In the old Disney movies, it all looks so simple.

You discover a wild orphan and take it in.

With a little love and the right kind of “wild-animal formula,” you raise up your wild baby into a one-of-a-kind pet that follows you around and becomes part of the family.

Depending on the program, that pet could be a deer, or a bear that hibernates in your cellar, or a wild goose, or a coyote.
Eventually, the wild animal wanders back into the woods, only to keep checking back from time to time, because the wild is a very different place in the Disney world.

However, in reality, things aren’t like that.

A family from Whitewater has a good idea of the reality. They have recently made state news for adopting a baby bobcat that showed up around their farm.

They are helping to raise the little cat, but they are also working to find an agency that will take over and reintroduce the cat into the wild, because they know that it is not a pet.

And they are right.

Too many wild “orphans” come to a tragic end. And often they are not orphans at all. They don’t usually show up around people’s homes, but are found in the wild — right where their mother left them. Only Mom expected to come back and find her baby, until some well-meaning human took it instead.

Wild things were not meant to be pets, and they are best left to their mothers to raise.

Great caution, as the Whitewater family is showing, and the intention to get the baby back into the wild, should be used when one is taken in.

We don’t have enough bobcats in the wild, the way it is.

— Chuck Smith