Rescuring critters

By Amy Geiszler-Jones

Opossums and bats generally don’t get much sympathy or compassion from humans.

Opossums have been stereotyped as dirty and aggressive. Bats suffer a similar image problem.

Fortunately for those critters, WSU biologist Karen Brown Sullivan and her former student Rejeana Heath-Coss are among their staunchest allies.

Sullivan, along with her husband Pete, has been helping "rescue" opossums for the past few years, while Heath-Coss, now an education major, rehabilitates bats, among other animals. They all hold wildlife rehabilitation permits.

The Sullivans and Heath-Coss point out the animals they focus on are unique. Opossums are the only marsupial living in the United States, while bats have the distinction of being the only flying mammal in the world.

Both animals help keep insect populations down.

"If we didn’t have bats we’d be overrun by mosquitoes," says Heath-Coss.

The Sullivans estimate they’ve rescued more than a dozen opossums in the last three years. Heath-Coss has hand-raised five baby bats the past few years. She also has a bat house, similar to a birdhouse, hanging high up in a backyard tree to provide shelter to bats in the area.

When the Sullivans take in a group of opossums — rarely do they get a single opossum — their house becomes a sort of zoo. The little critters, some as small as 3 inches, join the Sullivans’ already large menagerie of five cats, two dogs, an African grey parrot, ringneck dove, two parakeets, eight snakes, tarantula, centipede and an assortment of fish in two aquariums.

"We keep them (the opossums) in our house in cages. We have to keep heating pads in there and feed them every couple of hours just like a baby," says Karen Sullivan. They use an eyedropper or a needle-less syringe to feed them a milk supplement. To further help the tiny critters, they have to wipe the anal area with a wet Q-tip to stimulate bowel movements.

As they get older, the opossums are taken outside for exercise. It can look like the opossums are preparing for chin-ups as they hang from tree limbs, strengthening their leg muscles. The couple has discovered the opossums enjoy riding on their heads, because the hair simulates their mother’s fur.

"One thing we’ve had to learn is to become less attached," says Karen Sullivan. "I think originally we handled them much like we would a pet. You don’t want them to become too familiar or too comfortable with humans."

When the opossums reach about 7 inches in length, the couple releases them into the wild, usually in a wooded area with a water source outside Wichita.

For Karen Sullivan, helping opossums is a natural extension of her profession as a biologist.

"This is really fun for me," says Karen Sullivan, an associate professor in the biological sciences department. "I teach a general ecology class, so it’s nice to be able to share this with my students. The whole focus of the course is on conservation of species diversity and that all species are valuable." She’s taught the class for at least 20 years at WSU.

For Heath-Coss, feeding baby bats is just as challenging. They, too, demand milk every two hours. She feeds them using milk-soaked cosmetic sponges, usually used for applying eye makeup.

She wears surgical gloves when handling the bats because they can transmit diseases such as rabies.

While Heath-Coss does most of her rehabilitation work with bats, she takes calls almost daily about wildlife from people who’ve been referred to her by the wildlife and parks office.

"People have awfully good hearts and they pick animals up when they should just be left alone," she says.

One caller discovered a rarity in her backyard — twin bats that had been blown out of a tree along with their nest. Another person called around Thanksgiving, concerned that the wild turkey she spotted might become someone’s holiday dinner. Another caller was certain the large object hanging on her porch by its wings was a bat. It turned out to be an oversized black butterfly.

Heath-Coss recently switched from the master’s in biology program to the undergraduate elementary education program at WSU. Because of her interest in animals, however, she’s taking Karen Sullivan’s Wildlife Management class this semester.

The Sullivans and Heath-Coss think that opossums and bats are often depicted as being aggressive, yet they simply are being protective of themselves. When a opossum gapes its mouth, it’s trying to look fierce to simply scare away fellow animals. It’s a mechanism that backfires with humans, though, who view that as aggression. Pete Sullivan says. The opossum’s second line of defense is playing dead.