The North Texas Wildlife Center rarely gives cute names to the injured, orphaned and sick animals coming through its front door. Its team is too busy trying to save the lives of the 2,500 critters that need its help each year.
The Plano-based nonprofit cares for opossums, raccoons, squirrels and skunks. For ducks, vultures and pigeons. For Texas spiny lizards, toads and geckos. In 2024, more than 140 species took refuge here.
Inside an incubator was a month-old bobcat found in an Allen front yard by a homeowner who thought it and its sibling were kittens. Across the room, an eastern screech owl prescribed prednisone for head trauma after it crashed into a window in Plano. Two reptiles hunker down — a snapping turtle on antibiotics, emaciated after a puncture injury suffered in Sherman, and a three-toed box turtle hit by a car in Forney, its shell carefully pieced back together.
Those were among the 115 animals Dallas Morning News photojournalist Tom Fox and I saw during a recent morning inside this wildlife MASH unit — operating from a 1,044-square-foot house and small backyard and desperately in need of a larger location.
Because the demand for help overwhelms its resources, the center sometimes must turn away animals to maintain quality care for existing patients. That most often happens during the spring breeding season, when calls for help are in the hundreds and boxes of baby animals wait for available incubators.
The public’s lack of knowledge also creates near-impossible cases. Among the baby squirrels I saw were two who, when found, were fed cow’s milk and sugar water. The rescuer also used the wrong size syringe, which allowed liquid to be inhaled into their lungs.
About 75% of “finder fed” animals brought to the center in 2023 died within 24 hours. That’s why it’s much better to get help immediately rather than wait until a bad situation gets worse. (The center’s website provides info to help determine if a wild animal is in distress.)
The nonprofit operation officially opened in 2013 as the Dallas Wildlife Center, located in the climate-controlled garage of co-founder Mela Singleton’s home in Murphy.
Eight years later, juggling wildlife work, a full-time job and a family, Mela was bone-tired. Rehabilitators don’t get days off. Theirs is a relentless grind of feedings, cage cleanings, medical care and documentation.
Mela walked into her closet and, once she began to cry, couldn’t stop. “I was just done.”
A few days later, a stranger with an elderly opossum in tow showed up. “Don’t quit,” Lake Highlands resident Rebecca Hamlin told Mela as she examined the animal. “I’ll help you.”
Rebecca never left, and today she runs the center. According to Mela, the center’s board chair, “I gave the organization CPR, and Rebecca came along and shocked it to life.”
In late 2021, Mela, Rebecca and board secretary Jeniffer Coats pooled their savings to buy the Plano home. “We spent every penny we could without taking food off our tables,” Rebecca recalled.
The team’s many permits include a wildlife rehabilitator certification from Plano City Hall to operate at the location. From the outside, the center resembles the other small brick homes on the block. Beyond the door are 150 indoor and outdoor cages and enclosures, 28 incubators and tons of supplies and food. The walls are covered with instructions and checklists; boards, charts for each patient are attached to their quarters.
Every inch of space is used — including the bathroom tub, where a second three-toed box turtle soaked in diluted Betadine to clean his shell. The heavy-duty washer and dryer run all day.
Strict protocols keep the animals safe: Double doors, cages inside of cages and a location not publicly shared. “All those cages better be like Fort Knox,” Rebecca said, “because I need to not wake my husband up every night worrying about the animals.”
Rebecca’s ability to continue to work full-time in UT Dallas’ neuroscience research lab while also putting in 40 to 50 hours at the nonprofit is almost as miraculous as the structure she brings to the bursting-at-the-seams wildlife wards.
Task lists and spreadsheets are her best friends in both jobs. Rebecca also lets people know when she needs a break. She remains obsessed with opossums and oozes passion about the wildlife center.
The five-person staff and about 100 volunteers deal daily with animals’ trauma and suffering. Despite their commitment to “rescue, rehab and release,” they can’t save them all. They vent. They cry. They pick up the pieces and start fresh.
Most injured or orphaned wildlife begin their recovery in the incubator room, whose warming boxes cost $700 to $1,000 each. Patients often can’t self-regulate, so the incubators help maintain body temperature. Staff and volunteers with proper certification also have boxes in their homes for overnight care.
Once animals are nursed back to health, they usually go to “boot camp” enclosures in the backyard to hone their natural skills alongside their peers. To prepare them to eventually resume their lives in the wild, workers clap, stomp, blow in the animals’ faces and spray water at the critters.
“If we walk up to a raccoon on release day and he still seems willing to be picked up,” Rebecca said, “we failed at our jobs.”
The center is a hub in an impressive North Texas wildlife rehab network. Rebecca’s staff works with more than a dozen local cities. Municipal animal shelters often bring injured or orphaned wildlife to the Plano location.
The team consults with specialists across the state when they encounter something unfamiliar. Animals often are transported to rehab partners approved by Texas Parks and Wildlife.
For example, after the eastern screech owl’s brain swelling diminishes, it will move to a flight cage at a raptor rehabber’s location. Ditto for the black vulture recovering from West Nile virus.
The baby bobcat will go to a center in Amarillo with space the Plano center can’t afford. She and her sibling suffered from aspiration pneumonia; each time the one who eventually died meowed, bubbles of milk poured out of her mouth and nose. The surviving one “squeaks” when she breathes, a sign of an underdeveloped diaphragm and premature birth.
Adult animals rarely abandon their babies except in cases, like the Allen bobcats, in which they fail to thrive, Mela said. More often, wildlife become orphans after the mother is hit by a car or killed by another animal. The center’s records indicate 80% of baby raccoons arrive after critter-control companies evict the adult from an attic and only later does the resident realize babies were left behind.
(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)
With winter approaching, Nov. 15 was the last day the center released rehabilitated orphans into the wild. Some of the adult animals in “boot camp” might be freed — but only under certain circumstances such as camera-monitored property with food and shelter.
“We didn’t bring them this far to take a shortcut now,” Rebecca said. “They are stuck with us until it warms up again.”
Some animals go to sanctuaries to live out their lives. Others go to nature preserves or large parks in cities that have given their OK. Raccoons and skunks go to properties far away from people.
Whenever wildlife make headlines, whether coyote attacks or rabid-bat discoveries, the Plano operation gets calls. Because fears are often overblown, the staff’s best response is to post information on their Facebook and TikTok accounts.
Rebecca doesn’t expect everyone to go to the lengths she does to save wildlife. She just wants us to do the basics to coexist with them. For instance, don’t use poisons or set rodent glue traps outside.
Despite the often overwhelming demand for the center’s services, Rebecca is most thankful for the North Texas who seek it out. “You cared enough to get that baby here, that means a lot.”
If you need help with injured, abandoned or sick wildlife, text the North Texas Wildlife Center at 469.901.9453. To make a donation, go to ntxwildlife.org.