Irene Files: Forgoing Sleep, North Granby Residents Provide Haven for Wildlife

Susan Dwyer, founder and director of the Safe House Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in North Granby, has a simple explanation for how she manages to keep fed the 62 baby squirrels, one owl and a possum that were rescued from the aftermath of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene.

“I don’t sleep,” Dwyer said in a recent interview at the center. “I have a couple of very good volunteers and a lot of willpower.”

The vast majority of the squirrels rescued after Irene passed through were so young that they’re eyes were still closed and they needed to be fed via a syringe every two hours, which explains Dwyer’s sleep deprivation.

“The syringes are better than baby bottles because you can control the flow better,” Dwyer said.

With such dedication, it isn’t surprising that Dwyer, who is also a member of the Granby Conservation Commission, refers to her charges not as animals, but as babies, nearly 2,000 of which have passed through the state-licensed center’s doors since it opened five years ago.

The center, which is registered with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection’s Wildlife Division, is a refuge for young wild animals that are mostly orphaned through human interaction, either by poison, being run over or trapped.

On a recent visit, dozens of blanket-covered Tupperware containers ringed the large room above the Dwyers’ garage; the containers served as mini-incubators for the baby squirrels to keep them warm.

An adventurous adolescent raccoon named Togo paced his cage back and forth in anticipation of feeding time.

“It’s sort of my way of making up for all the harm humans have done to them,” Dwyer said of her motivation to run the center along with her husband, Mike. It costs nearly $25,000 a year to run the non-for-profit center, which the Dwyers receive through small donations and the occasional grant.

Much of the funding comes from Dwyer, who recently retired from her job as a manager of the state court computer system.

“I just love these little guys,” Susan Dwyer said. “You need to have wildlife with the environment, otherwise it’s just an empty space.”

Toward that end, Susan Dwyer earned her license to run the center by passing an exam and performing at least 40 hours of volunteer work at another wildlife rehab center.

In addition, she also went to school for three years to learn homeopathy to help nurse the animals back to health.

“It doesn’t do everything but it stabilizes them,” she said. “Rehabilitation is a constant learning process. Every baby is different and every circumstance is different. … Most of the vets won’t work with us.”

Dwyer recalled her first “baby,” which came in on a Mother’s Day several years ago.

“Someone showed up with a 2-week old flying squirrel and I didn’t have anything small enough to fit in its mouth to feed it,” she said.

Dwyer used a little pipette that someone had given her that was just big enough to fit in the baby’s mouth.

“Rocky grew into a big, beautiful flying squirrel,” Dwyer said.

Since then, Dwyer’s home has been a haven for many different types of the area’s fauna, including foxes, pigeons, woodchucks and mice.

Once the animals are weaned, they are put into big release pens, where they don’t have any human contact other than with Susan, who only sticks around long enough to feed them.

“Once they are outside, Mother Nature kicks in,” Susan Dwyer said. “Mother Nature is a wonderful teacher. Things that we don’t have a prayer teaching them, Mother Nature does. In the nursery, it’s light. Raccoons and skunks are nocturnal animals. As soon as they are outside, they’re sleeping all day and I feed them at night. I don’t want them getting used to thinking that it’s OK to eat during the day. That would be a death sentence to them.”

Dwyer said that it can be hard to say goodbye once its time to set her babies free, but she has gotten used to it.

“You do get emotionally attached but you learn that you can cuddle them when they are little,” she said. “But once they go outside, you have to let go. I think of their well-being when it’s time to let them go, you pat them on their head and tell them to be safe.”

Note: for this article, Susan Dwyer specifically requested that the center’s address not be mentioned to prevent the abandoning of animals on her doorstep. To donate to the center, checks may be made out to: Safe House Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, P.O. Box 147, North Granby, CT, 06060.