Life is wild at JSC!

NASA Johnson Space Center employees have learned that if a fawn is curled under a tree, it doesn't need a blanket; it's not abandoned. They now know that orange cones on a parking lot may be protecting a killdeer's nest.
And if they give their lunch leftovers to the ducks, the birds will start going to the cafeteria around noon every day for more handouts.

Oh, and those eggs in the outdoor ashtrays? Left by muscovies. The JSC Safety Action Team's wildlife committee will take care of the awkwardly placed nests.

The 1,580-acre JSC site in the Clear Lake area, where engineers, astronauts and other personnel work on out-of-this-world projects, is also a wildlife refuge. Gulf Coast prairie and marsh grasslands fill the undeveloped areas, which are much the same as they were before JSC opened in the 1960s. A pond surrounded by green space also sits in the center of the campus.

White-tailed deer are easy to spot. Grazing along Avenue B at Gate 4, they barely acknowledge the traffic. On a recent tour, the chair of the wildlife committee noted that she needed to remind employees to watch for deer crossing the road, especially at dawn and dusk.

Stephanie Walker, who is also a wildlife rehabilitator, says fawns begin to appear around the buildings in June.

"We usually see four or five. You never know if you are seeing the same ones," said Walker, who estimates about 150 deer in four or five groupings make JSC their home. The mothers sometimes settle their young ones under bushes near a building or maybe even in a parking lot while they forage.
"We figured out that these deer are so acclimated to people that when they are taking their fawns somewhere safe, it is actually safer for them to leave them among all these people than out in the back area where there are coyotes and things," Walker said.

When Walker gets a call about lone baby deer, she checks to make sure the animal doesn't look dehydrated or have fire ants on it.
"But usually no. They are just sitting out there waiting for mom," Walker said.
Big, small problems

A few years ago the animals were part of a Texas A&M study to evaluate the effectiveness of a contraceptive in white-tailed deer population control.
Researchers estimated about 170 deer were on the property, which is surrounded by an 8-foot fence. When the three-year study ended in 2008, about a quarter of the females had been given the single-dose contraceptive, which stabilized the population, said Roel R. Lopez, associate professor of A&M's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences.
While deer are the biggest wild animals at JSC, Walker deals with everything from rabbits to geckos.

Her duties have including finding ways to discourage skunks from nesting under buildings, taking baby squirrels that have fallen from their nests to the Wildlife Rehab & Education Center in Houston and reminding everyone that it is not safe to throw sandwiches to alligators sunning in a canal.
"We don't want to encourage them to think of people as a place where you get food," Walker said.

If there is a bigger problem, Walker usually gets Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game wardens involved because most of the wildlife is protected by federal and state regulations.

But that isn't always necessary. When Walker discovered a nest of great horned owls next to construction site, the workers started at the other end of the project to give the young birds time to fledge, she said.

"The guys there were very interested in the owls, so they were willing to coordinate their work in other areas until the babies had flown off," Walker said. "We had lots of people watching those babies."

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