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“I used to rescue bugs outside at recess,” laughs Ashley Makridakis. “Everyone else was playing tag and I was taking care of my own little ant farm. My sisters would see a spider and they’d be screaming,’Kill it!’ and I would be running over with my cup to save it and bring it outside.”
Growing up on a homestead farm in nearby Upton, Makridakis has always had an affinity for wildlife of all shapes and sizes, and while she appreciates domestic animals – “Dogs and cats and anything with a human owner attached to it,” as she says – it’s wild animals that ultimately captured her attention.
“Growing up I thought, ‘I love animals, why not be a vet?’” she recalls. “I started to pursue that avenue but quickly I decided it was not my jam. The amount of schooling and studying was a lot. I started giving up my dream but then I got into rescue and foster work. I soon discovered you can do this thing called wildlife rehabilitation; all you need is a bachelor’s degree and everything else is just outside education.”
Makridakis began taking the necessary courses, a process she fast-tracked once she was pregnant with her son. “I didn’t want to stop. I knew if I could just finish before he was born it would be a lot easier than doing it once I had a baby in my arms.” She found an intensive program in Amherst and spent four weekends away from home, determined to complete the coursework and pass the state licensing exam before he was born. “That’s when I started a whole new journey,” she says.
That journey has become Fresh Start Wildlife, and Makridakis is one of roughly a dozen licensed wildlife rehabilitators in MetroWest (a full listing of all Massachusetts licenced rehabilitators can be found here: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/find-a-wildlife-rehabilitator). As of now, her facility is licensed to take in and care for all wildlife with the exception of songbirds and raptors; with 60 hours of coursework ahead of her, Makridakis is planning to eventually obtain federal permitting to care for those, too.
Over the years, Makridakis has seen just about everything, and while every animal that has passed through her doors is memorable in its own way there is one particular rescue that stands out for her. It was January, 2019 during a stretch of sub-zero temperatures. “There was a swan on Lake Quinsigamond in Shrewsbury,” she says. “The poor thing had fishing wire in her mouth and through her neck. It was as if someone had taken a needle and thread and sewn her mandible to her neck. It was absolutely painful to see it. It got a lot of attention on the Shrewsbury Facebook pages and people were posting wondering if anyone was going to do anything about it and finally I was like, you know, I need to take action.” With the help of her colleague, Krystal Smajkiewicz, and the Shrewsbury police and fire departments, a rescue effort was launched. It took a hovercraft, patience, and a lot of prayers, but the swan was captured and brought to the nearby Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine before being successfully released in the spring.
“As humans we can be disconnected from wildlife and animal suffering. But animals hurt just like people hurt,” Makridakis notes.
As hard as it is to watch animals suffer, what’s even harder for a wildlife rehabber is finding a work/life balance, particularly when you have a husband and four children – Lyla, Jace, Quin, Mazy – who also need your attention. “Unequivocally hands down, finding the balance between caring for my patients and motherhood is hard. You can’t give 100% to both. For a very very long time – for the first several years – my kids and my husband unfortunately weren’t getting the best of me. They were just getting what was left of me at the end of the day.”
She continues, “You hand your life over. When you take in animals what they need takes priority. Not just the infants but also the wounded animals. If I’m gone longer than 2 hours there is going to be a life that is in excruciating pain because I haven’t given it the medicine it needs. There’s nothing worse than when the alarm goes off in the morning. A normal person can just hit ‘snooze’ but I can’t do that. If I did that, I would feel terrible, because I know there are containers of baby animals that are hungry if I decide to be selfish by sleeping.”
Not that Makridakis is complaining; she loves what she does and is eternally grateful to her family for sharing her with the natural world. Now in her ninth year, she is on the cusp of realizing one of her dreams: reaching 501(c)3 status. “Once the legal paperwork is filed and I get the EIN number I will be hitting the ground running. I am planning lots of fundraisers and I’m so excited!”
In the midst of juggling wildlife – she can have as many as 20-30 animals at her facility at any given time – Makridakis has also partnered with the Sudbury Conservation Commission to help make Raymond Road more “turtle friendly” (https://www.nbcboston.com/on-air/as-seen-on/frequent-turtle-deaths-on-sudbury-road-raise-questions/3688297/), and on June 4th, from 7-8pm, she will be partnering with Sudbury Valley Trustees to present a program on helping baby wildlife (see the SVT programs and events page at https://svtprograms.funraise.org/ for details and to register). And if that’s not enough to juggle, she also has a side business, https://www.gypsyandnova.com/, making botanical soy candles and offering essential oils and diffusers, with the proceeds from sales donated to animal rescue efforts.
“I think the love and curiosity for animals and how to help them is built in,” says Makridakis. “I think at its foundation it’s a calling. And I’ve always had it.”
If you’d like to stay connected to Fresh Start Wildlife and find out more about upcoming fundraising and public education efforts, follow Makridakis at https://www.facebook.com/freshstartwildliferehab and
https://www.instagram.com/freshstartwildliferescue?igsh=MW12Z2k5MnRmcjZnaA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
If you find an animal that needs care, reach out to her at 508-397-9708 or email [email protected].
For tips on the do’s and don’ts should you come across wildlife, especially during spring nesting season, Makridakis wrote an article for Discover Concord Magazine that is filled with great information: https://www.discoverconcordma.com/articles/193-wild-babies