Natalie Peterson Gets Back to the Wild With Dye Creek Wildlife Rescue

Natalie with a young fox kit taken into care after it was found in the roadway near Flournoy. When stabilized, it will be transferred to another rehab facility specializing in fox rehabilitation and release.

The land and its critters are in Natalie Peterson’s blood. After all, when you are raised as a rancher’s daughter, you often feel like a wild critter yourself! On the ranch if there was a baby left orphaned out in the wild, Natalie says “you took it in,” even if she lost sleep or nearly froze in the process. As a young girl on the family’s Coalinga ranch, she would often nurture baby song birds that had fallen from their nests. Besides the song birds and many leppy calves needing care, over the years she also cared for baby rabbits, burrowing owls and a favorite, Billy Joe Crow, a bird who just showed up one day and “adopted” the family.

More recently, after she and her husband, Chris, had raised their own son and daughter, it was a natural progression for Natalie to get back to the wild, eventually establishing Dye Creek Wildlife Rescue. Even though their children are grown and flown, Natalie isn’t truly an empty nester, as she’s busy filling her nest with a furry menagerie of animals in need, and visits from her grandchildren.

Officially starting her own wildlife rescue facility began to take flight after Natalie went through a series of trainings. With a lifelong fascination for  birds of prey, it was a dream come true to take a course with West Coast Falconry in Marysville. The inspiration kept soaring with a trip to Rhode Island for training with the International Wildlife Rescue Association; and locally, with the California Council for Wildlife Rehabilitators. Finally, Natalie landed at Shasta Wildlife Rescue and Rehab to help during baby bird season.

Fun fact: Rather than the normal nippled bottle or syringe, Natalie has to feed the baby possums with a tube. A mother possum has 13 tubes in her pouch to feed her young.

Natalie now works as a home care volunteer under a permit with Shasta Wildlife Rescue and Rehab and licensing is well underway for Dye Creek Wildlife Rescue to operate independently. Natalie is the only certified person in Tehama County to care for orphaned or injured wildlife before releasing them back to nature. When we spoke she was caring for 10 possums and three western grey squirrels and had already released two western grey squirrels back to the wild. It is not uncommon for her to care for birds of prey that are victims of car strikes or poisonings. Natalie has rehabilitated a cooper’s hawk and a barred owl with concussions.

Her childhood encounters with the wild and its harsh realities helped Natalie gain a fierce, independent spirit that has come in handy since Natalie is often a one woman show on their 15 acres in Los Molinos. Her husband, Chris, runs Chris Peterson Logging and works long hours away from home. I asked how he feels about Natalie dedicating so much time to animal rehabilitation. Natalie laughed, “We have an agreement.” After all, this tough, independent, lover-of-nature is the gal Chris fell in love with.

Natalie recalls a time when Chris had to keep his distance, even while home, “I took a direct shot of a baby skunk’s spray to my forehead. I was cleaning the enclosure for four babies and accidentally scared one of them as I leaned into the cage. A stream headed my way and it wasn’t just a little mist — more like a stream when you open a spray bottle too far. It hit me dead center of my forehead, luckily not in my eyes. It was in my hair though, and I smelled a little skunky for quite some time whenever I got sweaty. You can imagine how much my husband loved that! Not many people rehab skunks for that very reason. You also have to be vaccinated for rabies to be able to handle them.”

        Natalie does all the feeding and care for her wild charges and it keeps her busy while Chris is out in the woods. You would think there might be a great divide between what Natalie does with her long hours compared to Chris. Interestingly enough, they are both operating on the same principle — good stewardship of this beautiful land and its creatures. Not many know our outdoors as intimately as a rancher or logger who have lived in it and observed it more hours than most. Chris and Natalie both want to sustain the land and its biodiversity.

So while Natalie wakes multiple times during the night to support delicate lives, it may seem like she is operating in her own strength but, the truth is, thoughts of her husband working hard sustaining her and her animals’ wild is the wind beneath her wings.

Please contact Natalie at Dye Creek Wildlife Rescue if you encounter an orphaned or injured wild animal in Tehama County. Find her on Facebook or (530) 351-4698.