The Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic is a veterinary rehabilitation clinic in California run by Walter out of the barn on his farm. For the majority of the Animorphs' involvement in the war, they used the barn as their primary meeting place.

Layout

The clinic is a large, red barn with dark roofing and white trim.^[2] The barn is partitioned to keep certain patients, such as birds, away from raccoons and coyotes^[3] and wolves, which is then kept separate via another partition from the stalls containing the family's own horses. The clinic also includes an operating room and a handful of small recovery rooms as well. The floor of the clinic is made of cement.^[4] A computer is used to keep records of the patients, but it does not have internet.^[5]

History

Prime Timeline

In the olden days, the main red barn of the farm was used for traditional farm purposes. However, by the 1990s, Walter turned the barn into the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic, a center to take in any non-pet injured animals.^[2] By 1997,^{[note 1]} the clinic was in full service, with Walter running it first time while Cassie helped around as part of her chores.^[2] The clinic was established well-enough that the California Highway Patrol contacted them whenever an injured animal was found on or by the nearby highways. Around this time, Walter was sprayed by a skunk he had attempted to help, causing Michelle to refuse to let him sleep in the house. Walter went to sleep in the barn, although the skunk smell agitated the other patients, forcing Walter to leave the barn and sleep in a tent in the yard instead.^[6] In 1997,^{[note 1]} the day after the Animorphs received their power, Tobias acquired a red-tailed hawk that was at the clinic. Later that night, Cassie and Jake searched the barn looking for a wild green anole lizard that Jake wished to acquire.^[2]

A few weeks later, on a Sunday, the Animorphs convened at the clinic, where Tobias notified them that he had seen an invisible Yeerk ship coming to and from the mountains. At this time, there were two wolves at the clinic, a male who had been shot and a female who had been poisoned. In order to traverse the national forest into the mountains without using their bird-of-prey morphs, the human Animorphs acquired the wolves, with Jake acquiring the male while Rachel, Cassie and Marco acquired the female wolf.^[3]

Not too long after, the Clinic had several of its bird patients eaten in the middle of the night by a fox. Wanting to see what animal was eating the birds and how they were entering the barn, Cassie went to the barn at midnight and acquired and morphed Magilla, a squirrel patient. However, she was overwhelmed by the squirrel instincts while Tobias flew into the barn, who nearly ate Cassie. The fox then entered through a loose panel, which caused all of the animals to start making loud noises. The fox then began chasing Cassie, although Tobias slashed at it, prompting it to run away. Having heard the animal noises, Walter made his way to the barn, with Cassie barely being able to demorph in time. On Sunday, the Animorphs went to the barn as they needed seagull morphs as the clinic had many seagulls as patients. A few days later, Cassie returned to the barn at midnight, although this time she morphed seagull and left through the open rafters.^[4]

On a Saturday morning, the Animorphs went to the Clinic as Cassie's parents were gone for the day. Inside the barn, Ax, the Andalite that had joined them, morphed into his human morph. Tobias then flew in through the rafters and informed them that the bus was right on schedule; Jake, Marco and Ax then walked out of the barn and made their way to the bus stop. Less than a week later, the clinic had a poisoned northern harrier as a patient. As Ax needed a bird morph, he acquired the harrier from the clinic.^[7]

On another Saturday morning, Cassie worked at the barn, feeding the animals, as the other human Animorphs arrived. Sitting on bales of hay and feed sacks, Jake informed them that the Yeerks had taken over a hospital in their city known as the Berman Clinic. Seven days later, on another Saturday morning, the Animorphs gathered at the barn to acquire and morph into houseflies. Cassie first morphed into the fly in the barn, and the sight caused Tobias to fly away while Rachel ran out of the barn to vomit. Tobias later returned when Cassie had finished the morph, and observed her as she flew around. Shortly after, the other morph-capable Animorphs morphed into flies and spent a short while flying around the barn as well. They then landed on Tobias' neck as he flew them from the barn to the Berman Clinic.^[8]

On a Wednesday after school, the Animorphs, minus Ax, arrived at the barn for a meeting, with Rachel flying there in bald eagle morph. Cassie began to bandage a kestrel as the Animorphs argued about an offer that Ellimist had made, as well as Rachel's recent recklessness, such as acquiring a grizzly bear by herself without backup. Ellimist then teleported the Animorphs, plus Ax, to an alternate future timeline to subtly reveal that the Kandrona was located within the EGS Tower before returning them to the woods behind Cassie's farm. At 3:47 A.M. on Saturday, the Animorphs gathered inside the barn, turning on just one dim light so that Cassie's parents did not notice. Inside the barn, the Animorphs held an emergency meeting, where Rachel notified them that she had deduced that the Kandrona was atop the EGS Tower, just as Ellimist had intended. The group then left the barn to head to the tower.^[9]

On a Friday after school, not too long after the destruction of the Kandrona, the human Animorphs met up at the barn since Cassie wanted help to clean up the barn. Marco, not wanting to help move cages, laid down on a bale of hay while Rachel informed the group that she would be attending a weekend gymnastics camp. Jake then went outside with Cassie to retrieve cages from Walter's truck. On Saturday night, Jake, Marco, Tobias, and Cassie met up at the barn as Rachel and Ax were missing following an encounter with a dust beast known as the Veleek. The Animorphs realized that the Veleek attacked them while they were morphing or demorphing and that they needed to find and rescue their teammmates. They then left the barn and spotted the Veleek flying past, and stole Walter's truck in order to lure the Veleek away.^[10] Very shortly after, Cassie went into the barn to get overalls and boots for Ax so that, in Jake morph, could have dinner with her family. The next day, the Animorphs held a meeting at the barn during the evening to question Ax after Tobias returned with a bloody shirt strip on his clothing which he would not clarify as he had made a promise with Ax. Cassie fed a baby goose with an eyedropper while Marco and Rachel got into a heated argument with Ax. Jake then told Ax that if he was not going to be honest with them that he could not be a member of their team, and Ax walked out of the barn, although they later made amends as Ax officially joined the team.^[11]

Shortly after, the barn's patients consisted of a golden eagle, a fox, two wolves, various bats, a porcupine, a pair of jackrabbits, a deer that had been mauled by a bear, several doves, a goose, a swan cygnet, multiple seagulls, a red-winged blackbird, and a barn owl. The Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic was contacted by the Highway Patrol about a raccoon that had been struck by a car, and Walter secured the raccoon and brought it to the barn as a patient. Following the golden eagle's successful treatment, Cassie and Walter released it by the hills. In order to secure additional funding for the clinic, Walter set up a meeting with the board of the Dudette Cat Food Corporation. One Friday after school, Cassie was cleaning the raccoon's cage when Rachel, Jake, and Marco arrived, with Jake having called a meeting on behalf of Tobias. As Tobias flew into the barn, he informed them that the Yeerk Empire had established a logging camp in their national forest and had plans to conduct deforestation. Deciding to check out the outpost for themselves, Jake and Rachel morphed into their peregrine falcon and bald eagle morphs respectively in order to fly with Tobias while Cassie and Marco walked out of the barn and headed toward the national forest in order to morph into wolves. Later that evening, the California Highway Patrol called the Clinic to inform them of a burned skunk by the highway; due to his trauma, Walter brought Cassie along to secure the skunk, with Cassie bringing one of the frozen mice that the Clinic kept to feed their raptors.

As they located the skunk, Cassie realized had been burned by a Dracon beam as the skunk had been near the Dapsen Lumber Compound earlier that evening when the Controllers were shooting at Marco and Cassie. Walter and Cassie brought the skunk back to the barn, where Walter applied a bandage on the burn wound, although he was unable to determine what had caused the burn as it had been done too neatly. The next night, as the skunk had been agitated, Walter applied a sedative to calm her down. Cassie came to the barn as Walter did his rounds and learned that the skunk was female and had babies that were about six or seven weeks old that were alone in the wild. When Walter left, Cassie removed her gloves and stuck her hand into the sedated skunk's cage in order to acquire the mother skunk. On Sunday morning, Cassie went into the barn to retrieve a frozen grasshopper from the refrigerator. Cassie continued to take frozen grasshoppers and frozen mice from the barn's refrigerator to feed the mother skunk's kits as well as to give some of the frozen mice to Tobias, as he was unable to hunt due to always watching the skunk den. After a few days, the clinic finished treating the mother skunk, which Cassie and the other Animorphs released back in the forest.^[6]

This section requires expansion

Alternate Realities

History Altered by Visser Four

This section requires expansion

To be added

History Altered by Crayak

This section requires expansion

To be added

Appearances

Book Series

This section requires expansion

The Invasion The Visitor (mentioned) The Encounter The Message The Predator The Capture The Alien

The Secret The Android The Unknown The Departure The Discovery The Threat

The Solution The Sickness Elfangor's Secret The Separation The Proposal The Weakness

The Arrival The Hidden Back to Before The Diversion

TV Series

My Name is Jake (Part 2) Underground Between Friends The Message

The Escape The Capture (Part 1) The Capture (Part 2) The Reaction

The Forgotten The Leader (Part 2) Tobias (flashback only) The Release

Face Off (Part 1) Changes (Part 1) Changes (Part 2)

Trivia

• In some of the earlier books, the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic is referred to as the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.

Gallery

Notes

References