NOLIN RIVER WILDLIFE
After a 30-year-long career as a speech therapist, Mary Key decided to take a leap of faith.
In 2015, Mary and her husband Jeff were coming back from vacation and encountered a dead opossum. Its smell was enough to indicate that it had been dead for a few days. What caught Mary’s attention however, was that its stomach was wriggling with babies — the opossum was pregnant. She took all eight of the babies in and raised them.
It was only natural for her since she has been an avid animal lover since childhood. As a kid in Charlotte, North Carolina, she would pick snails from the road and put them in her garage, thinking she was saving them. Even as a speech therapist, she would incorporate animals into her sessions by bringing patients to her farm and letting them interact with horses and chickens. To Mary, animals bring out the best in people.
She quit her therapy profession and dedicated herself to saving animals. Nolin River Wildlife grew from her home as she took in more animals — deer, raccoons, groundhogs, squirrels, opossums — all with the intent of nurturing them to a point where they can be released back into their habitat. However long they are with her, Mary treats them like family.
Mary wants to do more than just care for wildlife — she wants to teach others about each animal’s contribution to the environment and how they also affect our personal lives. Every life and absence has a ripple effect.
This is her calling. Every human and animal are here for a reason.