May 15, 2001
Nature's babies
Tiffin couple comes to the rescue of orphaned and injured wildlife
By Carol Bogart
Lifestyle Editor
It was long, it was slithery and it was crawling down the sidewalk in front of St. Mary's school. Police called Paul Grammer to the rescue. "The phone rang, it was the police department," he remembers. 'They said, 'We have a BIG snake. It's in the back of a cruiser in a bag.'
"I said, 'Bring it over, I'll take a look at it.' The snake wanted out. He was just pushin' and pushin'. I was opening (the burlap bag) real carefully and (the officer) says, 'I just picked it up and put it in there. They don't BITE, do they?' I just gave him this look. I opened it up, it was a ball python, maybe four feet long and as big as my arm around."
Having been bitten on the back of the arm once by his son's ball python, Paul treats the "teeth" end of all snakes with respect.
Errant pythons, iguanas and other reptiles are just a few of the creatures Paul and his wife, Becky, rescue when called upon by the police and sheriff's department or the Seneca Humane Society.
Paul fell in love with snakes as a kid. Becky didn't learn to like them until after she fell in love with Paul.
The two met as students at Heidelberg. Today, Becky teaches sixth grade science at the middle school. Paul teaches fourth graders at Washington Elementary.
A visit to Paul's classroom finds floor-to-ceiling cages crammed with various-size (mostly big) red rat snakes, also known as corn snakes because markings on their bellies look like Indian corn.
An aquarium holds a red-earred turtle.
Paul utilizes snakes and mice to demonstrate "stimulus-response. I put the snake down and then drop a mouse. 'Okay, let's see what stimulates the snake.' Well obviously, it's the mouse. 'Okay, well, what was the response? What did it do?' It ate it. Stimulus-response. It's right in front of their face. I'll have teachers walking in and they back right out."
In a container covered with a kitchen towel, excited peeping erupts as Paul's students remove the cover.
Inside, a nest of baby wrens -- mouths open wide -- gobble down water-soaked dry dog food as fast as the kids can feed them. NIghtcrawlers, Paul says, become too expensive. Most such expenses come out of the Grammers' pockets. Paul and Becky are licensed wildlife rehabilitators.
At their home on Riverside Drive, this time of year finds assorted "nurseries." Upstairs, two young grey squirrels alternate between clinging to the wire of the cage peering curiously at visitors and diving beneath a towel if they feel threatened.
Five, count 'em five, friendly dogs and a comical Siamese cat sit on chairs, the couch, recline on the floor and drop hoping-for-an-ear-scratch heads in laps as Paul prepares to feed one of several red squirrel babies.
Red squirrels, he explains, "are real feisty. They'll scare a grey squirrel away. They're real hyper all the time."
This baby doesn't seem to realize it's only about four inches high when it sits on its haunches.
Paul takes a doll's baby bottle filled with a goat-milk formula and inserts it in the eager baby's mouth. Instantly, two little paws circle the bottle and the squirrel sucks hungrily.
Next, Becky goes down a few stairs, and, acknowledging a rehabilitated nighthawk's cry of greeting, retrieves two of six baby racoons.
"I usually feed them two at a time," she says, spreading a towel on the table.
Unlike the squirrel that faces Paul, the raccoon babies face away from Becky &emdash; again, both on their haunches.
A bottle in each hand, Becky starts to feed them. One grips the bottle in much the same way the little squirrel did. The other is content to let Becky hold it. The small raccoon spreads it arms, tiny hand-like-paws outstretched, black fingers splayed &emdash; the picture of contentment.
Raccoons, Becky says, are her favorites because each "has its own personality." With the Pennsylvania rabies threat headed this way, she's afraid the day will come the Division of Wildlife, through which she and Paul are licensed, will stop bringing the Grammers orphaned raccoons to raise, then release back into the wild.
As the animals mature, Paul and Becky stop cuddling and talking to them. Instead, the couple move them to a backyard pen that circles a tree far from the house. The Grammers don't even speak to the raccons and other wildlife as they feed it.
The object is to re-instill the animals' natural fear of humans. Both Grammers wish well-meaning but untrained people would leave wildlife alone.
Half-grown raccoons, Paul says, have sharp teeth and claws that can rake an arm. Too often, people will think they can raise a baby, only to dump it when it gets big. By that time, the animal has learned to depend on people.
Not hiding his disgust, Paul relates the time someone who'd brought him such raccoons told him, "and that one really likes pistachio ice cream." Where, Paul wondered, would the released raccoon find pistachio ice cream in the wild?
Sometimes it even takes awhile for animals or birds the Grammers have raised to "disengage" from their human saviors.
They tell about two Canada Geese they raised from goslings.
When the birds were old enough to survive on their own, the Grammers tried to release them at a reservoir.
Two resident geese approached their two, hissing and being generally disagreeable.
It had been a long walk from the car, hoisting carriers filled with heavy geese.
"I'm not carrying them back," Paul told Becky.
As the two started back around the reservoir to their vehicle, their entourage elicited stares from people fishing.
With Paul and Becky in the lead, two fat Canada geese hurried along behind them. Eventually, the Grammers found a pond and flock their geese accepted and that accepted them. The Grammers had to hide behind trees and bushes, though, before their geese would swim off to join the others.)
The Grammers say, before a would-be rehabilitator can be licensed, he or she must be screened by the state. The wildlife officer has to approve the license.
What advice would they give those who think they'd like to help injured and orphaned wildlife?
"Well, first of all, they have to really love animals," Becky says, then pauses.
Chuckling, she adds, "and they have to be a little bit crazy."