Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Brent Powell | Colleen Layton-Robbins, a wildlife rehabilitator and owner of Frisky's Wildlife and...... read more read more
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WOODSTOCK, Maryland – As she enters the room, a handful of exotic birds squawk excitedly, cocking their heads left and right trying to find the best vantage point to watch her every movement. Across the room, monkeys of various shapes and sizes take notice of her appearance and dance, chatter and perform various acrobatics in their enclosures. Some extend furry arms, hands and tiny fingers as if hoping to literally grab her attention.
But she’s not there to see them, not yet. In a soft, gentle voice she utters, “Cheechy, Cheechy.” Suddenly there’s an ever so slight movement of blankets near the floor. “Cheechy, Cheechy,” she says again. The blankets begin to slowly part and reveal the small furry face of a capuchin monkey with a milky left eye and the tiniest of toothless smiles that etches its way across it’s face, appearing to do so with great effort. Seeing her, its tiny voice utters a single greeting of it’s own…chee chee.
This scene did not unfold in a zoo or wild animal park, but rather in the living room of Colleen Layton-Robbins, a master wildlife rehabilitator and owner of Frisky’s Wildlife and Primate Sanctuary, Incorporated. She rescued the 48-year-old female monkey named Cheechy, over 20-years-ago, when her owner could no longer take care of her.
The tiny, feeble monkey is but one of hundreds of thousands of animals Robbins has rescued over the past 47 years. It’s an astonishing accomplishment by any standards, but yet some might argue, that the animals she rescued may just be the ones that also rescued her.
In March of 1970 life was coming at her like a rhino on roller-skates. She had just turned 16 and had been forced into an arranged marriage by her father, a Choctaw Indian elder. Less than 30 days after her wedding, her 22-year-old husband was on his way to serve his second tour of duty in Vietnam with the U.S. Marines. In the days following his departure she would receive even more shocking news. She was pregnant.
“I argued with my doctor, I called him a quack and told him I could not possibly be pregnant,” said the 63-year-old, whose warm, welcoming smile and passionate auburn eyes unite to highlight her still youthful appearance. “I told him it was just one time and I didn’t enjoy it. He told me you don’t have to enjoy it to get pregnant.”
With her husband now gone, she found herself living alone with her father in Washington, but her situation was far from that of a normal loving father daughter relationship. He was not only an alcoholic; he was also very abusive. Desperate to leave the cancerous situation, she found herself with very few options and no money.
So she did the only thing she could think of and enlisted the help of a local catholic priest, who agreed to help reunite her with her mother, who was a catholic missionary living in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The priest put her on a plane to Baltimore, Maryland, and from there she hitchhiked the remainder of the way to Pennsylvania. Eventually she found her mother, who in turn helped her find a baby-sitting job, and a very modest apartment close to a small diner. It would be here that she would soon be handed a surprise that would change the course of her life forever.
“I was sitting in the Tastee Freeze eating my pregnancy special, a hot-fudge sundae made with chocolate ice cream, crushed nuts and topped with pickle relish,” said Robbins. “These two people come in with a box of bunnies they had found near the railroad tracks and they had no idea what to do with them. After some discussion, someone said, ‘give them to the Indian girl, she knows all about wild animals.’”
But Robbins had no idea how to care for wildlife at that point in her life. She had helped her father run trap lines when she was younger, but she usually spent more time trying to spring the traps without her father’s knowledge to keep the wild animals from getting caught.
Nevertheless, she took the baby rabbits in and did what she could for them, but it didn’t turn out the way she had hoped. “Two lived and two died,” she said. “I wanted to know what I did wrong, and little by little it just kind of took off from there.”
Take off it did. Over the course of the next 47 years, she would see, treat and help almost every type of animal that crawls, slithers, hops, runs or flies including, turtles, raptors, raccoons, rabbits, possums, deer, bear, squirrels, foxes, groundhogs, skunks, ducks, geese, alligators, primates, goats, pigs and even a coatimundi.
Taking care of that many animals, an average of 5000 a year, requires a lot of her time, almost all of it in fact. She works out of her home and opens her doors to the public 12 hours a day, but her caretaking doesn’t stop when the doors close. She typically finds herself working 16-18 hours a day and then she is up every two hours at night to feed baby mammals that require it. It’s also not a Monday to Friday job. She works seven days a week, every day of the year. It’s a demanding schedule that would buckle all but the most passionate and strong-willed.
“My conscience is what keeps me going,” admits Robbins. “I can’t lay there knowing that an animal is suffering and not do anything about it. I’ve had a conscience beat into me. I’m a catechism survivor.”
Noone can doubt that she is a survivor. Her husband died in a motorcycle accident within weeks after returning from Vietnam. Her father committed suicide. She was stalked and raped by a man she had to ultimately kill in order to protect herself. When she was 22-years-old her house all of her belongings burned to the ground. She defeated cancer…twice. She caught a terrifying infection that she fought day in and day out for five-years at a cost of nearly $20,000 in medical expenses. A recent cataract surgery led to complications that almost cost her to lose her eyesight.
Despite those challenges and a host of others, you won’t find her unhappy or angry at life. Her smile has somehow endured. It’s a quick smile; warm and welcoming that greets an endless line of strangers and animals in need.
“You end up defocusing on your life,” she said. “The animals have saved me more than I’ve ever saved them, and that’s what gets me up to this day and keeps me going. It’s that little bunny sitting at the door of their enclosure, that has spilled their water, pooped in their food bowl and is desperately looking for someone to help them. You can’t sit there and say I’m too tired to do this or stop to think about yourself when you have an animal depending on you for all their needs.”
She never runs out of animals that depend on her. She keeps watch over them all hours of the night and day without fail, without a day off, without a complaint.
“When things go right here, this is better than any vacation,” said Robbins, whose last vacation or even day off was in 1988. “I’ve got the greatest husband now, fantastic pets, and a great group of people that work with me.”
One of those people is Phyllis Griffin, an associate of Robbins who has known her for more than eight-years, and often donates items to help her cause. “I really admire her dedication,” she said. “I’ve never seen anybody as dedicated to animals as she is. Not many people would do this, but this is what she enjoys.”
Griffin is just one of many friends and associates who think highly of Robbins and the work she does.
“She is tenacious, goal-oriented, very caring, very hardworking and she won’t back down if someone pushes her,” said Eileen Sturgill, who has been volunteering at Frisky’s for seven-years. “This is her whole life, she has devoted her life to taking care of the animals and running this facility. I’ve really enjoyed working with her and getting to know her through the years, and we have a lot in common. She makes me feel like I’m part of an important organization, and I’m glad I can contribute to it.”
Contributions are the only thing that makes her job even possible. She doesn’t receive a penny in state or government funding, which certainly presents it’s own financial challenges.
Robbins isn’t trying to get rich though and she says her biggest form of payment for her efforts is when the wildlife she rescues returns to the wild. “That’s your reward system, and it never gets old,” she said. “They don’t turn around and say thank you or good-bye or anything like that, but it’s always amazing to see. Most people waste their lives, but I’m not wasting mine. I feel your life is a gift to do something worthwhile with and when everything goes right with a release, it is the best reward and payment you could ever get.”
| Date Taken: | 08.18.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 08.18.2017 16:46 |
| Story ID: | 245309 |
| Location: | WOODSTOCK, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 420 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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