WALNUT CREEK, CA — The newest patient at Lindsay Wildlife’s hospital fits in the palm of your hand, and she is having a rough week. An Eastern fox squirrel, rescued after getting caught in a snap trap set for rats around a bird feeder, is this week’s “Patient of the Week” at the Walnut Creek wildlife hospital. She is alive, being treated, and healing. She is also one of more than 50 animals admitted this year after run-ins with the kind of traps people set without thinking twice.
Lindsay Wildlife Experience has been the East Bay’s wildlife ER. Raccoons, squirrels, birds, possums — they all end up here, some wrapped in towels by good Samaritans, others barely bigger than a golf ball. The hospital treats hundreds of raccoons a year alone, including one Jimothy who has achieved a level of social media fame most Walnut Creek residents can only dream about.
And look, the hospital runs on donations. Not just the big checks either. The wish list reads like a grocery run for someone who owns a zoo: fresh eggs, chicken thighs, dry dog and cat food, heating pads, unused baby bottles, flea and tick prevention, brown paper bags, Ziploc bags in every size. Gift cards to Costco, Safeway, or Sam’s Club work too, and so do plain old financial contributions.
There is an Amazon wish list for people who would rather click than carry, and the center updates it with the supplies it actually needs week to week. Everything donated goes straight to animals that are, in the truest sense, patients. The ones that recover get released back into the neighborhoods they came from. The ones that don’t get something most wildlife never gets — a dignified end, administered by people who spent real time trying to save them.
The trap angle is the part worth chewing on. Wildlife experts say most of these injuries are preventable. Rodent traps set around bird feeders catch more than rats, and the center recommends pest-safe feeder designs and sealing entry points before the traps come out at all. It is the kind of advice that sounds obvious until you are the one standing over a squirrel with a crushed paw, wondering how it got there.
For more on the people and places that make this town tick, check out our roundup of things to do in Walnut Creek or the story of Joybound’s summer movie nights down the street.
