Dawn V.

In 1994 during one of Dawn's first jobs as a part-time park naturalist, someone brought in two tiny opossum babies. Dawn did her best to keep them alive but did not succeed. She did some research and got her wildlife rehabilitator's license in 1995, and with the next batch of five opossum orphans she was able to successfully raise them and release them back in the wild. She was continually amazed at how fragile and yet how strong the tiny babies were, how hard they struggled and clung to life. It gave her so much satisfaction to be able to help a cold, starving, distressed baby wild animal and see it warm, happy, well-fed, growing and developing and exhibiting its natural, wild behaviors, and of course the best part -- being able to watch them return to the wild. Since those first batches of opossum orphans, Dawn has raised and released 25-50 opossums every year, as well as a variety of other critters. For years she had a "cooler brooder" that she used to transport the littlest orphans back and forth to work, but it finally gave out after over ten years of faithful service. She has been improvising since then with homemade incubators but it's very hard to keep a consistent temperature. Dawn has really noticed a drop in the survival rate of the tiniest orphans. She says that the thought of an incubator where you can set the temperature and not have to be constantly checking and worrying over it sounds like heaven! Let's make that happen for her!