This provided photo shows a sugar glider fostered by Eugene-based animal rescue Little Critter Crew. The "crew" also cares for other small pets, including hamsters, gerbils, mice, rats, hedgehogs and chinchillas.
Courtesy of Kayla Hernandez
While rescue shelters for dogs and cats can be found in many Oregon cities, there are fewer options for small pets like hamsters, hedgehogs, rats and chinchillas. The Little Critter Crew is working to change that. As reported in Eugene Weekly, the Eugene-based animal rescue has built a network of 32 foster homes across the state since it launched in 2020. Kayla Hernandez is the rescue’s co-founder. She joins us to share more details on how the “crew” operates and the importance of small animal rescue.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Rescue shelters for dogs and cats can be found in many Oregon cities. But there are fewer options for small pets like hamsters and hedgehogs and rats and chinchillas. As reported in Eugene Weekly recently, the Little Critter Crew is working to change that. It’s a Eugene-based animal rescue that’s built a network of nearly three dozen foster homes in Western Oregon since it launched in 2020. Kayla Hernandez is the rescue’s co-founder. She joins us now. It’s good to have you on the show.
Kayla Hernandez: Hi, thanks so much. I’m really glad to be here.
Miller: What made you want to start the Little Critter Crew?
Hernandez: So back when I first started, I was actually doing cat rescue and TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return). And during my time, I noticed that there was a lot less resources out there for animals like rabbits and hamsters and all these small furry guys than there was for cats and dogs. My co-founder and I came from a similar background, having a fondness of small animals in need. I started independently rescuing rabbits while Ashlyn was rescuing chinchillas, sugar gliders. We met through social media and started talking about what it’d take to create a nonprofit small animal rescue. Thankfully, we had a friend who was a lawyer, Lindsey Stallings, who helped us kickstart things. And there were a lot of obstacles to our plans. But after a year of struggles, we received our 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.
Miller: What made you switch to begin with, going from cats to these other small animals? What was it that made you say “I want to take in these small animals?”
Hernandez: Well every day I was seeing these small animals being rehomed, I’d hear of them being left in public spaces. And I was really busy with the cat rescuing at the time through the Humane Society. And there was just nobody stepping up to help the small animals. And it made me really sad. I kept making excuses as to why I couldn’t help. And then one day I was like “I’m gonna do something. There’s nobody else. If I don’t do something, nobody else is going to.”
Miller: What are the most common reasons you’ve seen that people decide they don’t want to take care of these particular animals anymore?
Hernandez: I think that there is a ton of misinformation on these animals out there. Just take hamsters for example. You go to the pet store and you say that you want a hamster, and you ask the employee there what they recommend, they’re gonna recommend you a small colorful cage with tubes. They’re going to recommend a wire wheel, a colorful seed mix, and they’re going to recommend a hamster ball. And little do people know that a lot of these things do not meet the bare minimum that these animals need to be able to express their natural behaviors [like] running, foraging, digging, burrowing. Hamsters for example, they run five miles a night in the wild. But they’re being confined to these small cages. You’re being confined to a small space, you’re being fed a diet that’s not very good, so you don’t feel very good. It’s like eating McDonald’s every day. You’re frustrated because you can’t run or dig or do any of these things that are natural to you. What are you going to do?
Miller: Well how can anybody give a hamster in a regular home a world where they can run five miles in a night?
Hernandez: That’s the thing is that we can never, as pet owners, give animals everything that they would have in their natural environment. But we can at least give them the minimum. Doing research for hamsters, we recommend 600 square inches for their enclosure of uninterrupted running space, an appropriate sized wheel - a lot of the wheels that are recommended for hamsters are too small and actually cause a lot of pain to their spine. And so when these hamsters are in pain, they’re not feeling good, they’re gonna lash out, they’re gonna bite. I hear “hamsters are evil” a lot. No, they’re just really unhappy. So as pet owners, we should be trying to mimic these things that they would have in the wild as best as we can, and always be striving to do research.
Miller: How did the pandemic affect everything that we’re talking about?
Hernandez: Well, we became official around 2020. So right before the pandemic hit in full force. So let me emphasize that things were already really bad in terms of the overpopulation problem here in Oregon. And I got into small animal rescue, like I said, because I was tired of seeing so many small animals needing help and there was just nowhere for them to go. Backyard breeding, animal mills, [and] misinformation are the biggest contributors to our problem.
And when COVID hit, a lot of people were stuck at home, and were seeking something to occupy their time. A large number of pets were impulsively purchased during that time. And this created an artificial demand. With so many animals being sold, more animals were being bred to take their place. And then the vaccines came, and people went back to work. And guess what they didn’t have time for anymore? All of those COVID pets. So we’re seeing an exponential increase in the past two years of surrender requests, animals being re-homed, neglected and dumped.
Miller: Everything that you were describing to some extent, in terms of the pandemic world getting pets for company, and then saying “oh, you know what? I don’t want this anymore,” I feel like I’ve heard all of that for cats and dogs. I’m wondering if you think it’s worse for these small pets because there’s a tendency for many humans to just think that these small pets just have less worth?
Hernandez: Yes. A lot of people view small animals as disposable, like they’re less than cats and dogs. So there is definitely, I feel, a worse issue than even with cats and dogs in Oregon. But it’s a problem that often goes unnoticed because they are small animals. People aren’t paying attention to a problem with them as they would with cats or dogs.
Miller: It doesn’t seem like you’re necessarily in business right now of wanting to convince more people to take these animals on as pets. But if you were, what do you see as the joys of them? I mean even as you’re describing it, it seems more subtle than the joys that cat lovers and dog lovers know. Why do you like having a sugar glider or a hedgehog or a rat or a hamster as a pet?
Hernandez: That’s a really great question. I think that getting to know them and getting to know their individual personalities is so fun. You’d never think that a mouse, until you have one, would have such a different personality than the next one. It’s really special too to have this little tiny creature, this little prey animal, begin to trust you. I mean, we’re these big scary predators to them, and here they trust us.
There’s a lot of learning when you first take on a new species. Like rabbits for example, they may not be as expressive as a cat or a dog, but they are so smart, and they have so much personality. I would definitely say that rabbits are my favorite animals to work with. They’re just very gentle, very smart, and full of personality. I think that if you are giving them the things that they need, and they’re happy, and you’re taking the time to get to know them and their body language - because like I said, a cat or a dog, they’re very obviously expressive, they’re going to meow, they’re going to bark, it’s pretty obvious when they’re not happy. But maybe a small animal, you’re having to learn their body language to really understand how they’re feeling.
Miller: What animals are in your home right now? We only have a minute left. Hopefully you can tell us in one minute.
Hernandez: Yeah, no problem. I’ve got rats, hamsters, mice, rabbits, sugar gliders, a chinchilla cats, a bird, a dog. I’m definitely a big animal lover, and I often take in and keep the ones that are a little special needs, have temperament issues, things like that.
Miller: So many of those sound like snacks for your cat. But I imagine you take care of that?
Hernandez: Oh, definitely. There’s definitely a way to have both types of animals in your home and be safe about it.
Miller: Kayla Hernandez, thanks so much for joining us. It was a pleasure talking with you.
Hernandez: Thank you. It was a pleasure as well.
Miller: Kayla Hernandez is one of the co-founders of the Little Critter Crew. It is a small animal rescue. We heard about the group in Eugene recently.
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