Dennis Animal Rehab Manages in Tough Times

ELDORA – Having enjoyed his work with his wonderful menagerie of creatures before a captive audience at Crest Memorial School earlier this summer, we wandered down the road less traveled, old Route 47, passing thriving new horse farms and run-down older homesteads, into the far reaches of western Dennis Township, in search of Steve Serwatka.
The first indication that we’d arrived was a sign prominently displayed over an entrance.
“New Jersey Nature.”
“Donated by Avalon Sign Company,” a voice greeted us, referring to the sign.
Find Serwatka, we had, going about his business.
“We’re going net seining to Corson’s Inlet to fill the new tanks with more sea life,” he announced.
The new tanks had been donated by Anthony McCurdy and Jeff Bingaman, fifth grade teachers at Dennis Township School. In early July, McCurdy took students from the school’s summer camp program to visit the tanks and their new residents.
“Can’t keep animals in the classroom anymore,” Serwatka noted with a shrug of sad resignation. “So they brought them to me.”
Serwatka employs the latter phrase frequently, usually in connection with unwanted pets or injured wildlife. In fact, more people are discovering that New Jersey Nature is the place to call when dealing with “misfit” critters.
While guiding visitors past tanks holding everything from turtles to Indigo snakes, Serwatka informed that he’d just returned from rescuing a cat out of a tree in Wildwood.
Recovering from my initial shock upon learning that trees still exist in Wildwood, I asked if he’d added “fireman” to his extensive list of job titles.
“I’m doing animal control for the week,” he replied.
Having recently been laid off from his long-time job as a veterinary technician, Serwatka is happy for the chance to earn some extra cash.
New Jersey Nature is a nonprofit facility dedicated to wild animal rehabilitation and human environmental education. Its existence depends upon donations and money Serwatka earns from public appearances with select members of his now 200-plus family.
How did Serwatka accumulate an ark’s worth of animals?
“Word-of-mouth mostly,” he says. “Also local animal control, police…a lot of people know about us in Cape May County.”
Entering the inner sanctum of New Jersey Nature, the first impression is of a much larger wildlife reserve than the roughly one acre it occupies.
Much of it has been landscaped with the work being done, gratis, by Garden Greenhouse, a Clermont-based landscaping and greenhouse business.
“Lenny Catanoso (owner of Garden Greenhouse) has been a godsend,” Serwatka said. “When the state came to inspect the facility, they were really impressed with the quality of work that’s been done.”
“He also gets food for all the animals, all the best stuff,” Serwatka noted, adding that his own out-of-pocket expenses often exceed $600 per month.
Having been greeted at the entrance by the same fawn that captured the crowd’s heart at Serwatka’s Crest Memorial School program, we proceeded past several ponds wherein a number of alligators lurked, loafing in the shaded mud.
“They don’t look like it now, but they get pretty aggressive this time of year,” he pointed out. “Chris gets bit at least once a week.”
“Chris” is Chris Conroy, Serwatka’s assistance and apprentice at New Jersey Nature. Conroy helped Serwatka with construction of many of the displays.
Serwatka is quick to credit Conroy’s science teacher at Cape May County COMPACT, Rosemary Lafferty for bringing them together.
“She’s a real hands-on science teacher. She came out with her class for a field trip and Chris kept coming back. So I put him to work,” Serwatka said.
Serwatka doesn’t want most of the animals brought to New Jersey Nature to stick around. His goal is always to rehabilitate injured wildlife sufficiently to return it to the wild. Failing that, he hopes that a zoo will accept them, as was the fate of a coatimundi he’d recently nursed back to health.
But that’s not likely to happen with the three-legged beaver. A nocturnal creature, the beaver was one of the largest Serwatka had ever seen.
“He has his own enclosure area…I’ve offered him to zoos but nobody wants him. He chews everything,” he continued.
The beaver was about to demonstrate his peculiar talent when he was interrupted by the unannounced appearance of one of the largest of Serwatka’s critters, a potbellied pig.
“Say hello to Moe,” Serwatka introduced him. “He came to me a 20-gallon cage. He was only six inches long when I got him.”
Rest assured, the pig was no longer so short.
Serwatka’s favorite animal at the center, the pig came to New Jersey Nature the same way as too many of his other current charges.
“A guy bought him online and learned too late that he couldn’t keep it,” Serwatka said.
The pig lived with Serwatka in his house at first. Then he started to grow. And grow.
Approximately 300 pounds later, the pig relocated out of doors where he supervises yard work and follows Steve from chore to chore.
Our admiration of the pig came to an abrupt halt when Serwatka’s trained eye detected an escape in progress.
A baby raccoon had freed itself from its temporary indoor enclosure and then managed to get out of the house.
Instinctively reaching for the cute critter, Serwatka’s guests were set back on our heels when it began spitting, snapping and snarling. Serwatka deftly managed to grip it, the raccoon all the while twisting to escape, literally biting the hand that fed it, before he maneuvered it into a holding cage.
“Don’t try to handle raccoons, even babies,” he admonished, repeating a lecture he had obviously given many times. “Don’t ever feed them.”
“When we get raccoons…and we get lots of them…I have to worm those three times to get rid of tape worms,” he said.
Tape worm can be transferred to humans from an animal like that, he said. They carry an intestinal parasite which, if transmitted, can affect human vision.
Suddenly, that cuddly rascal didn’t look so lovable.
The excitement with the raccoon concluded, there were eight-foot snakes to be fed, turtle eggs to be hatched, and, of course, that net seining excursion to Corson’s Inlet to fill up the new aquarium tanks.
A typical day at New Jersey Nature is not like a typical day anywhere else. It’s a busy and varied adventure. But for the animals in Steve Serwatka’s care, it’s another day they’ve been helped to stay alive.