1. Who are you?

a. My name is Dawn Brooks, I am a veterinary chief of staff at Littleton Animal Hospital.

2. What type of domestic animals do you typically work with?

a. So, we treat dogs and cats and pretty much any animal that is within that weight range or smaller. So, we see birds and reptiles, Rabbits, Gunnie Pigs, Rats, we do see a handful of Chickens, that’s become a very popular hobby recently but no farm animals.

3. What type of wildlife animals do you typically work with?

a. So, wildlife, we are a basic wildlife rehabilitation practice. So, we can see mostly small mammals. We can see turtles that might get injured and some birds as long as they’re not migratory birds we are able to treat them. If they migrate, we have to transfer them to a person with a special permit.

4. What are migratory birds?

a. So, there are a number of birds that are considered migratory like Waterfowl. There is a list that you can find on the Mass Wildlife page that can tell you which are migratory. Some of them are Songbirds which you sometimes can’t tell what they are when they’re babies. So more than half of our “baby bird” help in the spring ends up being us trying to figure out what species it is because it may not have its adult plumage which is what most of us use to figure out what kind of bird it is and then we have to figure out what it is by its baby characteristics and the minute we know we can’t take care of it we’re making calls to see where we can transfer.

5. How did you get into this type of work?

a. When did I know or how did I get into being a veterinarian? I’ve always wanted to be a veterinarian for as long as I can remember. Wildlife was not something that I really was very interested in when I was younger. As I started my career, I started getting into the exotic animal field: Birds, Reptiles, Small Mammals, because they were just an under served part of our animal community. When I started to come to this practice there’s an associate here that has a HUGE interest in wildlife, and really really wanted to start a Wildlife clinic, so we as a hospital decided that our particular skill set working with those types of animals made us a perfect place to take in wildlife.

6. Why did you choose these species of animals?

a. So, when I first graduated from Veterinary school, they didn’t teach you a lot about those small mammals: Birds and Reptiles and how to treat them. I’d say the majority of my career was learning how to care for them because the training wasn’t there and many Veterinaries didn’t know how to care for them and didn’t really have the desire to learn. So, it was me trying to help a population of animals that didn’t seem to have veterinary care options.

7. Why did you choose these species of animals?

a. So, with wildlife the majority of our calls come in, in spring and summer and I would say 90% (ninety percent) of them are orphaned or thought to be orphaned animals, “We found a bird in our yard, what do we do?” and so this website is going to be a great way for people to learn how to decide if they should leave it be or bring it to a wildlife rehabilitation practitioner. But the spring and summer is when most of these orphans come around. Spring, summer, fall pretty much injuries of all kinds. A lot of time shit by car trauma or found on the side of the road trauma. And then we get really quite about late fall, winter.

8. What should someone do if they find an injured animal?

a. If you find an animal that you believe needs help or assistance you need to find a wildlife rehabilitation practitioner. Someone who is certified or licensed by the State of Massachusetts to help those wildlife animals. The best way to do this is to go to Masswildlife.org and search for a “rehabilitator” that is going to give you a map and all of the available practitioner in the area and what animals they can treat. So, you can click on “bird” and it will weed out all those people in your area that don’t take birds and then you can choose from those places to call around.

9. How can someone contact you?

a. At our practice we are open Monday through Friday and only Saturday mornings but any time during our open hours we do accept Wildlife calls or Wildlife drop offs for us to treat. You can reach us by going on that website: Masswildlife.org or Our clinic website Littletonanimalhospital.com

10.What is the most common injury you see?

a. Most common injury that we see in Wildlife is trauma. From being hit by a car or being attacked by a dog or a cat or from falling out of a tree or similar type of injury. So, a lot of head trauma, a lot of broken wings or broken legs and sometimes bite wounds from cats and dogs.

11.What advice do you have for the public?

a. When you find a Wildlife, whether its injured, or you think it’s been left behind by its mother before you do anything visit Masswildlife.org and look up how to tell whether or not the animal is injured or orphaned. And this website may also provide you some insight on making those decisions. Before you touch the animal, you need to asses the situation, determine if it looks like the animal is injured, or if it just looks like it fell out of a nest, or fell out of a tree and is a baby. You need to do everything that you can to make sure that the parents of that animal can come back to them and care for them but they won’t come back if you are in the area. So, before you do anything go to the website, look at what to look for. If the animal is obviously injured in some way. You can see that the wing is broken and kind of drooping off to the side, the animal clearly has an open wound and you can see blood. Those are they types of animals that you need to get to a rehabilitator quickly. If it looks like a baby bird, if it looks healthy, if it just doesn’t have all of its feathers or even if it has feathers, there are times where you intervene and times that you should not intervene. If you do not know what to do make sure that you look that up before you make the decision to touch the animal. The second advice I am going to give you is to be patient. If you choose to help a wildlife animal you need to take the time to find a Wildlife Rehabilitation Practitioner that can take your (animal). This means you’re go on the Masswildlife.org website and you’re going to find Practitioners that aren’t going to answer their phone. They don’t answer their phone. They don’t have the time to answer everyone’s calls and its going to take time to get a call back. It may not be with in an hour. It may take a day or two. Behind the scenes that Practitioner is calling around their network to see who can help if they’re not able to. So, you need to give them time to get back in touch with you. You also have to be prepared to drive. Anybody who works with wildlife is a volunteer. We do not get paid. So, we don’t drive to pick up the animals, you have to bring the animal to them. The one place that’s the best for the weekends is Tufts university in Grafton (Massachusetts) has a wildlife clinic. They can handle migratory birds and they can handle a lot of things that people like us cannot. So, a lot of times on the weekend if we can’t tell what bird it is and it’s a Saturday at one (1) O’clock and we’re closing we’re going to suggest you go to Tufts to bring that animal. But again, you need to call ahead, you need to wait for a call with instructions before you go somewhere.

12.How can someone donate?

a. So when we have an animal that’s brought in that’s Wildlife we have what we call an intake form and on the intake form you put down your contact information. What simply that means if we have questions about the injury or where you found that animal, we may call you for more information. It also tells us where you found that animal. Did you find it at a certain road or a certain park? Because many times if we can rehabilitate the animal, we want to return it back to where you found it so knowing the location is really important to us. And then there’s an opportunity for you to make a donation. We do not ask for any money for the animals that are dropped off here, however we except a donation. So, if you want to give us a monetary donation at that time it goes right into a fund that we use to pay for medical supplies, food, and bedding supplies. You can also visit our website; we do have a Wildlife page and a Facebook page. So, when we have orphaned animals, especially baby bunnies and they get to the point when they’re off formula and they need food we’ll post on Facebook saying “We are ready for clover or freshly cut grass.” You as a community member can follow us on that page and jump into action when we say we need you to go out in your yard to pull clover and you can drop those off to us and it will feed the babies that we have. We also have a Wishlist on Amazon. So, when we need supplies, we run out of something we post it on that Wishlist for members of the community to buy. So, that you know you’re purchasing a certain item for us. So, if you need any more information, you can contact us at our website Littletonanimalhospital.com, call the clinic directly or speak to any of our staff members.