Steve and Kathie Marsh socialize every day with a 6-foot-long hog named Sizzlelean, a young but functional male skunk named Fifi, and a bobcat with an attitude. His name is B.B.

Both Marshes have gotten used to questioning stares.

"OK, so maybe we're 'creature crazies,"' says Steve, with a resigned shrug. "If you've got to be crazy about something, this is just fine."

The Marshes run the 8-year-old St. Johns Wildlife Care, a nonprofit organization centered in, around and under their home off State Road 13A. The elevated structure sits near the center of 20 wooded acres Marsh has owned for about 20 years.

"What we do is respond to calls when someone finds a wounded wild animal," Steve says. "We pick it up, care for it and try to return it to its natural habitat while it still knows it's an animal and can survive in the wild.

"Of all the animals we rehabilitate, the most difficult are predators - birds of prey, a bobcat, a panther."

Occasionally, an animal becomes a permanent resident.

"Sizzlelean probably weighed 25 pounds when we were called out to try to save her," Kathie says. She's talking from inside the pen, stroking the huge porker and pulling back its rough hair to show scars left by 146 stitches.

"She had been literally torn apart by a pack of dogs," Steve says. "She was just a baby ...

"It got to the point where we had to eat her or adopt her. You can see which choice we made and, no sir, I don't know what she weighs. It has to be more than 500 pounds, though."

A tent-like structure shows above the trees about 40 yards behind Sizzlelean's home and a portion of it extends out over a pond.

"That's the intensive care recovery tent for birds of prey," says Steve. "There's fish in that pond and some birds, like ospreys, can exercise their instincts and help feed themselves ...

"We worry about a bird being here so long that it begins to molt or is about to molt. It takes them some time to grow the new feathers and be able to fly again. Without them, they're helpless in the wild."

Across the lawn, beyond the fig tree whose fruit is left for the free-living birds and occasional transient animals, Kathie has entered the young skunk's domicile.

"He's about 12 weeks old and was hit by a car."

B.B. Bobcat stalks in the next cage, moving back and forth like the caged animal he is. Kathie enters his home and strokes the cat as it comes and goes from each direction.

"B.B.'s not wild, but does have an attitude at times," Kathie explains. "Loves my son Jeremiah, who is 16."

Monty Python lives in a cage on the Marshes' porch. "Actually, he's a boa constrictor, whose breed is native to the South American rain forests," Kathie says.

Chickens and a peacock roam the grounds, along with a mixed-breed muscovy duck with only one wing, and it is sticking up at an awkward angle.

The peacock just showed up one day, and Steve says it's doubtful that somebody had simply dumped him off.

"He can fly, you know, though not for great distances. Maybe he made a lot of short hops. As for chickens, you can see they're all over the place and we've never brought a chicken on the grounds ourselves."

While Kathie checks on the raccoons, Steve spreads St. Johns Wildlife Care's books on a table.

So far this year, it has cared for 97 waterbirds, 33 birds of prey and 168 mammals: 63 squirrels, 37 raccoons, three gray fox, 45 opossums, four deer, seven rabbits, five skunks and four bats.

A log shows when each injured animal was discovered, the circumstances, treatment and final disposition. Disposition "D" indicates deceased, but there are more Rs than Ds. R means returned to the wild.

Screech owls and barred owls are on the list, along with Carolina wrens, a northern gannett, various woodpeckers, a kingfisher, sandhill cranes, a red-billed grebe, a turkey vulture, hummingbirds and an occasional armadillo.

The apparent causes of the injuries also are listed, and they include "hit by car," "flew into windshield" and "brought home by a cat."

"That's the kind of work we do," Steve says. "We serve five counties, including southern Duval and all of St. Johns. We've got satellite groups in Flagler, Volusia and Putnam.

"We get 3,000 to 4,000 calls a year, and have to respond to about 1,000 of them. So many calls involve domestic animals - dogs, cats - and we just can't respond to those. It hurts, but we can't."

St. Johns Wildlife Care needs volunteers and other kinds of support, and especially in the administrative and public relations sectors. It takes three years to train someone to respond to a wildlife call, and Steve says "We've got that down pretty good."