HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — This week’s Everyday Hero is a Hillsborough woman who spends a big portion of her life taking care of animals, but not the domesticated kind.

For many people, the wild is just that - it's separate from the organized and urbanized world. But not everyone sees it that way.

"People have no conscience that these animals feel the same we feel. To me, it's mind boggling," Linda Ostrand said.

Ostrand is a wildlife rehabber at Our Wild Neighbors (OWN).

“I feel like we have abused nature in every way," Ostrand said.

OWN is a Hillsborough wildlife rehab center that supports and takes care of wild animals.

“This is a little downy woodpecker, suffered a dramatic fall, see how unsteady she is on her feet?" Ostrand said. "This little guy has a broken wing fracture.”

Just this year, OWN has taken in close to 1,000 animals.

Ostrand says that number increases significantly every year.

“We’ve taken in at least half a dozen just this morning," Ostrand said.

The work never stops.

“For a lot of people, wildlife, and anything around wildlife, are just expendable," Ostrand said.

But not for Ostrand and her small staff.

Birds, opossums, squirrels, snakes, rabbits, ducks and so many more are taken in by OWN.

“There's always plans and hopes and dreams, but we have to find some support. What I'd like to do is actually create a nature center so that people could actually see and be a part of where these animals live," Ostrand said. But money and interest will be needed to make that happen. 

It's getting quite crowded inside OWN, and Ostrand is hoping to expand to a larger center that will continue the center's mission.

The ultimate goal is to release these animals back into the wild.

“Any time you get a baby bird in, and [it] gets bigger and gets bigger and fledges and leaves, thats the end goal," Ostrand said.

Those are the good times. There are many bad ones too.

“A lot of people can't even look at some of these things. If I don't, no one will. So I cope. The hardest thing is euthanizing," Ostrand said.

That's the life of a wild animal rescuer. Ostrand says her love for wild animals started when she was a child after she says her parents bought her a pet donkey.

The rest is history.