With Wednesday's blustery winds, Cynthia Clabough was expecting company.

"After the storm a few days ago, I ended with - let's see - eight birds out of that one," counted Clabough, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. From her home along the Wapsipinicon River in Linn County, she raises a variety of orphaned, abandoned and injured wildlife.

Most of the 30 or so licensed rehabilitators in Iowa, and their helpers, go way beyond the call of duty to get that sick or abandoned raccoon, fawn or bird back into the wild. But they are not exactly looking for more business. They would be much less busy if people would follow one simple rule: LEAVE IT ALONE.

"I'm getting all kinds of calls from people who have 'found' wildlife babies," acknowledges Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist Tim Thompson. "It's the time of year when wildlife populations are at their highest. In almost all cases, I ask them to leave it alone. Just because they 'find' it, doesn't mean it is lost or abandoned."

In most cases, the parent is nearby; it's instinct for survival keeping it out of reach of the human predator it perceives. When that well-meaning Good Samaritan walks off with its baby, neither the baby nor the natural world are being done any favor.

"A doe, for instance, hides its fawn and goes off to feed," explains Thompson. "The fawn has no scent when first born. The mother protects it from predators by staying away, until it returns to feed it." By carrying a wildlife baby home, you've most likely shortened its life or chances of growing up wild. And by growing up wild, it has a better chance of avoiding predators - including us - as it matures.

If it is truly orphaned or abandoned, your first call should be to a conservation officer. He or she can locate the nearest rehabilitator; licensed wildlife care-givers who raise the animal as close to the wild as practical. And the end result is to return it to the wild. A self-professed nature lover, Clabough admits it seems like a losing battle.

"I see the environment progressively getting worse. Urban sprawl sickens me. To see (people) chopping up what little habitat we have left. If I can release a handful of healthy species each year; it maybe gets a healthy strain of animals out there," admits the homespun philosopher.

She has several others who help her; one takes only raccoons; and just a litter or two a year. But even that helps. That same person comes over to critter-sit if Clabough wants to leave for a weekend, for instance. And as the saying goes, "it's hard to get good help." Burnout is one factor. Many baby birds need to be fed every 20 or 30 minutes. Expense is another reason there are not more rehabbers. While some stores offer discounts on food needed by wildlife babies, rehabilitators primarily pay out of their own pockets. They're perhaps the most dedicated conservation volunteers out there.

At our place, a two-day old fawn was the center of attention on Memorial Day, for the half hour I had to wait before meeting Clabough to hand him over. Its mother had been killed by a car the night before, near Lake Macbride State Park. With it's high rigged rear legs, it cautiously hopped around the empty dog kennel; bleating. Easy to see why someone might try to take matters into their own hands. On the other hand, I couldn't even get it to take a few drops of water from a baby bottle. Easy to see it would not last long in inexperienced hands. A few hours later, another call came; "fawn in the yard; what should I do? "Leave it alone; call back if it was there in the morning," I suggested. The call never came.

The moral to the story? If that wildlife baby is truly orphaned, contact a conservation professional. If it's just there, and there looks fairly safe, leave it alone. The wild species out there have been doing pretty well despite us for 10,000 years. They can probably stumble through a while longer.

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