BARNSTABLE · ROUTE 6A
"We have to admit, this is a strange request even for us."
That's how the Cape Wildlife Center in Barnstable opened a July 23 post, with two owls in the picture. Then it got to the point. "We're asking you to help us buy… mice."
You may know the place as the number somebody gave you the day you found a hurt bird. The hospital at 4011 Main Street is the kind of institution most of us never think about until we're standing on a shoulder with a towel, wondering what to do. Few of us have thought about its grocery list.
The list has a number on it. Why would anyone need that many?
About 87 mice a day
The center told the public its patients and ambassador animals eat about 31,725 frozen mice a year. Divide by 365 and you get an average of about 87 a day. That's our arithmetic.
Popular Science listed who's at the table: hawks, owls, foxes, snakes and weasels, each of which, the center wrote, "depends on a species-appropriate diet to heal."
For nearly two decades, that diet came free. Research facilities passed along laboratory mice they no longer needed, Boston.com reported, and the center fed them to its patients. Then, in the center's words, "that donation has come to an end."
A line that used to read zero
Buying mice on the open market would add an estimated $30,000 to $45,000 a year to the budget, the center said. That's a forecast, not an invoice. Spread over 31,725 mice, it works out to roughly 95 cents to $1.42 each, by our math. Neither report names the old supplier or says why it stopped.
It's a strange kind of cost. Nobody's buying a new X-ray. Nobody's cutting a ribbon. It's a line that read zero for nearly 20 years, and it arrived during what the center's summer appeal described as its busiest year ever.
The appeal went out with a match: a donor would match gifts to the mouse fund up to $10,000, Popular Science reported. On July 27, four days after the post, the center announced it had met its goal. "Your response was overwhelming," it said.
We couldn't find the total, and the $10,000 match is a ceiling, not a sum raised. Boston.com reported in August that the donations would help cover costs as the center sought a longer-term solution. It didn't say what that would be, and we found no public word of a new supplier as of Nov. 5.
The center has been here before
This place has needed saving on short notice before. In November 2016, CapeCod.com reported, the Humane Society of the United States planned to close the center that Nov. 18, saying it hadn't drawn enough financial support. A last-minute deal with the Pegasus Foundation kept it open through March 1, 2017.
The roots went back further. Barbara Birdsey and her husband started the training program in West Barnstable in the late 1980s, CapeCod.com wrote in 2017, and that year the New England Wildlife Center helped keep it open. The center's site today calls it the Birdsey Cape Wildlife Center, a program of New England Wildlife Centers.
A bill that comes back
Which leaves the question July didn't answer. A donation drive buys time. A mouse budget comes back every year, and it doesn't care how well the post did.
Should a hospital like this be paying that line out of donations? Would you put roughly $1.42 toward one mouse, or would you rather see someone with a lab find the next free supply? Hit reply and tell us. And if you've ever driven a hurt animal to Route 6A, tell us that too.
If you find one on the shoulder
Call before you touch it. "The creature may not need help," CapeCod.com's guide advised in 2017, so call first, and don't handle an animal unless the center tells you how.
The number. The center's site lists its Wildlife Hotline and main line as 508-362-0111, and an after-hours emergency line, 617-835-6845, as of Nov. 5.
Giving. General donations go through the center's site. We couldn't confirm that a mouse fund is still open as of Nov. 5.
Other Mid Cape creatures with fine print
Two more places where the shellfish came with paperwork.
YARMOUTH · BASS RIVER
The town has a plan for its oyster shells, and it ends underwater.
LEWIS BAY · QUAHOGS
The tide and the sunset had something to say about it.