What’s it like to live with wild animals in your apartment? A licensed wildlife rehabilitator explains why she cares for squirrels, opossums, rabbits and more in her Brooklyn home—and how it feels when she finally sets them free.
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A lot of New Yorkers can say their roommates are total animals, but for Kris Bevilacqua, they really are. As a New York State-licensed wildlife rehabilitator, she cares for orphaned, abandoned or injured wild animals in her Brooklyn home.
Beginning in spring, Bevilacqua works with Sean Casey Animal Rescue in Sunset Park to coordinate care for any birds, turtles and small mammals—mostly squirrels that have fallen out of trees—that people bring in to the shelter. The ground floor of her Clinton Hill carriage house has been converted to a small zoo, with spacious cages ready for their tiny occupants and big jars of nuts and food pellets. Two longer-term tenants also live there: Rocky, a southern flying squirrel that has been raised by humans and can’t be released into the wild; and Possum, an opossum who is waiting for a new home.
The menagerie also includes a bunny named Beatrice, a rescued guinea pig named May, and two rescued chinchillas. For Bevilacqua, who’s taken care of animals since she was young, becoming a wildlife rehabilitator just made sense.
Transcript
When I was a kid, I took, people would always bring little rabbits and mice to me and I’d take care of them, and then over the years we’ve had rabbit and dogs and cats.
[Couple mealworms, some cat food]
For the past six or so years, we’ve volunteered every Friday over at Sean Casey Animal Rescue where people turn in all kinds of wild animals. It just made sense for me to become a wildlife rehabber so that when they get a squirrel they can say, ‘Hey, we got another one, come and get it.’
We’ve had 19 squirrels at one time.
Rocky is a flying squirrel, what else would you name a flying squirrel.
It appeals to my nurturing side to do this, you know, when you, you know, you pick up a little animal and you coax them to eat.
She and Possum both like to eat sometime between 10 p.m. and midnight.
You could say he’s a nice boy for a ‘possum, [laughs] he’s way friendlier with people than he ever should be.
He was originally found when he was very tiny in Brighton Beach.
He’s still waiting to go to an educational facility, or someplace where he will have more attention, and he won’t have to fend for himself.
[Here you go babe]
It’s incredibly satisfying to watch them go from being hairless, their eyes are closed, and be able to take them along, to be along on the journey, really, with them as they get ready to, as they grow up and they’re ready to go out and do their thing in nature.
