Written by Trevor Weeks MBE, WRAS Founder.
The past week has been a very sad week. WRAS Trustee Monica Russell, Chairperson, Rescuer, Carer, Fundraiser, Cleaner, Cook and Friend, sadly passed away on 16th February 2016 after her long battle with cancer. Our thoughts are with her husband Brian and daughters Kirsty and Claire who have been so lovingly taking care of her during this difficult time. Monica worked behind the scenes at WRAS, and performed many roles. Her biggest role was hand rearing baby mammals especially hedgehogs and fox cubs. She would often be up through the night to feed the babies, who when very small are often in need of being fed every couple of hours. She would always encourage children around her to watch her feeding and felt that educating children to appreciate wildlife was important.
Monica has voluntarily been helping wildlife for over 20 years. She started in a similar way to myself, finding a wildlife casualty and struggling to find anyone to help, other than vets who only offered to euthanize the casualty. Rather than wanting this for a poorly hedgehog she had found, she took it on and it recovered. She started working with Folly Wildlife Rescue but when she moved to Eastbourne she started volunteering with WRAS. She was an absolute natural at hand rearing and would often take little creatures to work with her to ensure they got the continuing care they needed.
It was not just the orphan rearing Monica was involved in, but she also helped out on rescues, on the committee, at fundraising events, building pens, cleaning, and even stayed over at the Casualty Centre during snow to ensure the casualties would get looked after properly. Staying over at our old centre wasn’t exactly comfortable either. Sleeping on the cold floor was ok, but having hedgehogs snuffling, grunting and chewing their food through the night, as well as the owl flapping its wings, and then at first light the pigeons pecking at seed and flicking it through the bars of the cage at you! I found some old video of Monica helping me catch a swan wandering around the car park at the Fishermans’s Green on Eastbourne Seafront as well as some of her feeding a premature fox cub. You can see our Tribute to Monica on our You Tube Channel www.youtube.com/user/eastsussexwras.
Monica was a good all round person who got involved where ever she could due to her compassion and dedication to helping others. She is an inspiration to us all and we hope we do her memory proud and can live up to her dedication and commitment to help wildlife in need. We will miss you Monica and will never forget all you have done for WRAS.
Instead of buying flowers a just giving page has been set up by her daughter so people can make donations in her memory. You can make a donation using the following link: https://www.justgiving.com/Claire-Martin33
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