Nestled into a makeshift “nest,” pieced together from materials we used for a recent art project, two baby hummingbirds found on campus seemed to float in a pink cottony cloud.

I manage the staff and operations of Noah’s Ark at the Skirball, so responding to a lost child or a spill on the gallery floor is no problem. Knowing what to do with two tiny, helpless birds unable to feed themselves or fly? That is not in my handbook.

So, when I was at my desk recently and heard that two hummingbird babies were found in the grass near the rainbow mist arbor, I groaned. The Skirball is situated right in the Santa Monica Mountains, so living amid wildlife—snakes, lizards, spiders, foxes, raccoons—is expected. It’s not unusual to encounter a family of deer standing majestically in the arroyo garden when I’m heading out to my car after work. I kindly leave them alone, and they kindly leave me alone. But when we encounter an injured animal right in our backyard, we can’t very well leave it alone.

Quite fortuitously one of our Noah’s Ark gallery educators is a trained, licensed wildlife rehabilitator. When faced with an injured animal, she’s been kind enough to oblige and whisk the animal off to safety until she’s done teaching. But this doesn’t make for good practice, and I knew that we needed to take her off the hook for responding. Coming up with a protocol had been on my to-do list, but I had not yet thought it through. So here I was, groaning because it had come up… again. Continue reading →