Arizona’s state mammal is the ringtail, often erroneously called the ringtail cat. It’s a little cat-like creature that’s actually part of the raccoon family. It sort of looks like a cat/racoon hybrid with a fluffy, ringed tail.
But, these little creatures are having a harder time today as we build further into the desert and come into closer and closer contact with what’s now called urban wildlife.
The Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center says it’s seen a significant increase in ringtail rescues this year, as they’re sneaking into closets and pipes looking for water and food.
Kim Carr, animal care manager for the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center, joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
KIM CARR: If you ask any Arizona native, sometimes they don't even know what a ringtail is. They’ve never heard of a ringtail, but it actually is the Arizona state mammal and incredibly interesting little critters. Very, lots of neat adaptations and, and characteristics about them. But, you don't see them very often because they're very secretive and, and mainly nocturnal.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. They're elusive, right. And they tend to live in these sort of odd places, it seems.
CARR: Yeah. They find little niches and rocky crevices and mine shafts and people's attics. You know, they can get themselves into such tiny little places. So you really just don't see them very often, they're just really well hidden. They have made their way into a lot of different, you know, Arizona folklore and whatnot.
GILGER: OK. So let's talk about what's happening now with ringtails, because this is not a great development. Your organization says they've seen a big increase in ring tails needing rescue this year. And that's kind of common across the board. But these particular animals, because of some of the attributes that you've described here are being found in some difficult scenarios, it sounds like?
CARR: Yes. And you know, by our numbers increasing, it's not going to sound like a lot, but to us it's a lot because we might only see a ringtail every other year. So, it's not a really common animal that we take in that we care for.
But for some reason, this year, in the past six months to a year, we've received five of them, which again, numbers wise, that's not a huge number. But considering that we only see one every couple of years and that is a large amount of ring tails for us. And they're coming from different scenarios, getting themselves into trouble in different ways and needing our help.
GILGER: Right. So, you've rescued ringtails in odd places like a school closet, a pickup truck, a medical facility, a tortilla factory. Talk a little bit about the situations they've found themselves in.
CARR: There's kind of a touristy area, out past, like by the Superstition Mountains and it's called Tortilla Flat. So it's kind of got a historical area. There's a saloon/restaurant out there that people can, you know, it's open, people can visit there, eat there. So it's kind of a little touristy destination.
And some of the workers there in the restaurant called our emergency line. And they had found a ringtail that had gotten into, it's called an oil transfer tube, but it's where the oil from the fryer is stored and there was no oil inside the tube. But of course, there was a lot of residue in there because oil, you know, sticks to everything, and some rain water had also gotten in there. So that was kind of mixed together.
And somehow the ringtail got in there and was covered in this oily residue. It was wet, sopping wet. And the workers were able to get him into a box because he wasn't doing very well and they didn't have to try too hard and they called our rescue line and that's when we sent one of our volunteers out there to go get this little guy.
GILGER: Man, oh, man. So they can find themselves because they like to go into these little spaces, in some difficult spaces, are the ones that you've found and that you've rescued this year, have they been in, in bad condition?
CARR: A couple of them have been just fine. They found themselves in a place that maybe they could not get out of, or maybe they could have, but, you know, you can't really have a ringtail hanging out in a closet at a school for various reasons.
You don't want a wild animal running rampant in a school and, and it's possible that that animal could have gotten itself out, but of course, you know, and wanted to air on the side of caution and, and they ended up, you know, getting the ringtail out of that school, which was good, but some of them come in and they are perfectly healthy, they might just need to find another place to live.
But, we have had several that were, you know, really thin, and of course, the one from Tortilla Flat wasn't doing great. He had ingested some of the oil in his lungs. And so, it took a lot of care to get that animal healthy.
But luckily, some of them do come to us and it's a really quick turnaround. Those can be released pretty quickly and, you know, those are obviously the stories that we love that we just kind of have to find a new home for them. And the other ones might take some more intense medical care and time to rehabilitate.
GILGER: Right. And if you can just release them back into the wild, maybe into an environment that's a little less urban?
CARR: Absolutely. And, you know, we try to find a really good place for them, especially if we're rescuing them someplace where they've kind of gotten themselves into a pickle. We want to take them away from that place. You know, that is their habitat and that's probably their home range, but we don't want them to get into trouble again. And the urban wildlife thing, you know, people always think that wild animals are out in the desert and they're really far removed, away from civilization and people, and really they're just living among us now and that's the way it's gonna be from now on.
GILGER: Right. So, let's talk about that because that trend seems to be increasing and we see more and more stories like this, of animals getting themselves into tough situations with people or stuck as these ringtails might find themselves. Is this just about, you know, us building and moving into their habitats more and more?
CARR: There's a lot of different factors, of course, that's one of it. We're just, you know, building out and building out and taking over more and more habitat and a lot of these animals are learning to coexist with humans, which is great because we certainly don't wanna drive anything to extinction or to, you know, being endangered.
So, they are living amongst us in our neighborhoods and, and they're kind of learning to adapt and, and some of it might be because, you know, if you have a hot year, or you have a year where it was, you know, a huge drought year and so they're getting forced to kind of come into those urban areas to look for food and water.
So, there's just a really a lot of different things that go into why you see so many animals in neighborhoods. But again, you know, that's where they can almost find all the resources that they need. It's one stop shopping for wild animals, basically, in our neighborhoods in our cities, unfortunately.
GILGER: Does this have to do with the intense heat that we experienced here this summer as well? More so than usual?
CARR: We did seem to get a lot of animals that were extremely heat stressed, dehydrated. And, we do get animals like that every summer, especially some of the younger animals, maybe animals that are orphaned, or somehow got separated from their mothers that come in a really bad condition.
But, because we had such an extreme summer this summer, where it was just as everyone knows that lived through it. The heat was relentless and, and it didn't rain. So you think about these wild animals that they have all these adaptations to be able to survive without water for a while at some point, they're going to need some water. And we received a lot of animals that were, you know, in dire need because of, just the lack of moisture out there and the lack of being able to find water. So it was a pretty rough summer for wildlife.
GILGER: Tell us what other kinds of examples of this. Would people be surprised at the kinds of animals that are being affected by the heat this way? Is it native animals that are, you know, used to the desert as well?
CARR: Even native animals, there are some animals that maybe can survive their whole life only getting the moisture from their food, there are certain rodents that they don't ever need to drink a drop of water. They can get all the moisture that they can from the seeds and the food that they eat.
But, you know, mammals, the wild mammals do need water, they get a lot of water from their food, but you know, they can't go without water forever. So, they're having to search longer and harder to find water sources, and especially when there is just no rain, it might just be a water puddle from a rain shower and maybe that's all they need for a while. But when we're not even getting any rain substantially at all, all summer then it's really detrimental to the wildlife.
