Wildlife rehabilitator Jerry Harvey cares for even the most misunderstood animals, including the “opies” of the world.
Photo Above: Raccoons and opossom are two animals for which Jerry Harvey has special affection.
Photos Courtesy of Jerry Harvey.
Jerry Harvey isn’t ashamed to share the real reason he feels such an affinity for wildlife.
“I was sexually abused as a child and there was literally so much fear and mistrust, that the only thing that I felt I could trust were animals,” he says. “I would quite literally be out in the yard and anything and everything that I could pick up, or ‘save,’ I would. But even as a kid, I knew that you didn’t put them in jars or bring them in and put them in a box. I just seemed to have this intuitiveness about how to care for them, what to do and what not to do.”
After contrasting careers as a paramedic and a standup comedian, Harvey, 59, now focuses on Opie Acres, the nonprofit wildlife rehabilitation center he founded in Chattanooga in 2017. Each year, he takes in up to 800 injured or abandoned wild animals—mostly opossums, raccoons and skunks.
Harvey’s wildlife rehab journey began in the early 1980s, when as a young man, he volunteered at the Chattanooga Nature Center. He dreamed of doing it for a living but quickly discovered “there was no money in it, none whatsoever.” So his mom talked him into going to paramedic school, urging, “If you can do this for animals, why don’t you do it for people?”
He took her advice, but after 23 years was burned out from the nonstop emergencies. One day an ambulance partner commented on his knack for entertaining the crew and dared him to participate in an open mic comedy competition. The performance went well, and Harvey went on to compete in national contests. Each time, he won or placed in the finals.
By 2016, he was touring with an “internet superstar” and earning great money, but the crude lifestyle made him miserable. He’d never stopped rescuing animals, rehabbing them at home or delivering them to the local zoo or nature center, so with his landlord’s blessing, he started Opie Acres on the two-and-a-half-acre wooded property where he lives.
Harvey was walking one of the on-site trails when suddenly, “It hit me. Opie Acres just seemed to be the [right] name. So I started cutting trails into the woods to put habitats and cages. And it has literally grown around that name into what it is.”
In the animal rehabilitation world, “opie” means opossum. Until recently, Harvey says, “People had so many untrue notions about possums, that they carried rabies, that they were filthy animals and that they carried all these diseases that could be passed on to humans, that they were nothing but giant rats.”
Harvey learned in the 1980s that the stereotype was just not true.
“And I found them to be fascinating because of their prehensile tail, their four fingers and a thumb on all four limbs and the fact that they’re our only marsupial in the United States. So I just took it upon myself to make sure that the world knew, and that was I going to be the one to save them.”
Harvey intended to simply take in the overflow—probably 10 or 15 possums—from other rehabbers in town, most of whom weren’t interested in caring for the maligned mammals anyway. The first year, he provided a safe haven for about 70 possums, prompting him to add an 8-foot-by-12-foot outbuilding to handle the influx. The second year, he took in 200 animals.
Opie Acres is now a fully functional animal hospital with a kitchen for food preparation and storage, two infirmaries to handle admissions and intensive care patients and a third building for geriatric and hospice care.
“Many times,” Harvey says, “people will find possums just laying in their yard, or in the road, or on their porch, and think they’re sick or hurt. And when they get here, we realize when we see them that they’re just old. They just can’t forage for food like they used to. Most of the time, we get rid of all their intestinal parasites, and we can give them two really good meals a day and a soft, clean bed. And within just a couple of days, they start perking up. They may live several weeks, or sometimes a few months, more than they would have in the wild.”
In years past, Harvey and other wildlife rehabbers discouraged the general public from trapping and transporting hurt or displaced animals. But, he notes, the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency currently asks citizens to bring the critters to rehab centers like Opie Acres.
Harvey and another trained rehabilitator talk callers through the process and how to stay safe.
“Fortunately, because of our Facebook page and the education programs that we do, people just know now to stop and check to see if there are baby possums in that pouch. Or they know how to take a broom and scoop an animal into a carrier.”
As long as there’s room, Opie Acres accepts most mammals except bats and deer, which are restricted by state law.
When the time is right, Harvey and his team, which includes about 10 volunteers, release the recuperated animals into the wild, ideally in the general area where they were found or, with permission, on a landowner’s property—but only if they’re ready. A possum, for example, must be able to build a nest, climb well and forage for hidden food. They also need to demonstrate a healthy fear of other animals and people. “And if they don’t meet all those criteria,” Harvey says, “we’re not releasing them.”
Fortunately, happy endings aren’t out of the question for critters that can’t be reintroduced into their natural habitats. When she was about six months old, Bonnie the raccoon was discovered with broken bones in her face and her nose so badly injured, Harvey recalls, that “it was torn off of her face and was literally hanging by a thread.”
After surgery and several months in the facility’s ICU, Bonnie had healed but was so attached to people that she couldn’t return to her old life. She is now one of only two raccoons in the state of Tennessee that serve as education ambassadors at public events.
Harvey will soon add a fourth free-standing building on Opie Acres. To handle the high number of animals in need—in spring and summer, as many as 200 at a time are under Harvey’s care—he seldom takes a day off.
“The greatest reward,” he says, his voice choking with emotion, “is that we get to see all these little creatures, these little faces, thrive. We lose animals every day and we have to euthanize animals every day, which is very hard. But the reward is that we save so many. Without us, these animals would have nowhere else to go and no one else to stand up for them.”
Harvey’s 3 ‘Don’ts’ of Wildlife Rescue
- Don’t be too quick to remove “abandoned” baby animals. “For a lot of infants, the mothers will come back and get them, and they can be reunited,” says Harvey, founder of Opie Acres Wildlife and Opossum Rehabilitation in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
- Don’t try to rehabilitate them yourself. “Feeding the wrong foods, giving the wrong medications, even splinting or bandaging a minor wound if not done properly, can be deadly from infection,” Harvey advises. “Not all birds eat birdseed. Not all birds eat worms. Because their diet is so complex, if possums get the wrong food when they’re in their developmental stages, they can end up with horrific bone disease and deformities.”
- Never, ever follow advice you find on the internet. “Speak with a professional wildlife rehabilitator,” says Harvey. “And get that animal to a professional immediately when you find out that it is abandoned.”
The story above first appeared in our May / June 2024 issue.
