We want them to make a good informed decision.

We see how they interact with the animal.

We show them a variety of animals that might work out well in their family.

And we ask that kids are available to interact with the animal if there are kids in the family as well.

A lot of our programs are education driven.

We provide programs for children with regard to kindness to animals.

We always want to promote kindness to animals in all the programs that we do.

Our entire building is one uh educational extravaganza.

We've got a lot of information throughout the shelter that people can stop and look at and really get educated with everything from what type of um dog might be best suited to a family to preventing uh any problems from occurring to training, a variety of issues.

So we're always looking to educate the public.

While the humane society can help you, you can also help the shelter with volunteer opportunities.

We have such a variety of opportunities for people.

Anybody is interested, give us a call because they can interact with the animals and they really do provide a great service.

Got a problem with a skunk in your window well, raccoons in the attic or tearing at your garbage cans.

For help with native or migratory wildlife species, you can contact a private trapping and pest removal service or another department of the Wisconsin Humane Society.

Our goal is to um rescue, rehabilitate, and release native wild animals.

And uh another function that we have is to help talk people through uh nuisance problems they may be maybe having with wildlife, and also to help advocate for wild animals in the city here and help prevent injury, fear, pain, and disruption for wildlife in the first place.

The Wisconsin Humane Society's wildlife rehabilitation center annually receives and cares for over 5,000 injured, sick, and orphaned wild animals like this blue heron.

It has seen some 150 different species of animals, many of them familiar to our area, many are not.

We'll admit anything here from snapping turtles to uh um great-horned owls and and uh white-tailed deer and all sorts of creatures, any any native wild creature that you can think of that can fly over or live in Milwaukee County, we've we've admitted here for care.

A creature that's relatively sedentary, like a gray squirrel.

Um we if it's an adult gray squirrel squirrel, once we rehabilitate it, we'd try and get it back to the neighborhood it came from because that's where it knows where everything is that it needs, it's food, water, shelter, all there.

Um for juveniles.

If we get in a baby raccoon, for instance, and uh we rehabilitate that, we would not take it back to where it came from in the city because it needs to learn uh we don't want it to become a nuisance animal by being let go again in the city and trying to find its way and find food in the city.

So those creatures will go out to private lands.

In addition to helping animals in the wildlife hospital, the center provides advice to thousands of callers about injured, sick, orphaned, or nuisance wild animals.

If if people see healthy animals and they have questions about it, they wonder why is this animal in my yard or is it dangerous or not?

And and you know, anything about it.

There's a variety of resources they can call.

They can call one of the nature centers around, but they can certainly call us and we'll talk to them about the natural history of this animal, why it's in their yard, what it might be looking for at a at a particular time of year, and um and how they can deal with with coexisting with that animal and ideally appreciating it.

If they find injured, sick or orphaned animals or animals they think are any one of those three things.

Again, we invite them to call us and we'll talk them through it.

Uh sometimes they they think things may be injured or orphaned.

For instance, this season right now in the summertime, we get a lot of calls from people who have found fledgling birds, for instance, wild birds, be it a morning dove or uh uh a baby robin or something, and they'll immediately jump to the conclusion that it's orphaned.

And in fact, it's probably a fledgling that has its parent taking care of it, but the parents not there all the time.

The parent has to go out, find things to feed the youngster, fly back, feed it for a short period of time, fly out again.

So we we'll counsel people about watching that animal and trying to determine whether it's truly orphaned or not, whether it's truly injured or not.

You can also visit the center, check out their wildlife gallery.

View a behind the scenes video about the work of the wild animal hospital.

Walk through the animal house to learn how to animal proof your home.

We get thousands of phone calls a year, sometimes 125 a day from people asking us, I have a chipmunk in my dryer vent.

Raccoons are getting in my garbage cans.

Something's in my chimney, something's living under my deck, all sorts of things like that.

It's very, very common.

So we have both our animal house here.

We invite people to come in, look around the animal house.

It's uh it's a walkthrough model.

Uh it shows various aspects of uh actually shows things that animals can get into that you may not want them to get into.

Uh raccoons getting into garbage cans, a simple solution is use bungee cords across the top of the can prevent them from getting in there.

Um cap your chimney to keep animals from getting in the chimney.

Some animals get in the chimney and they can't get out.

So you do yourself and the animals are favored by animal proofing your house.

Animal shelters receive many calls from people who are not equipped to care for their pets, be they cats and dogs or exotic animals.

Many of them are simply abandoned, and the humane society says that's irresponsible.

And unfortunately, it's it's very common for people to just dump things in parks.

They think, well, you know, I don't want this anymore, it can be free out here.

Uh these animals are from their perspective not equipped for survival.

And in terms of populations, in terms of the health of wildlife in general, releasing uh a creature that could have uh a disease that's transmissible to other wild creatures is would be devastating.

If this monkey pox business had gotten out into the wild, would have been absolutely devastating for for native wildlife.

So, under no circumstances should anyone release um exotic creatures to the wild.