The Anna Maria Island Sun Newspaper


Vol. 17 No. 20 - March 1, 2017

FEATURE

Thirty years of rescue in Bradenton Beach

Anna Maria Island Sun News Story

TOM VAUGHT | SUN

Screech owls are among the many birds in the cage
behind the Wildlife, Inc. building.

 

BRADENTON BEACH – The Wildlife, Inc. Education and Rehabilitation Center sits in a very unlikely spot – an established residential neighborhood on Anna Maria Island. The home of Gail and Ed Straight, hidden behind shrubbery and trees as well as a fence, looks like any other residence, but there are many surprises inside.

Neighbors are used to the noises from parrots, owls and other injured critters who live there in cages. Some of them are on the mend and will be released back to the wild, while others are too injured to survive on their own, and they will spend the rest of their days there.

Wildlife Inc. has been around 30 years and many residents and government workers of Manatee County know to call 941-778-6324 if they find an animal in distress. The Straights have accepted all types of animals in need of care, from magnificent raptors such as eagles to owls otters, turtles and recently, an 8-foot snake found in Robinson Preserve.

Volunteers help feed, bathe and care for them, and there are others who help educate kids at schools around the county and during their annual fundraiser arts and crafts festival. David Sadkin, the education director, is well known to area students as is the Straights' grandson, Devon, who helps show the animals who live there permanently. Devon, incidentally, graduated from Bayshore High School and is going into law enforcement.

It all began with a duck that somebody had found, and they took it in. Then came more injured critters and in 1987, Gail got licensed.

"Each year calls grew," said Ed Straight. "In 2000, we remodeled and when the Pelican Man, Dale Shields, died we had to help fill the void."

Ed Straight came from North Carolina, where he grew up on a dairy farm. When he got to college, he started to study for a law career, but changed his major to psychology.

He also spent time treasure hunting, looking for shipwrecks While in college, he got into a rock and roll band and later moved to St. Petersburg where he worked with ambulance crews and met Gail, who worked in a hospital. They later moved to the Manatee County where he was put in charge of the county's ambulance service and finally, the Manatee County Emergency Management Service.

In 1983, he became a reserve deputy for the Manatee County Sheriff's Office and until last year, he was a Bradenton Beach City Commissioner.

They operate by gifts and donations, and when a wealthy benefactor held the annual Island Blood Drive for many years, they usually got the most donations from blood donors who could specify where a $100 donation could go.

Wildlife Inc. has expanded to Mixon Farms east of Bradenton, where they have some animals and on the Island, Dr. William Bystrom of Island Animal Clinic in Holmes Beach provides medical help.

Ed Straight still enjoys playing rock and roll and dreams of fortune hunting, but his roots are in that house hidden on the Island, where the sounds of animals in need reverberates.

Tipping - politics, economics and cheese

The virtues of tipping are manifest. People smile more and go faster when they are enthused by the prospect of a tip. You get your cheese faster when the people serving your cheese think they are going to get some cheese too.

The politics of tipping and minimum wages is not complicated.

The most ambitious and brightest people all over the world want to come to America.

Many of them make it.

Because these workers are new to the country, they are often employed in industries with ease of entry. Restaurants are one of those industries.

The simplest of the new Americans' talents is their ability to cook food and serve it.

Their labor is auctioned at the lowest levels. These low level wages are often lower than what constitutes a living wage or a wage adequate to feed and clothe a family, let alone buy a car or send a kid to college. It is too often irrelevant to the person paying the wage that it is inadequate.

A restaurant operation that is paying less than the minimum required to support the worker is operating a kind of slavery. The worker is paid something, but not really enough to live.

Because the restaurant does not pay a survivable wage, it's workers live in subsidized housing with subsidized health care and travel to work on subsidized transportation.

Restaurant owners and chains that refuse to pay their cooks and waiters a living wage are operating their businesses with subsidies paid by you.

Economic injustice eventually creates political discontent.

Someone realizes, "Hey, these workers are not paid a decent minimum wage. We should do something. We should raise the minimum wage."

Right now those political minimum wage accusations are being leveled particularly and most justifiably at chain restaurant operators in our major metropolitan areas, where the costs of living are highest and the level of wage inadequacy is the most glaring.

Some restaurant operators in these major metro areas are now advocating a kind of "steal-the-cheese" switch that restaurant owners have always played when faced with having to pay their cooks more.

It's called, "Let's steal it from the waiters."

Every restaurant operation in the history of food has tried at one time or another to rob Peter the waiter to pay Paul the saute guy. If Paul the saute guy deserves more money, the owner would rather take it from Peter the waiter than pay it himself. The owner steals the waiter's cheese and gives it to the cook.

The restaurant owners who are currently espousing a radical change in tipping practice are just taking another run at stealing tips. If you take a look at what they are paying kitchen workers in urban markets, where the costs of living are high, you would realize they must have some experience at theft.

One "respected" restaurateur in New York is paying cooks and chefs an average of less than $12 an hour.

In New York it costs more than $12 an hour to stand on a street corner and breathe.

The "let's-change-the-tipping" restaurant owners in New York, LA and Seattle just want to steal the waiters' cheese so they don't lose any of their cheese.

The tipping system has survived because it works.

If the sneakier restaurateurs succeed in stealing the waiters' cheese to keep more cheese for themselves, then your cheese is going to take a lot longer to get to the table.


AMISUN ~ The Island's Award-Winning Newspaper