lifestyles
Nancy Schwarting, WildCare director, holds a sharp-shinned hawk. The hawk was treated for a soft tissue injury and was scheduled to be released yesterday.
WildCare
Sometimes the world isn't always easy in the wild. That's why WildCare accepts and cares for injured and orphaned animals Story by Casey Barnes Photos by Jay Thornton
Broken Wings
As Nancy Schwarting watched a night hawk fly off to freedom, a smile crossed her face.
This cormorant water bird was found with a dislocated wing, an injury probably caused when the bird was spun off a car. The bandages on its wing will be removed soon so that it can return to the wild.
if you find an injured or orphaned animal, call WILD Care at 542-1200.
"Boy, that was a beautiful flight," Schwarting said. "That was great."
The hawk's unexpected launch into freedom is symbolic of WildCare, a nonprofit organization of which Schwarting is director. WildCare.
which cares for injured or orphaned animals, has nursed the night hawk and many other animals back to health.
The night hawk was injured about three weeks ago, and by last Wednesday the hawk was not flying well enough to be set free in time for its migration south for the winter, Schwarting said.
WildCare had made the decision to keep the bird for the winter and to set it free next spring, but the bird had a plan of its own.
Off to a warmer climate, the night hark is gone, creating a feeling of accomplishment and relief for Schwarting.
Keeping the bird for the winter would have been a risk for the hawk and an additional expense for WildCare.
The group's economic problems could be eased in part by the Second Annual Art Show, Sale and Auction Sunday at the Holiday Inn. 200 McDonald Drive.
The show and sale will be from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the Regency Rooms and the auction will be from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Brazilian Room.
Admission is $2, and the event will include paintings, sculptures, woodcarvings, prints and jewelry made by artists from Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa.
The art show and auction is the biggest fund raiser of the year for WildCare. The money will go to wildlife rehabilitation, food, bedding and utilities to care for animals such as the night hawk. Schwarting said.
WildCare, once a University-funded program housed in Mallott Hall, was cut off from University funding in 1992 because of budget cuts.
Schwarting. who was a paid employee of WildCare, still
works for the University as supervisor for technical services of Animal
Care, a program that takes care of all the animals on campus, such as the animals in the Natural History Museum.
WildCare originated under the Animal Care unit, Schwartting said. But WildCare never involved research of wild animals, while Animal Care does do research for biology laboratories.
WildCare is now based at Sunflower Farm near Eudora. Outdoor enclosures were converted to flight pens and manual housing, and a new eagle flight pen was constructed in 1991. Animals that require exercise for recovery, such as bobcats, waterfowl, raccoons and beavers, are housed at the farm or at the home of one of 40 active volunteers, half of which are students. Schwarting said.
Pat Beesley, president of Students for WildCare, an organization funded by Student Senate, said the student program provides volunteers, educates the public about WildCare and helps with the fund raising.
"We work really hard to get animals back in shape and set them free." Beesley said. "Later, when you see a similar animal, you can't help to think if that is the one. You think that that animal might not have been there if it weren't for WildCare."
People bring injured, wild animals that they find to the facility. WildCare nurses them back to health and in the best circumstances, sends them back into the wild.
"It is not for long-term captivity," Schwarting said. "But
part of what we do is to make the practical decision of which animals need to be kept down and which animals get back out."
Some of the seriously injured animals that may never function normally again are used by WildCare to educate the public. They are chosen for their calmness and ability to adapt to a cage and used to teach people of all ages about the importance of wildlife in society.
Emotional ties to the animals are never made, Schwarting said, because WildCare does not give them names. Naming individual animals isn't professional, she said.
But some of the animals have had special meaning to the volunteers.
"The cormorant water bird has a mind of its own," Schwarting said."He came in with a dislocated wing, probably spun off of a car. We've got our fingers crossed with him."
The water bird is residing in a pond made by a scout troop. He eats live goldfish and plays in the water, which is all he can do with the bandages on his left wing.
The water bird came to the facility from Ottawa about a week ago, after a woman found the injured animal and called WildCare.
His wing was dislocated, an injury that can rarely be corrected, but a volunteer veterinarian popped it back into place, and the cormorant is due for release soon.
Native-American artist inspired by history
Wayne Wildcat, a Lawrence artist, is having his largest public exhibit at the Lawrence Arts Center.
Photo courtesy of Wayne Wildcat
Wayne Wildcat, a Native-American artist from Lawrence, has his paintings displayed at the Lawrence
Art Center until Nov. 9. Many of the paintings, like "The Strategy," have a political message.
By Susanna Löof Special to the Kansan
Special to the Kansan
One wall in the exhibition room at the Lawrence Arts Center, Ninth and Vermont streets, is a giant painting of buffalo skeletons and a Native American surrounded by generals and officers planning the Indian Wars. The opposite wall is covered by another large painting of a child looking into the room as if he wants to tell observers something.
Wayne Wildcat, a Native-American artist from Lawrence, will have his paintings exhibited at the center until Nov. 9. He said the painting of the child was a representation of the Turkish killings of Armenians about 80 years ago.
"Ifocus on injustice inhistor- er." grid. Wildest, explaining
the motivation for the mural, titled "The Pawn of the Empty Category," which he painted about 20 years ago. "I like to paint about stories of injustices that are less familiar to the world."
The exhibition room is dominated by three giant paintings, but smaller paintings also are displayed. Most of the paintings are of Native Americans.
One of them has three young girls sitting on a floor. Like most other people in Wildcats' paintings, their faces are resolute and their eyes are dark.
"They have just arrived at a boarding school." Wildcat said.
ings, he does not want to call them critical.
"They do not express criticism, but my perspective," he said.
The paintings mostly are painted in brown nuances, which Wildcat creates by mixing white and umbra.
Despite the political message in Wildcat's paint-
"I think the brown tones evoke history," he said.
The lack of brightness and light in the majority of the exhibition's paintings is explained by the dark stories they tell, Wildcat said.
Wildcat, who has had an arts studio in Lawrence for 17 years and who paints portraits for a living, has painted full time for the last six years. The exhibition at the center is his largest public exhibition.
"It has been a pretty successful show," Wildcat said. "People have been writing
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
really great comments in the guest book."
Wildcat named the exhibition "Against All Odds."
"We, the Indian people, survived against all odds, just like anyone who faces genocide and survivals," he said. "I guess I survived, too, and now I am telling my story."
News of the Weird
LEAD STORY
In July, a 33-year-old state trooper in suburban Seattle made a routine traffic stop of a 20-year-old man who was rushing his girlfriend to an abortion clinic. He detained the couple for 90 minutes so they would miss their appointment and attempted to talk them out of the abortion. The couple then was forced to follow the trooper to a church, where a woman continued to exhort them.
In July, Phoenix resident Javier Salinas, 23, had part of his tongue bitten off by a 35-year-old woman who was defending herself from his alleged sexual assault. Helen Carson bit off part of her husband's tongue in August in Kingsport, Tenn., as she pretended to make up after a domestic quarrel.
LATEST BITES
NEW CIVIL RIGHTS
In May, a 35-year-old man in Saginaw, Mich., needed 65 stitches to repair his penis after his live-in girlfriend bit him in a quarrel over whether he was seeing another woman.
In January, Anchorage, Alaska, resident Sarah Achyok, 36, also confronting her boyfriend over alleged infidelities, bit his penis so severely that part of the tissue was shredded. In neither case was the organ severed.
Last fall, the Utah Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal from state prison officials who had wanted prisoner Nick Paul, 28, punished under a 1992 law designed to protect guards. Paul was charged with spitting on a guard. Under the 1992 law, the court ruled only the "throwing" of fecal matter and other bodily fluids is punishable.
In August the city of Buffalo, N.Y., agreed to pay $4,000 to two Niagara Falls men arrested in 1991 on drug charges. Police accused the men of swallowing drugs and then forced them to vomit, which the men said violated their rights.
LEAST JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE
In December, Curtis Shields, 29, was convicted of stabbing a 20-year-old neighbor in Chicago after the two men argued over who had the greater knowledge of Black history.