Timber and Juneau are wolf-dog hybrids that live at the Pauline S. Schneegas Wildlife Foundation in Silt, south of I-70. Timber is actually 90% wolf, said founder Nanci Limbach. 

“They’ll lick you to death,” she said. 

Wolves and dogs are pack animals, so Juneau and Timber live together and have done so for nine years after Timber was turned over to the sanctuary by his owners. 

“He was jumping fences, chasing livestock. Wolf-hybrids don’t really make good pets, so we got him,” Limbach said. 

The almost-wolves are not the only permanent residents of the sanctuary: bobcats, tortoises, turtles, kestrels, hawks, pigs, chinchillas, bearded dragons, crows, rabbits, and a raven named Loki live there, too. 

“Loki pretends to be bashful — he hides his face under his wing,” Limbach said, laughing. “He waits for you to stick your fingers in the cage, and then he bites them.”

Each of the animals has a story. Some, like Gavin the red-tailed hawk, is blind in his left eye, and the feathers on that side are a bit mangled, and Limbach said he was probably pushed out of the nest early by his mother. 

Spike, one of the tortoises, kept escaping from his owner’s home. 

“We had the family who used to have him come up and see him,” Limbach said. “The little boy, after seeing Spike, turned to me and said, ‘You’re evil.’ I asked him why, and he said, ‘You won’t let the animals go free.’ Now we know how Spike kept getting out.”

The sanctuary’s permanent residents are educational, offering lessons on how to treat wild animals and why it’s a bad idea to turn them into pets. 

“A lot of people get these animals as pets and are surprised when they turn out to be wild,” she explained. “Other times, they get pets and then don’t want them anymore and then turn them loose.”

Unfortunately, animals that are pets from birth, despite being wild animals, don’t learn how to survive in the wild, such as Nova the kestrel. 

“Someone was outside, and Nova landed on her shoulder,” Limbach said. “So she called us. Nova is very friendly because she was raised with people, so she never learned to hunt.”

Junior, the potbelly pig, was also dumped by his owner out in public. 

“He was abandoned in a park with 50 pounds of food,” Limbach said, petting Junior’s head as he snuffled. 

Some of the other animals were abused and needed more care. Bandit Bob, a red-eared slider turtle, had rubber bands placed around his shell as a baby. 

“As he grew up with the bands around him, his shell deformed,” Limbach said, showing the peanut-shaped turtle. “It’s pretty common for people to do that and then sell the turtles as an ‘exotic breed.'”

Some turtles can have odd shells — spiky, flat, soft, plated and many others. However, no turtles are born with a figure-eight-shaped shell. Some wild turtles can end up in this shape from plastic rings from soda cans floating in the ocean, and the sanctuary keeps one next to Bob’s tank for education. 

The sanctuary wants to rehabilitate some animals, like the Arctic blue fox from Iceland that was turned over to them. 

“There was a breeding house in Tennessee that breeds anything and everything,” Limbach said as the fox stood on a rock. “So he was purchased. The people who had him had him for about a year, and they didn’t build him an outdoor compound or anything. They kept him in a laundry room because it had cement floors, so he couldn’t dig out.”

Limbach, as founder and director, runs the entire sanctuary. It’s an endeavor that she’s always wanted to do since being a child, she said. 

“I started as a vet tech in Glenwood Springs, worked there for about nine years,” she said. “Learned a lot of stuff, and then I’ve been doing this for about 43 years now.”

Her husband, Paul, built almost the entire sanctuary when it was originally an apiary. 

“It used to be for beekeeping,” she said. “That used to be a honey house.”

Eventually, it was turned into the sanctuary, and she lives there with her husband, their pug, and the residents of the sanctuary. 

If anyone has found a wild animal in need, call Colorado Parks and Wildlife first. However, if you can safely catch the animal, there is a small crate with a heating pad in the shed at the front entrance of the sanctuary. 

“Just put them in the crate, write down your information, and we’ll get to them pretty quick,” Limbach said. “Sometimes we’re feeding other animals or doing something else, so it’s nice to be able to have this.”

She says if you put an animal into the crate, make sure they’re secure. 

“Had a guy tell me he found an injured chipmunk. He’d put the box with the chipmunk in it in the crate,” she said. “I got the crate, put it in my car, and when I went to pull it out, I realized the box he’d used had ventilation holes in it. No chipmunk. Either it’s in his car, my car, or it got free.”

To find out more about what you should do about particular animals, such as fawns, bats and bears, the sanctuary’s webpage has a tab for “I’ve found a …” for informative purposes. Or, to learn more about the sanctuary, visit psswf.org.