Photo by J. Adrian Wylie
At the end of the Ann Arbor Art Fair, wildlife artist and photographer Marie Rust and woodworker Lisa Ramlow from Bear Track Studios were packing up. When they opened a print bin, a mama deer mouse leaped out into the bushes, leaving behind her four babies. She’d apparently ridden all the way from Rust and Ramlow’s studio up north, giving birth en route.
Fortunately, Rust has an Ann Arbor friend, Sally Fekety, who rehabs possums. (The two once worked together at the Humane Society of Huron Valley.) She called Fekety, who arrived with a critter cage and patiently waited for the mama to come back to her babies.
Fekety then called Kari Aspenleiter at Serenity’s Place, a wildlife rehab center in Brighton. Aspenleiter told her to call Julie Kobylarz. Kobylarz (ko-BUH-larz) rescues, rehabs, and returns to the wild injured or vulnerable mice, voles, chipmunks, shrews, and baby squirrels.
And that’s how the mouse family arrived at the Ann Arbor home Kobylarz shares with her partner, Bryan, and their three children.
Kobylarz, thirty-six, has loved rodents since childhood. Chipmunks ate from her hand at her family’s cabin up north in Gaylord. At home in Westland, her parents gave her gerbils as a gift. In college at Central Michigan she bought “feeder mice,” which pet stores sell as food for reptiles, to keep as pets. She first came to Ann Arbor for treatment at Dawn Farm, and is celebrating ten years of recovery this year.
Kobylarz posts her “mousetales”—pictures, videos, and stories about mice—on social media. In 2021, one shared a lesson learned from an early rescue in her own home. “Our landlord had good intentions, but didn’t do much about our mouse problem,” she explains. “I just couldn’t stomach the kill traps at our disposal.”
So she tried a suggestion she found online: put a tiny bit of oil and peanut butter in a bowl. As promised, the mice climbed in and couldn’t get out—but the sticky mixture clung to their feet and fur. Kobylarz’ video of herself giving a mouse a bath garnered more than fifty million views on TikTok.
She later found an injured squirrel and contacted Jolene Matousek of the Felix Foundation, a fox sanctuary in Howell, for advice. Matousek invited Kobylarz to work with her and gave her further training.
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Tall, with nearly waist-length brown hair, Kobylarz looks like a wildlife deity among the untamed gardens in her backyard. Her calm, purposeful manner helps her assess and treat multiple rescues with support from Bryan and their children.
“The kids love it!” she says. “They help me clean cages. It’s taught them a level of compassion I admire. Bryan helps me with whatever I need.”
Donations and ad revenue from her social-media sites help support her work. With more than six million followers on various platforms, Google defines her as an internet personality.
Mona Lisa, named in homage to her Art Fair origins, gave birth to another litter shortly after her arrival. “They can get pregnant immediately after giving birth and give birth twenty-eight days later,” Kobylarz explains. Mona and her babies currently occupy a comfortable tank with a screen on top, absorbent paper-based bedding, water, and food.
“I spoil my nursing and pregnant moms,” she smiles. “They get fresh fruit and vegetables every day.”
With colder weather, mice seek shelter in buildings, alarming their human occupants and sometimes causing damage.
Kobylarz’ advice: “When mice come into your house, don’t take it personally; they’re just doing what mice do. They’re not being malicious; they are an integral part of the ecosystem, doing what mice do to survive.”
She advocates “rodent roommate” prevention by sealing entry points and using deterrents like mint sprays or coyote urine. If that fails, she recommends using a live trap, or, for those unwilling, a quick-killing electric “zap trap.”
“Glue and poison are the worst,” she says. “Glue leaves them stuck for days, in pain and starving. … Poison brings a long, horrible death between three days to two weeks.”
If people don’t care, “I remind them that mice are not leaving their house and dying. They’re going into your walls, where they’re going to rot. And, if by chance they do leave the house, they’re going to get picked up by a hawk or another predator that our ecosystem needs and kill them.
“There are a lot of creative pest control solutions that people don’t know about, like natural mouse birth control. It doesn’t bring any harm. It only stops the mice from reproducing. I like this solution for big infestations.”
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Tanya Hilgendorf, CEO of the Humane Society of Huron Valley, emails that her organization received more than 6,000 requests to rescue sick and injured animals last year. “A piece of the puzzle that’s absolutely critical to saving lives and preventing suffering is wildlife rehabbers. Rehabbers like Julie are true heroes. Sadly, there aren’t many and they are declining.”
Elena Wakeman of Ann Arbor–based Friends of Wildlife says she had to put its work on hold because there aren’t enough rehabbers with the necessary DNR permits in the county. (Kobylarz is a “sub-permittee,” working under Matousek’s supervision.)
The DNR has a list of licensed rehabbers online, but Kobylarz, who is unlicensed, is glad not to be on it. She’s afraid she’d be overwhelmed with the onslaught of wildlife, especially babies, in May through September.
The Huron Valley and Livingston County humane societies bring Kobylarz the injured and at-risk wildlife that she specializes in. Locals on Facebook and Nextdoor also sometimes recognize her as a rescuer of little critters. When she can’t help, she recommends other rehabbers she knows from an informal network.
Kobylarz never adopts her rescues—it’s not good for them, and it’s against the law. She either releases them where they came from, or takes them a mile into the woods. She equips them with enough food and shelter to acclimate to their new surroundings, and brings babies with their mamas.
Not everyone appreciates her work. Kobylarz says her “skin has gotten so thick” from internet trolls.
“If I’m weird to somebody, so be it,” she says. “I think my message is sound: having compassion for other living beings who feel pain as much as you and I do. Reducing suffering, whatever it may be, is a worthwhile cause.”
And sometimes, her social media posts get through to the haters. “They’re intrigued, so they stay and watch,” she says. “It’s way different to see the face of a mouse rather than a shadow racing across your kitchen counter.”
Mousetales on social media:
TikTok
Instagram
Facebook
Snapchat