Rehab founder rescues bats injured in freeze
When Michelle Una Camara received the phone call for help, she was ready.
Animal Care Services wanted to join forces with the experienced wildlife handler to save San Antonio’s fallen bat population.
Roadways beneath overpasses were littered with Mexican freetailed bats, frozen from the recent snowstorm that paralyzed the city. As the streets began to thaw, motorists unknowingly drove cars and trucks over the winged mammals that looked like leaves or small piles of dirt.
Camara, 52, parked her car at a curb at Loop 410 and San Pedro, away from the field of small bodies. One by one, she picked up the injured and the dead with blue-gloved hands. As she scooped the small animals off the gray pavement, dozens of other bats were falling from crevices overhead onto the road.
That was day one. Camara, volunteers and Animal Care Services officers would repeat the scene throughout the week, offering triage to thousands of storm-struck victims from the city’s bat colonies.
“When it gets too cold, under 20 degrees, that’s when they fall,” Camara said. “I’ve never been called for that many before. The most I’ve gotten a call was for 30 bats.”
Now she has about 3,000 bats in her care.
For more than 30 years, Camara has dedicated her life to the rehabilitation of injured animals. For the past nine years, she has rehabilitated bats and educated the public about coexisting with urban wildlife. She recalls presenting education programs at the San Antonio Zoo in the 1990s.
Camara is the owner and founder of Southern Wildlife Rehab Inc., a nonprofit which has rescued a wide range of species including amphibians, bats, beavers, bobcats, coyotes, feral hogs, foxes, insects, skunks, snakes, turtles, tortoises, ring-tailed cats and one tiger.
Operating from her Alamo Heights home, Camara’s goal is to get her patients healthy and back to their natural habitat. Her practice has sprawled out of her backyard into her garage, where her team heals more than 300 animals each year.
As much time as she spends rehabilitating animals, it isn’t her job; it’s her hobby. Camara is a paralegal and mitigation specialist working at a San Antonio law firm. She helps research social histories for clients, especially those facing the death penalty, to find ways to prevent that sentence.
She cares deeply about saving life — human and animal.
That’s why she has those thousands of bats convalescing at her facility. One recent day, many of them were hanging upside down, serenely clinging to the mesh of a darkened pop-up tent that serves as a healing hut in her backyard.
They remind her of fairies, she said.
Wearing a face mask with a bat-wing pattern, she gently gathered a dozen that needed extra care and swaddled them in a camouflage-patterned blanket. Inside her garage, she placed the blanket in an incubator to keep them warm. Then Camara cupped each bat in her hand, one at a time, and fed them a highprotein liquid mixture through a syringe.
A native of Detroit, she’s always had an affinity for animals. She was 18 when she began working as an independent rehabilitator.
Camara received her bat rehab training nine years ago at the Bat World Sanctuary in Weatherford. She still calls her trainers for advice on rescue missions.
For these bats, Camara said, Bat World founder Amanda Lollar suggested using hydrolyzed protein to revive them.
Camara has developed a strong connection to the unusual mammals.
She recalls the day she made eye contact with a Mexican freetail bat named Elvis in her early training days at Bat World. Elvis looked at her, she said, aware that Camara was calling him. Over the years, she said, she has found some bats answer to their names.
“When we’re out there, they’re running to us,” Camara said. “It’s like they know we’re here to help them. They’re highly intelligent.”
Bats aren’t aggressive, Camara said, but she stressed it’s not safe for the public to pick up a bat they may encounter and should instead call Southern Wildlife or Animal Care Services for assistance. She said she’s had her round of rabies shots.
Camara has learned how to properly handle bats during her training and years of experience. They are gentle creatures, not given to attacks.
“That’s why we’re able to pick up 3,000 bats that I’ve never met before,” she said.
ACS spokeswoman Lisa Norwood said calls involving a nondomestic animal are opportunities to work with partners such as Southern Wildlife Rehab that have specialized expertise.
“Certainly, our officers have some experience and training,” she said. “But we depend on our subject-matter expert partners that can most appropriately address these cases.”
One of Camara’s memorable rescues didn’t involve a bat, but a skunk. In May 2016, she received a call from a Montessori school staff member that a live skunk was dangling from the drainage hole of a dumpster. Camara showed up with oil, but panicked when she couldn’t dislodge the animal.
Then she recalled she had a wire hanger, the utility tool of the masses. She used the round, shoulder part to loop around one of the skunk’s ears and carefully pulled her head out. Then the skunk sprayed her.
The injured animal had a deep, open throat wound that looked like a severe burn. Camara said she had to use collagen to help the skin tissue grow back.
“That animal shouldn’t have lived,” she said.
Two months later, Camara released the skunk she named Monty back to her home in the wilds around Mitchell Lake.
The founder of the Southern Wildlife Rehab said her mission will always be to help people understand that it’s not just humans they live with, but also animals that are important to the ecological balance.
“It’s a passion,” Camara said. “It’s what I do. It’s what I am.”