Greetings One and All,

It has been another interesting year for us here at Ohio Nature Education, both for the organization and in our personal lives. Mr. Van (Jim) was diagnosed with bladder cancer this past summer and in late August, began seven weeks of both radiation treatments and chemotherapy. Every weekday Jim received radiation treatments and on Mondays he also received chemotherapy. He has just completed all of his treatments as I write this to you in late October. Of course, we aren’t alone in this battle as many of you have faced the same. Therefore, you know that life keeps moving on regardless of a cancer diagnosis. And boy, did it keep moving on for us! We lived out of coolers for five days as we waited for a new fridge to be delivered (twice!). Our twelve year old dog, Penny, had some type of seizures/fainting spells for 4-5 days and we thought we were going to lose her. And then, our well pump went out and proceeded to get stuck and would not go up or down. We were without water for two weeks and eventually had to have a 525 gallon tank brought in to flush toilets and water the 45 animals that currently live in our backyard! The well pump eventually gave way, Penny has had a miraculous recovery, and I am trying to help Jim to put back the weight that he has lost.

Jim tends to be private, but I am happy that I decided to share his journey weekly on Facebook. He was so tickled to see the outpouring of love and well wishes come in every Monday as he faced all day treatments. For that, we thank all of you that took time to respond to our posts!

In spite of the hardships there were some precious moments that we won’t soon forget:

  • One of our volunteers, Brian, informed me that he was changing employers but that he had negotiated that he leave early on his regular animal care day so that he could continue his weekly shift with us.

  • One of our customers and donors dropped off cases of bottled water! Thanks, Charlotte!

  • Thanks to Ellen & Tara who sent meals

  • Thanks to all of our family, friends, customers, donors, and the best darn volunteers anyone could ever ask for who offered time after time to mow the lawn, fix meals, transport Jim to treatments, the list goes on & on.

  • To our daughters Tara & Fallon who made sure their dad got regular special care packages to cheer him up.

  • A very special thank you to Tara & Chris for being there over and over and over…..

  • To the individuals who posted “Never give up” signs in random places.

  • To the little Palm Warbler who kept me company while I sat in the car waiting for Jim to finish his treatments.

We are blessed!

- Mrs. Van

Unfortunately, we suffered some losses at ONE this year. We lost Hibou, one of our Great horned owls who had been with us for 19 years. We also lost Apollo, one of our Red-tailed hawks to West Nile virus. Recently and quite surprisingly we also lost Twitter, another Great-horned owl. He appeared very healthy the night before, so it was quite the shock. We submitted him for a necropsy but he was found to be in good body condition with no signs of trauma or abnormalities and cause of death was not determined. It’s always hard for us to lose one of our education ambassadors and we will miss them all.

Apollo

Hibou

Twitter

 We are grateful for all of our donors and customers, but we feel the need to feature these three below:

A big thank you to Donovan and his mom, Julie, for having family and friends donate items from our Amazon wish list and make monetary donations instead of gifts for Donovan’s birthday. They also helped make enrichments items for our animals

Our very special boy & his generous caretaker who regularly purchased items from our Amazon wish list.

To Jay & Yvonne – you’ve saved the day more than once

We hope that you’ve taken the time to make it out to Deer Haven Park to see some of our birds in their second home. We are on our third rotation and will be switching out birds again in early December. Everyone has adapted quite well and we are pleased with this partnership with Preservation Parks of Delaware County.

PPDC recently posted a volunteer spotlight on their Facebook page of Chun Qin. She writes:

“My experiences as a volunteer in Preservation Parks of Delaware County has guided me how to do nature education in China. Then, when returning to China, I can use these experiences to instruct my friends in China how to do a better job for China’s nature. 

In addition, my volunteer time at Preservation Parks has increased my knowledge of birds, insects, and plants. I started to feed the injured birds this fall at the Deer Haven aviary. I learned how to take care of the injured birds or the birds which have no ability to hunt. And at the same time, I learned many new English words about caring for the birds. I found out different species of birds have different characteristics and habits.  Everything I learn about birds is interesting to me”.  

Thank you, Chun Qin, for providing care for our birds and for reminding us how far-reaching environmental education can be.

This year was definitely better as far as number of programs that we conducted compared to last year, but we are still nowhere close to our pre-Covid numbers.  We conducted 106 live programs, 6 Zoom Q&A sessions, and our YouTube videos were made available to our customers for a total of 25 weeks.

 

We are thrilled to have taken on two multimedia interns Emma & Liz ,both students at CCAD.  They bring some great ideas on how we can better engage people using today’s technology. In addition, we welcomed Shelby & Dani on to the ONE board. They bring with them a  new, fresh and younger perspective. We are feeling very fortunate to have them.

Emma

 

Liz

 

Shelby

 

Dani

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

As you all know, program revenue is a major source of our funding, and unfortunately, we still have not found a free food source for our birds of prey and are faced with paying $16,000 this year just to feed the hawks and owls. We appreciate your continued support in helping us provide a home for 45 non-releasable wild animals, in raising the next generation of naturalists, biologists, and environmentalists and in teaching people to live their lives to positively impact wildlife.

If you would like to continue to support our mission, please consider the following:

Contact Mrs. Van for other ideas or current items of need!

Thank you

WE NEED NATURE!

GET READY TO CELEBRATE WITH US OUR 25 YEAR ANNIVERSARY IN MAY 2022! MORE DETAILS LATER!