I recently noted my first year volunteering for a local wildlife nonprofit, and stopped to reflect on what I've learned about people and animals.

I was prompted to volunteer after one night being out driving in the Presidio and coming upon a skunk in the road. It was quiet and I was the only one around, and I stopped to take a look at it. I discovered it was unconscious and breathing. I couldn't get anyone to come out and give it medical attention. I later found an organization that did give wildlife care, and I've been volunteering there ever since.

Seven days a week I check our voicemail and pass on summaries to the executive director. It's computer and phone work, so it's not like I'm fishing opossums out of storm drains or raising pigeon chicks in a shoebox. Yet I do think I've gained a tiny bit of insight about how animals and people get along in big cities.

It's a crowded city. Coyotes, bobcats, foxes, raccoons, skunks, possums, squirrels, gophers quail, owls, and dozens more species all share the same 46.7 square miles with 750,000 humans. We get about ten calls a day, or about 1 per seventy five thousand residents. Put it another way, one half of one percent of the city calls us every year.

Most of the wildlife make their homes in parks and backyards, but also nest and den in attics, basements, garages, in-between buildings, and a hundred other places no one ever bothers to look. They are everywhere around you: one night my wife and I watched a family of raccoons cross the street and then climb a tree. They were only eight feet off the ground when a man appeared. They froze in place and he passed directly underneath, completely unaware five pairs of beady eyes stared down on him.

Animals turn up in the strangest places. A squirrel somehow ended up at the very top of the Transamerica Pyramid--how it got there is anyone's guess.  There are now coyotes living in at least three different parts of San Francisco.  Raccoons have allegedly overrun Treasure Island, the island at the midpoint of the Bay Bridge.  Just last month we got a phone call from the largest private forest in San Francisco, passing on a report from a security guard that a bobcat and her cubs were seen there.

The vast majority of hotline calls are simply queries to minor animal problems. I just laid a backyard of sod lawn and raccoons are rolling the lawn up to look for grubs. My koi pond suddenly has vacancies. My cats went into the yard and now smell like skunk. Pigeons are pooping all over my landing.

Some of the calls are quite amusing. We got one call from a couple that was plagued with raccoons coming through their cat door. One night the husband was sitting down watching TV, and suddenly saw a raccoon wandering through his apartment hallway. The next night his wife felt something furry brush her head while asleep in the bedroom...and it wasn't one of the cats. Another caller rescued a hummingbird from a tree that was strangely still, prompting her to rescue it. Closer examination revealed the bird was dead, and had been long before it was "rescued".

Most people are willing to accommodate wildlife quite a bit. They treat animals like neighbors--an occasional nuisance they'll put up with, but if it keeps up they'll take action. They usually go at least a few days before reporting a skunk that is spraying their dog in the yard, hoping it will go away. They're willing to report a few koi AWOL. We advise them to take reasonable measures, such as putting out buckets of ammonia to chase raccoons away. Problem solved, and maybe we get a donation out of it.

It's often the people that sound the most casual and unbothered by their wildlife problem that are the biggest threat to wildlife safety. It's not unusual to contact them and find out that they have already had the animals poisoned, or shot, or boarded up inside someone's house forever. One of the lessons I've learned from manning the hotline: beware the people who sound bored leaving messages. Animals--they can take them or leave them. For now, they can take them, but you better resolve the situation before they change their mind.

It's always been quite clear me that part of the reason why I volunteered for the seven-days-a-week job was to help, in a tiny way, the animals that we've shoved out of the way. There was another reason though, that occurred to me this afternoon. After more than three decades of living in the city and growing disillusioned with its people, I also wanted to know if there were other people who would have been moved by a mortally wounded animal left to die on the side of the road.  Of course there are. There always have been.