Kaye Baxter is emphatic about the role of Sarvey Wildlife Center in our community.
Do not, repeat, do not, ask volunteers to trot out resident birds — owls, eagles and falcons — to show them off.
“We don’t do shows,” Baxter said sternly. “We do education to teach kids why animals are important.”
It’s her time of life to make sure missions are clear: Baxter, 69, is dying of lung cancer at her home on the grounds of the Arlington center.
“I’m fighting it,” she said. “There is nothing you can do to stop it.”
In keeping with her lifelong flair as an actress, an artist and a ballerina, Baxter wore a modern, spiky hairdo Wednesday morning. Her 64-pound frame swam in a blue jogging suit.
She was helped from the kitchen to an easy chair by her brother, Ron Baxter, who urged her to drink breakfast, a protein shake.
“He’s the best,” Baxter said about her brother, who lives in Federal Way. “This family flocks together.”
Calling kin, who are caring for Baxter around the clock, a “flock” is her utmost compliment. Saying she’s passionate about birds is an understatement. She called a red-tailed hawk “her baby” for 20 years.
“Mellow Yellow was supposed to go after me,” Baxter said. “I was upset when she died four years ago.”
Her love of animals came at an early age. Sure, she had dogs and cats — but her first wild rescue, at age 8, was an owlet she found huddled soaking wet in the corner of a newspaper stand.
After three months, when the owl was completely feathered, she let him go. There was never a question of keeping the bird.
“It’s a wild thing,” she said. “How would you like it if I put you in a cage?”
The Florida family moved to Oregon, where her father worked as a machinist. They acted together in the Portland Repertory Theater when she was in high school. She danced with the Portland Opera Association, Baxter said.
She married young and lived around the world with her Air Force husband.
Sipping her brew, an unusual sound filtered through the screen door from an aviary across the parking lot.
Snapping her neck toward the ruckus, Baxter grinned so hard her eyes crinkled shut.
“Those are the eagles,” she explained. “Talking.”
She carefully leaned forward to savor the cacophony. Her living room is decorated with comfortable chairs, animal sculptures, oil paintings and treasures from her Cherokee heritage.
An indoor companion nuzzled Baxter’s hands. Ravens Wing of Hawks Eyrie is a medium-sized chocolate poodle with a mop of Shirley Temple hair.
They live next door to birds that were too injured to be released back into the wild. The birds are featured in the shelter’s education programs.
Baxter is a saint, said eagle-handler Jeff Guidry.
“Without Kaye, tens of thousands of our wild brothers and sisters would have perished,” Guidry said. “She taught me how to handle raptors, raccoons, possums, the list goes on. Kaye has given all of us (animal and human) a very special gift that we would never have had without her.”
Workers at the center come and go in a quiet parade of humanity. It’s gear-up time, as baby season looms. Soon well-meaning folks will bring in baby squirrels, robins, bunnies and sparrows.
Her first customers almost 30 years ago were five barn owlets. When a Weyerhaeuser building was demolished on the Everett waterfront, Baxter crawled on her belly through rubble to make the rescue.
The wild-bird group she worked with in Seattle suggested she do the rehab herself.
“They had no place to put them. I said ‘What the hey’?”
The instructional assistant and busy mother of four sons raised the owls in her Eastmont home. Word spread of her abilities, and her house became a haven for injured or abandoned birds and young animals. The nurse who never used her degree professionally got up at dawn to feed, clean and nurture.
“My husband didn’t like that I had no time to fly in our Cessna,” Baxter said. “I couldn’t leave the animals.”
Neighbors were pleasant, but she knew when it was time to move. She bought a house and property between Granite Falls and Arlington. Ducks, raccoons and skunks were moved in 1987 to the country quarters in a rented, uncovered trailer.
She is licensed by the state and the federal government to rehab animals. There are tests one must take to earn several permits to perform such work.
Did she pass the exams?
“I wrote them,” Baxter said, slapping her leg. “I’m that old, man.”
More than 4,000 birds and animals passed through the center last year.
“She saved a lot of animals,” said Kelly Pattison with Sarvey. “She is an amazing person.”
Sarvey’s chores can be difficult. Baxter hates to see an osprey coming up the driveway.
“They won’t eat in captivity,” Baxter said. “You have to force-feed them.”
Their talons are like fish hooks, she said, curling frail fingers like a claw.
Unwanted snapping turtles the size of Frisbee’s aren’t much fun, either, Baxter said.
In tough times, she almost had to close her center, but Baxter said miracles kept arriving. When money got low, cash rolled in. When they needed lumber, it appeared at the end of the driveway.
Folks who brought in animals sometimes stayed to volunteer.
One son, John Bailey, who lives in Snohomish, aims to keep Sarvey operating as his mother’s legacy. She sees no miracle cure for her disease, which was diagnosed a year ago.
“Things are getting worse and worse,” Baxter said. “Eventually it gets you.”
Ready for a midmorning nap, Baxter stressed a message.
“Wild animals are the ones we see,” she said. “They come in and hate our guts. We want to keep them that way, and release them.”
That’s the whole point, she said.
Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.
Located on five acres at 13106 148th St. NE in Arlington, Sarvey Wildlife Center, a rehabilitation clinic, includes buildings, eagle flights, cages and ponds for recovering deer and waterfowl. In 1988 the nonprofit Wildlife Care Center was renamed Sarvey Wildlife Center in memory of Bill Sarvey, a Washington Department of Wildlife Agent and wildlife friend.
It takes more than 100 workers to keep the doors open. The center accepts donations and volunteers.
For more information, write to P.O. Box 3590, Arlington, WA, 98223, or call 360-435-4817.
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