Jeff Kaley
WAURIKA — For many years, youngsters from Fun in the Son Preschool have gone on an annual field trip to the “wonderland” Carole and Bill Eakin have created in the backyard of their home on Meridian Street.
During those adventures, the students have been able to “oooh” and “aaah” while observing exotic koi swimming through the two ponds in the Eakins yard. The youngsters have gotten a look at fossilized snails and petrified wood, and they’ve been able to brag to their friends about hands-on experience with dinosaur “eggs.”
The children have walked among banana trees and received a treat by being able to pluck some of the sweet fruit they produce. Over the years, the Eakins have enhanced the visits by bringing in horse trainers and other wildlife handlers.
When eight of the students from the First Baptist Church’s preschool made the 2009 journey to “wonderland,” they got an extra thrill. Thanks to Wally Breaden, the young’uns were given an up-close-and-personal introduction to some rare fowl and some too-cute baby squirrels.
Breaden is director of Breaden Rehab Wildlife near Lawton. His sanctuary near Lawton specializes in taking in animals that have been injured or abandoned and rehabilitating them for release into the wild.
It wasn’t the first time Breaden has been a guest at the Eakin outing, and this time he brought along some fowl that were anything but “foul.”
From their cages, Breaden produced a horned owl, a barred owl and a rare partial albino redtail hawk. But the hit of the show were the four baby squirrels the youngsters were able to watch being fed by baby bottles.
“I grew up hunting and fishing and my Dad was in the military, so we traveled around a lot,” Breaden said, when asked what led to the wildlife refuge being created in 1973.
When Breaden and his siblings were young, “We’d bring home animals and our friends would find other animals and bring them over to our house,” he noted.
When Breaden’s parents retired from the operation, he became director of the rehab facility.
“We mainly take in birds,” Breaden said. “We’ll take in any kind of animal, but mostly it’s birds, because there are enough mammal rehabers around that we can concentrate on birds.”
The bird species coming to Breaden Rehab Wildlife can range from common fowl like the horned owl and barred owl, or they can be exotic birds, such as the albino redtail hawk.
Breaden said that particular bird “came from the northern part of Oklahoma, and about the only time you see them is in the winter time.”
“This albino is special,” he added, “because most of the time birds turn white they usually don’t make it in the wild.”
Breaden noted that the facility has an 85 to 95 percent success rate in rehabilitating animals and releasing them back into the wild.
Sharon Morgan, Fun in the Son teacher, said this year’s visit to the Eakin “wonderland” should become a great memory for the youngsters.
“They were very curious about all the animals, although they were cautious about the birds at first. But once they got to see them, they wanted to look in the cages,” she said.
“They really loved the baby squirrels and watching them being fed from the bottles.”
