After East Haven resident Karyn Putney and her husband, Brent, adopted their first dog from the Dan Cosgrove Animal Shelter in East Haven 12 years ago, the couple decided they loved the shelter so much that they kept returning to visit.

“I even took my Girl Scout troop there for a shelter tour,” recalls Karyn. A few years later, she started volunteering to help care for the animals at the shelter with her young daughters.

“We try to follow their lead,” Karyn says of her girls’ innate interest in volunteerism, “so they will enjoy community service and want to continue it long term.”

While helping at the animal shelter on a regular basis, Karyn and her family met local rehabilitators that worked alongside animal control officers, and realized, through them, that there “was definitely a very low volume of [animal] rehabbers compared to the high volume of calls that come in from all over the state,” she notes.

That’s when Karyn’s eldest daughter said that she loved big birds and birds of prey and wanted to work with them as a rehabilitator when she grew up. Upon hearing this, Karyn admitted to her daughter that she had wanted to rehab mammals ever since finding, as a child, an orphaned opossum.

“Why didn’t you?” was her daughter’s logical question, for which Karyn had the thought: That’s a really good question.

“I didn't have a good answer,” explains Karyn, “so I looked into the [Department of Energy and Environmental Protection] program, did my internship, which is a minimum of 40 hours, and you have to take a test. It was a full-day module at the time [and] it was online through the State of Connecticut.

“It's only offered once a year,” continues Karyn, “usually in the spring, and then once you complete all three parts you are able to be a custodian of wildlife so you're able to handle them and have them legally in your possession because it's not legal for the general public to care for wildlife.”

In the first year that Karyn worked as an animal rehabilitator the number of requests for help was more than she had expected.

“The numbers of calls, even in the first year, were unbelievable,” Karyn notes, adding, “and then last year our numbers went over 300 for the season.”

Karyn only handles small mammals, which includes predominantly opossums, flying squirrels, gray squirrels, red squirrels, and chipmunks. Tending just these types of mammals is a handful. The problem is the slim number of licensed small mammal rehabilitators since it takes a special type of person to assume the responsibility of caring for wildlife.

“There are not enough people that do it,” explains Karyn, “so my husband [Brent] ended up getting licensed [as a wildlife rehabilitator] a year after I did because our volume just went up so much.”

The demand became so great Karyn says a good friend she works with at Bridgeport Hospital—where Karyn works as a maternity nurse helping mothers with post-partum depression, and who also volunteers at the same animal shelter—ended up getting licensed as an animal rehabilitator.

And her daughters—although still too young to be licensed rehabilitators (18 is the minimum age)—help where they can.

“It's a little hard because kids they can't do a lot of the hands-on direct animal care,” explains Karyn, “but we ended up going and getting our USDA license which allows us to do public education with non-releasable animals. I have two opossums that are designated [as] non-releasable from our vet, and we have a state inspection through the USDA. [The inspector visits] annually to make sure that we have appropriate care and that we can provide for them.”

After passing each inspection, Karyn says, “Then we can do programs and classes for the public. We did the Branford Festival [and] we have an event for older kids scheduled [at] the library in Branford [Blackstone Library]. I did summer camp for [the] Dan Cosgrove Animal Shelter. I went once a week with one of my opossums and talked to kids all about marsupials and living with wildlife.

“[My daughters] help a lot with the education portion, and they come with me when they do events and they get to teach the other kids what they have learned, which is great,” Karyn says.

“And they help a lot with our domestic [animal] rescues,” Karyn explains, adding, “That’s another thing that happened during COVID. The amount of animals that people started surrendering to rescue is something that we've never seen. The amount is absolutely out of this world. Animals are being dumped outside. These are domesticated animals that are being dumped: rabbits, Guinea pigs, hamsters, ferrets, lizards; people are just finding them outdoors because people are just getting rid of them [because] it's so hard to get placement [for these unwanted pets] in a rescue because everyone is so swamped. I think a lot of people are trying but they just let them go.

“Throughout COVID we started getting calls not just from animal controls in different towns needing help with wildlife,” continues Karyn, “but animal controls in different towns who don't usually handle small animals saying please help, we found a rabbit outside, we found something in a box in front of the building, so we started taking in domestic rescues too.

“Eleven Guinea pigs arrived one night because someone was renting an apartment in New Haven and the house was condemned so literally someone had to take [the animals] right away before they hit the street,” says Karyn.

That’s something Karyn warns against, the purchase or acquisition of animals that are adorable when young but end up being too much work, too costly, or too dangerous once the animals reach adulthood.

While many states, like Connecticut, have made many animals illegal for the general public, like prairie dogs, chimps, and monkeys, Karyn says, “It still blows my mind that in many states there are breeders for skunks, raccoons, and opossums, so while these are illegal [to have as pets] in Connecticut it’s still legal in many states.”

If people want a pet, Karyn tells people to stick with animals like domesticated cats, dogs, and small pet-shop mammals and birds.

And if someone comes across an injured wild animal Karyn advises, “you need to get them to a rehabber early. Don’t feed them. If you can safely contain them in a box or carrier you [simply] provide warmth. You don’t provide food. And you locate a rehabber. There’s a list of wildlife rehabilitators by species on the DEEP website.”

Karyn accepts small mammals from towns throughout New Haven County, but if she receives a call for help from farther afield, she will network with other licensed rehabbers in the state.

“All the rehabbers know each other because it’s a pretty small community,” she notes.

And when it comes to paying for all the costs associated with being an animal rehabilitator, Karyn says, “We're trying to book more educational sessions, and we became a licensed nonprofit 501(c)(3) and we just hit our one-year anniversary, so we've been trying to learn a lot more about fundraising.”

To learn more about Karyn’s wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, or to offer support, visit her website at farmriverwildlife.com or contact her through Facebook.

To nominate a person of the week, contact Jason Marchi at jasonjmarchi@yahoo.com