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CASTALIA - Some Tiffin residents got a bird's-eye view of Back to the Wild Wildlife Rehabilitation & Nature Education Center.

Allen Eiry Senior Center and Tiffin-Seneca Public Library sponsored a trip to the center Wednesday afternoon as part of the library's annual Community Wide Read. Mona Rutger, director and founder of Back to the Wild, presented a program at the library Sunday.

The center was founded almost 20 years ago and is located on property that also is home to the family's house. Rutger said she and her husband are on call every minute, every hour and every day of the year, and they get telephone calls at 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. She said the effort is a labor of love but she wouldn't do anything else.

"We're trying to teach kids that they have to take better care of the earth than past generations have," she said.

Ninety percent of what comes in to Back to the Wild are human-related injuries.

Rutger said officials' goal is to get all animals back into the wild, where they belong, and the center is allowed to use a limited number of animals for educational purposes.

The center is home to animals such as bunnies, ducks, geese, opossums, squirrels and birds, including hawks and eagles. It had eight bald eagles Wednesday and has plans to release an eagle near the Sandusky River this week.

"We just got this eastern bluebird in the other night," she said. "He's good. We're going to be able to release him back into the wild."

The center is home to a ruby-throated hummingbird that had a broken wing that didn't heal enough to allow the bird to be released back into the wild. The center either has to keep her as a crippled bird or make a decision about whether it is more humane to euthanize her, Rutger said.

"We try very hard to do what's right for the animal," she said. "Wild animals do not handle captivity very well."

Rutger said the center needs 15 employees but has three. The center only is funded by donations. The center can't charge for programs but can ask for donations, and it couldn't exist without volunteers, she said.

Volunteers, Rutger said, are not petting or playing with the animals.

"We are rescuing them, rehabilitating them," she said.

After a presentation in the nature education center, Sarah Langdon, staff supervisor, took the group on a tour through rows of cages in the back. Langdon, who has worked at Back to the Wild for four years, said the center has multiples of almost every animal housed in the back cages.

She showed the tourists a butterfly and the permanent resident birds. All the birds in the back are not able to be released, she said.

"They all talk to each other," she said as the group walked near eagles in a cage.

Leo Sendelbach of Tiffin visited Back to the Wild for the first time Wednesday and said he has a fair amount of interest in wildlife. He said he thought Back to the Wild was educational, exciting, interesting and useful.

"I'm very glad that I came," he said.

On the Web:

Back to the Wild:

www.backtothewild.com