On a Friday night some time ago, Colorado Division of Wildlife district wildlife manager Shannon Schwab was ready to go home from work when she got a call.

Two teenage girls were distraught about two fledgling magpies that had fallen out of the nest onto the ground.

Schwab attempted to talk them through placing the birds back in their nest, but the girls insisted it was too high for them to reach. So, Schwab arrived on scene, armed with nothing more than a plastic shopping bag. Sure enough, the nest was high in the tree, so she scooped the birds into the bag and tucked it into her belt to start climbing.

“I'm winding through these branches, and the branches are scraping my face and sap is in my hair,” she said. As she clambered down and brushed her hand across her face, she stopped short.

The birds were back on the ground.

“I barely made it up there alive and back down, and now I've got to go back up?” she said, adding that the young girls were thrilled to witness the rescue.

Schwab's story illustrates the types of scenarios the Division of Wildlife's local, volunteer Wildlife Transport Team might face during its week on call this summer. She shared the story during a five-hour training held last weekend for about 18 folks interested in being part of the team or serving as part of the Bear Aware educational force.

Being on the transport team is all about problem-solving and thinking at the spur of the moment, Schwab said. She admitted that sometimes, even district wildlife managers have no idea how to handle a situation, but they're quick to use the tools at hand — most commonly durable gloves and a towel or blanket — to do what's best for the animal and the people nearby.

Ruth Carroll, who's entering her second year on the Bear Aware team — training for that was also held last weekend — is considering volunteering for Wildlife Transport as well this summer. She sees a connection between her passion for educating her neighbors in

Silverthorne's Hamilton Creek on living in wildlife's backyard and getting hands-on in handling wildlife-human interactions.

“They're typically a nuisance because of us,” she said.

Painting the picture

Transport team members carry a dedicated cell phone to field calls that might come to animal control or the Summit County Sheriff's Office. When called, a transport team member's first task is to get an idea of the scene, and it can sometimes be difficult — a youth could be in hysteria, a mother could be nervous, a man could be vague in his descriptors. Transport volunteers need to get details on the time frame of the incident, if the animal has been picked up, what kind of animal it is, and more.

“A lot of this is actually figuring out if there's actually a problem... if the animal really needs assistance,” Schwab said, explaining that sometimes, young wildlife are doing what nature tells them to do, “and a ‘well-intentioned' person comes along and messes it all up.”

The goal is to educate from the beginning, Schwab said, adding that she finds nothing worse than having to euthanize or take a creature to a rehabilitator that could have gone back to its mother or survived on its own.

“You need to ask a lot of questions. Paint yourself a picture of what this person's looking at, what they have in their hand. (The solution) might be to open the box and let it go, or it might be to pick it up and put it back in the nest. Or, it might be, OK, it needs to go to rehab,” Schwab said to the group, comprised of men and women from their 20s to 60s.

The response is largely the same across the board, and it most often involves patience.

“You are the first face, the first voice they get to when they're stressed about something in wildlife. It's your responsibility to treat people and wildlife in a professional and responsible way,” Schwab said.

When she and Shepherd are out performing Division of Wildlife duties, they're not always able to respond to small mammal, amphibian and reptile and bird calls. Instead, the Wildlife Transport Team is dispatched and has the power to make a decision: release into the wild, send to rehabilitation or euthanize. The transport team is essentially an arm of division staff. They typically only act when the animal is clearly orphaned or injured.

“Not everything can be rehabbed,” Schwab said. “The whole point of rehab is to be able to put that animal back in the wild. We don't pick up an animal and rehab it so we can put it in the zoo.”

She added that euthanization is better for an animal if it'll never be able to live out a normal life.

Not much action yet

Because the recent wet weather hasn't been conducive to human-wildlife interactions, volunteers shouldn't expect many transport calls just yet.

“This weather is going to change how a lot of wildlife interacts. When babies hit the ground … when raptors move through … when more people come to the county, that's going to make a difference,” Schwab said.

When the weather clears, though, the calls will start coming.

“Wildlife gets caught because of people all the time,” Schwab said. “Often, it's not the wildlife that's the issue.”