

Then they move outside as their first step to a holding pen where they can actually have a swimming pool, a den, they learn to climb trees, and they get a feel for the outside life.

And after they've been in there a few weeks, we move them to a release pen, which is further down in the woods by the creek.

They're alone more.

We hide things for 'em so they can start figuring out how to forage.

We get minnows for 'em and put in their pool so they learn how to catch fish.

And after they've been down there, you can kind of tell when they're ready to go, they start their pacing and they really start climbing and trying to come out the door when you're trying to go in.

So we pick a day and that's release stay.

And we all go down and open the door, and out they come, and they go in the creek and up the trees and climbing everywhere, and they just start foraging around.

- But they don't necessarily have to stay on the property then?

- No, they don't have to.

- They grow up and move out?

- They can travel up to 10 miles from where they originated from.

I mean, I've had 'em follow the creek and go under the road, under the bridge, over to the neighbor's property, and up in trees back in there that, you know, some of our friends have seen 'em over there.

- So how do you identify them?

I mean, how do they know that they're yours?

- Personalities.

- There's certain ones that you just know, you get really attached to certain ones or they have a certain marking, or a certain attitude.

- Face.

- Yeah, and I mean- - The shape, head shape, yeah.

- Really?

- They're all different.

- Yeah.

- And this is for raccoons and, I mean, see, so raccoons look like raccoons to me.

- There's squirrels that we know, "Hey, that's this squirrel, that's that squirrel."

Possums are a little harder.

Well, my husband takes care of more of the possums, so he may know the difference.

- So he knows when they roll over and look that one eye- - Yeah, yeah, he could probably tell you which possum's which.

But all of our babies we give them names, so they grow up with names and we just kind of know.

"That's so and such, that's so and such," you know?

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- What fun.

So one thing that I know that you worry about is, you know, people whose homes, or maybe cabins or something, butt up to woods and so they'll get some of the wildlife coming in.

What are the dos and don'ts for those people?

- Well, we get a lot of calls.

Oh, they've got a coon in their attic, a coon in their garage.

Basically, especially in the spring, 'cause they've got babies, all they're doing is looking for a place to safely have their babies and keep their babies safe.

They will move on when the babies get big enough.

But if you really need to get rid of them, you can play a radio very loud, put some pans up there that'll bang together or something.

The more loud noises they have, the more they wanna get away from it.

We've got people that do put out traps and will trap because, oh, they've got a chicken coop or something.

It is illegal to trap this wildlife, unless it is trapping season for that wildlife.

But they'll trap it, it'll be a mother, they'll go relocate it, which is not good for the mother.

And then, two days later they're calling me with five or six babies.

So they've orphaned them babies, made the mother worry.

I mean, I know they don't, most people don't think that animals have feelings.

They do, they have feelings.

They have families.

It'd be like someone coming and taking your kids away.

How would you feel?

Someone putting you three states away in the middle of nowhere where you don't know anything or anybody or have no place to stay.

People don't stop and think about that, a lot of people don't care about that.

- Right, "Just get it out of my yard," right, yeah.

- But we ask that in the springtime, please pay attention to what you're doing.

If you got a raccoon problem, play loud music.

Put something loud up there.

Watch cutting down your trees.

There's baby squirrels up in them trees and they fall out of the nest, or sometimes the tree falls on the mom and kills the mom.

Same thing with, you know, fox.

We get all kinds of calls, foxes, possums, everything.

I mean, yes, occasionally a mom will abandon a baby.

If you find one single baby and there's not a mother around, something- - Is there something wrong with the baby then?

- Something could be wrong with it.

If there's something wrong with that baby, a mom will abandon one to make sure to take care of the others.

But unless you see a dead mother laying around, chances are that mom's out finding food.

Baby may be out just looking around a little bit.

Not necessarily is it orphaned or abandoned.

- Right, just one of those.

- Yeah.

- Just looking for some trouble.

- Right.

- Well, what's been the most interesting thing on the job that you didn't anticipate, Jordonna?

- Oh, where do we start?

Every day is different, every animal is different.

Like, an interesting thing that happened?

- [Christine] Yeah.

- We have release pens for our squirrels that are outside, and sometimes they're ready to get out and go.

And one time I accidentally released a squirrel 'cause he released himself.

He was ready to go.

- Okay.

- So animals are very unpredictive.

That's one thing, so every day's different.

- Okay, and then, Carla, have you had any unique experiences in your critter care?

- So many, I could almost write a book I think.

I mean, between things that happened at the zoo, and things that happened as a vet tech, and the 18 years I was doing it on my own, every day is different, just like Jordonna said.

And it's given me tons of information that I can use in my classes and to educate people to know, what Buddy's saying, that you've gotta be careful when you're trying to get rid of nuisance animals.

You've gotta stop and think there's babies.

We have a lot of problems with people that, you know, they call the nuisance wildlife people not realizing that a lot of time those are gonna be taken out and destroyed.

They're not gonna be released.

And also we have situations like if a possum's been hit by a car, if it's a female, she probably has babies in the pouch.

And you might wanna stop and check and see if those babies are alive, because we might be able to help those babies.

So it's been so many interesting things one after the other.

It's kind of hard to narrow it down.

- Okay, you're chomping at the bit.

Got something to add to that?

- Yeah, just be mindful.

If you see a deer and it's by itself, it's a baby deer, check its ears.

If it's wrinkly, it's dehydrated.

If they're perked, the mom will be back, it's just going to go get some food.

- Not necessarily are they abandoned.

A lot of people will go pick up a baby deer and, "Oh, I found this injured or this orphan baby deer."

He is not orphaned.

His mom puts him somewhere, leaves him there while she goes and eats.

She will be back.

Now if she doesn't come back by dark or it's been a couple days and the ears are like wrinkled in, then nine times out of 10, yes he might be orphaned.

So please call somebody to have him checked before you just pick him up and take off with him.

Which is illegal by the way.

- Yeah.

- Well, so is there an okay time to, I mean, early spring obviously is when most of the babies are, 'cause they've been busy and hibernating in the winter and stuff.

Is there an okay time to catch them, or trap them, or probably not?

- There are trapping seasons for coons, unfortunately.

Of course, I don't agree with any of that.

There's deer hunting season, I don't like that.

But yeah, you just gotta look and see when your trapping seasons are, when your hunting seasons are.

- [Christine] I had no idea there was a trapping season.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- I'm definitely a city girl.

You have like a mascot, you have a little, Candy.

Is that Candy?

- Candy, yes.

- Tell us about Candy and how Candy came to you.

- Well, she is actually a grandbaby of another coon that I raised.

When we were still living in town, we used to take him to my husband's mother's place, 'cause she has a place in the country.

And she found this little baby hanging in her barn all by itself one day and really dehydrated, really small.

So she brought this baby down to me.

Well, she's got cerebellar hyperplasia, which is wobbly kitten syndrome in layman's terms.

She does have the occasional seizure.

She'll be walking and she'll fall over.

And she doesn't think anything about it, she doesn't think anything's wrong with that.

- That's life, yeah.

- You know, that's her life.

But, yeah, she's our little mascot.

I do take her into classrooms and to different places just so people can get an idea and see a raccoon up close and pet one.

She's the biggest, lovable little baby.

- So you don't ever feel threatened by any of them, do you?

I mean, do you?

- Every once in a while, yeah.

- Different personalities.

- Yeah, they do have different personalities.

When we get wild adults and that have, oh, say been hit by a car or injured, yeah, you do have to be careful 'cause they're scared to death and they're big enough when their bite's really gonna hurt.

I've been bit several times.

I mean, it's not if, it's when on these animals.

- It just comes with it.

- Yeah, so do you work with some veterinarians too, I mean, to find out what Candy's condition was?

- We have a very good vet in Galesburg who is wildlife licensed.

He tries his best to help me out.

I mean, we can't save them all.

Sometimes they are too bad, we do have to euthanize.

- So those are the ones that may have been hit by a car, or attacked by another predator or something?

- Yeah, or they've been out there so long the infection's totally taken over their body.

Or they have broken bones that you can't possibly go and do surgery on and try to change bandages on, like a, you know, a baby deer or something like that.

Yeah, he tries to help us out to the best of his ability.

(laughs) - And how many volunteers do you have?

Because the babies, I think, Carla, I think you told me that the babies are fed three times a day.

- Yes.

- But then once they grow up, it's twice a day?

- Yeah, it goes to twice a day.

- So how many volunteers do you need a day to do that?

(Buddy sighs) - Do we need?

- We normally, starting off, we do three shifts per day.

And I try to tell these guys don't do over two, three days a week or you're gonna get burnout.

It's just too much.

Of course, I do it nonstop, because I gotta fill in when other people aren't there.

But yeah, we'd love to have like 15 to 20 volunteers at the season time.

And, of course, it always sloughs off in the winter.

People go back to school and- - Or they go to Florida for their winter someplace else like that.

- Yeah, yeah.

We have one lady that comes back from Arizona every year and she just loves feeding the little babies and stuff.

So, yeah.

- Do you have rocking chairs that, you know?

(everyone laughing) So you can rock the babies too while you feed them?

- Yeah, I mean, yeah.

- They're babies.

- You do feed 'em.

You do have to burp 'em.

You do have to potty 'em when they're very little.

- Yes, you do have to burp them.

- You are their mother literally, and so you have to do everything for 'em if their eyes are closed.

- Oh gosh.

- I mean, we get 'em, you know, very little-bitty sometimes, yeah.

- What's the littlest one that you think you've had so far?

You have all your track marks on you, yeah.

- Yes.

(laughs) - All your paw prints.

- We've probably, the smallest would be like about a week, week and a half old coon or- - Mhmm.

- Some tiny baby buds, yes.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Oh, so like maybe a pound or something?

- [Buddy] Doesn't even have any fur on it yet hardly.

- Maybe not even a pound.

- Not even a pound, yeah.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- Like, newborn.

- Ounces, yeah.

- Umbilical cords still on.

- Oh gosh.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- So young that people don't even know really what they found, because the stripes aren't apparent yet and the banding's not apparent yet.

So they're contacting us saying, "What is this?"

- Yeah, is it a mouse or something?

- Yeah, and the baby squirrel.

- The baby squirrel turns out to be a baby bunny or, you know, whatever.

- Yeah.

- So you do bunnies too?

- No, we do not, unfortunately.

- You would be overrun.

- We get a lot of calls on bunnies, and wild bunnies just really they don't survive in human hands.

It takes somebody very special to raise the bunnies.

We don't have the resources or the time for baby bunnies, 'cause we'd have a million of 'em.

- So you are located in Knox County.

Where are these 33 acres?

- We are in between Galesburg and Knoxville right off County 10 on Fleisher Road.

We've got 33 acres with a creek running through it.

We have two houses out there.

So one is our house, one is the critter house.

And then, we have two different barns right now with the intent of probably having to build more here very soon.

- So the critter house, all of the critters, so you have 120 critters there right now?

- Mhmm.

- And so they're all living in the critter house?

- Well, no, we have horses, we have goats, we have pigs, we have ducks, and geese, and chickens, cows.

- It's a domestic sanctuary, as well as wildlife.

- We have white-tailed deer.

So yeah, there's different areas for each one.

But like all the coons, the squirrels, the smaller animals are in the house.

- Okay, and you're a 501c3?

- Mhmm.

- All right, now how do people, we have maybe about five minutes left.

How do people find you, and number one, maybe say, "Hey, you know, I'm interested to come take a look, maybe I can volunteer"?

- Right.

- Facebook.

- I'm gonna let Carla take that, 'cause we have a page on Facebook.

- We do, we have a page on Facebook.

It's called Critter Cove.

- What a clever name.

- Exactly, it would be very original we thought.

So it has information on there.

If you wanna make a donation, we have a wishlist for Amazon.

We have postings on there of things we need, donations we need, such as if we are in need of food or bedding, or just monetary donations.

If we're looking for volunteers, we post on there a contact us so we can get people in and get 'em trained.

That's primarily how we kind of keep up with people.

We also have various events, and we have a few coming up here real soon, and we post on there, we have event pages, and try to get public awareness to come and see us and to help us out, almost everything's donation.

- Are you surprised people don't know about you?

- By now, yeah.

I'm still getting people that say, "Well, I've never heard of you, I didn't know you were here."

Okay, it's been seven years.

- Yeah, I was totally embarrassed to say that as much as I followed wildlife rehab, I didn't know that you were there until someone contacted me and said, "Can you take these babies over there?"

And that was the first I knew, and that kind of was a kick to go, "Why didn't you know about this?"

- But we were only a couple years in then.

- That's true too.

- Now we're seven years in and I'm still getting people, "Well, we didn't know nothing about ya."

- Well, but you know what?

I mean, knowledge is power.

- And we are listed on the DNR website too.

'Cause we're licensed through the State of Illinois, so we are a licensed DNR rehabber.

- Okay, well, with the couple minutes that we have left, let's go, we'll go to you last, Carla, what's your bucket list for Critter Cove?

- My bucket list for Critter Cove, volunteers, definitely.

I would love to be able to see more cash coming in that we can apply to the supplies that we need.

- [Christine] And those supplies are like blankets, and rags?

- Yeah.

But also things like the buckets of powdered formula, things that the public can't just get and donate to us, we need funds to do that and to maintain the cages.

For example, a generator, when our power went out for about three days, we couldn't even get water.

You know?

- Oh gosh, okay.

- So, and lost some things in the freezer.

So yeah, we're looking for things like that, it'd be great.

- Okay, all right, well that's one bucket list.

Let's go to number two.

- Definitely volunteers.

Buddy and Andy work their butts off every single day.

- Andy is her husband.

- Yes.

- We sort of mentioned that.

- He's not here.

- Didn't give him a whole lot of cred, yeah.

- They definitely need the help, 'cause this is a full-time job for them.

I get to go home, enjoy my weekend.

- With your cats and dogs?

- With my cats and dogs.

But, Buddy and Andy do this every day.

They wake up, they're feeding.

They go to sleep, they dream about feeding.

They need all the help in the world so they can successfully run and take time for themselves.

- Do you get any time for yourself, Buddy?

- No, we have not had a vacation in over seven years.

- Okay, well, we gotta work on that.

Okay, so bucket list is you would like to take a vacation.

- Yeah.

- But what else?

- I would like for enough money to be coming in that Critter Cove can stand on its own two feet and be fully functional and operational.

Right now we put about $50,000 out of our pocket into this every year.

We have several pens, some other barns we would like to put up in the future.

And just fix the place up a little bit, I mean, after so many years you gotta kind of redo a pen, and revise it.

- It's life.

- Yeah, I mean, it's wear and tear basically.

The critters will wear and tear it.

(everyone laughs) - Yeah, they have those claws.

Well, thank you very much for sharing this story.

Thanks for contacting me and letting me know about it.

It's awesome!

- Thanks for having us.

- And keep up the good work for all those little, Elly May, move over.

(everyone laughing) And thank you for joining us.

Stay well and keep a lot of things in mind these days.

(gentle upbeat music)