In her spare time, she uses those skills to keep baby raccoons alive.

Rooks is a neonatal intensive care nurse at Baptist Medical Center and a volunteer for St. Johns Wildlife Care. The St. Augustine-based volunteer organization rescues and cares for wild animals until they are healthy enough to be released back into the wild.

"Sugar plays with everything; she's so sweet," Rooks said last week as she played with one of the baby raccoons she's caring for at her Sawgrass Players Club home. Sugar perched on Rooks' shoulder then tussled her hair.

Karen Inman, director of St. Johns Wildlife Care, coordinates a volunteer program that rescues orphaned animal babies and injured adult wildlife. -- Maggie FitzRoy/staff

"She thinks I'm her mom," Rooks said, laughing.

Six-week-old Sugar and her sister were found abandoned and motherless several weeks ago, starving and close to death. After they were brought to St. Johns Wildlife headquarters in St. Augustine, organization President Karen Inman called Rooks. Inman knew that, with Rooks' skills, the babies had a chance of pulling through.

Her sister didn't make it, but Sugar did. Rooks fed her formula every few hours with a syringe, then after a week graduated her to a baby bottle. Now Sugar is very healthy; she's the charm of the Rooks household, which includes husband Bob and son Ryan.

Sugar plays with the dog, her toys and her cage mate, Sissy, another baby raccoon. She fishes for goldfish in the backyard pond and still takes a bottle several times a day.

A baby raccoon rescued by Karen Inman sucks on the woman's finger. -- Maggie FitzRoy/staff

"Orphan babies are not part of nature just running its course," Inman said. It's civilization -- cars and development and destruction of animal habitats -- that kills mother animals and leave helpless babies to die. Unless they are found by people willing to help them.

Often when people see baby animals alone, they assume the mother is nearby, Inman said.

"But if mama's not there when you see the little baby, then there is no mother," she said. "She's not coming back."

Rooks started her involvement with St. Johns Wildlife in May when she found a baby raccoon at a shopping center. He was in a little green carrier, with a bottle and a jar of formula. The 3-week-old raccoon was unconscious. Someone had tried to help him and didn't know how.

Rooks thought maybe she did. She brought him home, started giving him formula through an eye dropper and stayed up with him all night until he started to revive. After a week of taking a bottle, he started to grow and developed a fat belly -- so Rooks named him Buddha.

A baby great horned owl that has been cared for by Karen Inman of St. Johns Wildlife Care awaits his next meal. -- Maggie FitzRoy/staff

Not knowing anything about raising raccoons, Rooks heard about St. Johns Wildlife and called for advice. She was surprised by what Inman told her -- that raccoons are cute and playful as babies, but they don't make good pets. Once Buddha reached a certain age and could fend for himself, he needed to be released back into the wild.

"We really fell in love with him," Rooks said. "Our plan was to raise him and let him go in the backyard and come and go like a cat."

Baby raccoons are very much like cats -- they are intelligent, easily litter trained, very playful and purr when they're happy.

But unlike cats, adult raccoons have major mood swings, Inman said. If they want something, they wouldn't hesitate to "bite the daylights out of you to get it. ... They're still partially wild, no matter what. When their hormones kick in, they're going to start doing what they're supposed to do in the world."

Buddha now lives at St. Johns Wildlife headquarters, where he shares a cage with two other raccoons and is learning how to be wild. Soon he'll be transferred to a "wilding cage" outdoors, where he will receive limited human contact and begin eating rats, frogs and crayfish. In a few weeks, Sugar and Sissy will be big enough to leave the Rooks' home and join him.

Last year, St. Johns Wildlife took in about 1,000 animals, including birds, opossums, squirrels and turtles.

This year, there have been more, including a baby bobcat and a baby fox that were rescued in spring. Both live in outdoor cages at St. Johns Wildlife, which has its headquarters on the 15-acre property of Karen Inman and her husband, Randy.

This time of the year, half of the Inman home and much of their back yard is devoted to wild animals. Cages filled with baby raccoons pack the dining room and kitchen areas. Large outdoor cages form an animal compound that resembles a miniature zoo.

Karen Inman, with her husband's help, has devoted the past seven years to wild animal rescue and care. It's a full-time job with no pay. The organization gets calls from people who are referred by the Sheriff's Office and the Humane Society. They are on call day and night, seven days a week.

"I've just always enjoyed taking care of animals," Inman said. "I just feel like it's something that somebody needs to do."

Ryan Rooks, 19, said he doesn't mind sharing his Ponte Vedra Beach home with baby raccoons who need help. He knows that once Sugar and Sissy leave, other baby raccoons probably will arrive to take their place. Geri Rooks is a natural with babies.

"I think it's kind of neat," he said as he stood in the kitchen and watched Sugar with his mom. "We got cats, we got dogs, why not have raccoons?"

Randy Inman said caring for wild animals is enjoyable -- and a lot of work.

"Helping something that can't help itself -- most people don't really care," he said. "They say, 'I'm not going to be bothered. But we're going to be bothered. ... When you release an animal and see it run into the woods, you can just tell they are happy. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel like you've actually done something."