Emily Bush dumped a bag of squirming mealworms into a plastic bin filled with saw dust.
She gently ran her bare hands through the mix, then plucked a single yellow-brown larva from the pile.
“So, all of these worms will eventually be beetles, and then those beetles will basically reproduce these guys,” Bush explained.
Bush pulled out a second bin and repeated the process. She worked on a big metal table in a special room in a dorm at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville.
Bush is an animal person. She grew up on farm in Meigs County in southeast Ohio.
Now, she’s finishing up a four-and-half-year-stay at the women’s reformatory for child endangering and illegally manufacturing drugs.
Bush hasn’t been idle during her last few years in prison, though. In addition to breeding mealworms to feed rescued reptiles and birds at Ohio Wildlife Center, Bush takes care of the baby bunnies.
Ohio Wildlife Center takes in around 8,000 animals every year. Most are orphaned babies that need extensive care. The central Ohio-based nonprofit found extra helping hands in Ohio’s prisons. Incarcerated individuals like Bush raise the baby animals through a partnership between Ohio Wildlife Center and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Ohio Wildlife Center spokesman David Donahue said the partnership has its origins around three decades ago, but its current form took off in 2021. Around 200 incarcerated people in five prisons care for animals.
Donahue calls it “rehabilitation on both sides.”
"I've had people say that I didn't know how to care for myself but caring for an animal taught me also how to care for myself,” Donahue said.
Each prison specializes in raising one type of animal. That streamlines the supplies to be approved by security at each location. It also allows the incarcerated individuals to get extremely good at working with a certain species.
Richland Correctional Institution takes opossums. Marion Correctional Institution handles songbirds. And the women’s reformatory in Marysville cares for rabbits. This year, Bush said the women raised more than 300 of them.
By October all of the bunnies have left the prison. Rabbit season usually runs from around early April to mid-September. This year, it started early when flooding in March forced bunnies from their burrows.
At the women’s reformatory, 10 women fed the rabbits twice a day, took them outside, and filed all the necessary paperwork. Working with the rabbits is a privilege, and the women take it seriously. Bush said they sometimes work from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
“We make sure their cages are changed, um, we make sure that they have fresh water. We come in. We get their formula ready,” Bush said. “One rabbit is like caring for 20 children.”
Bush explained that the women track rabbits’ weights. Some of the smallest come in at 47 or 50 grams, about a tenth of a pound. The women feed them formula with syringes until they hit about 90 grams. Bush said once the rabbits can eat kale, they gain weight quickly. Usually, the women are ready to send a rabbit back to Ohio Wildlife Center in two and a half to three weeks.
“We try not to get attached. We try to just like come in and feed and go,” Bush said. Still, she said, there are some special ones. Every rabbit has its own personality.
The rabbits in the program have an impressive 90% survival rate. The women have brought bunnies back from the brink of death. Other volunteer groups want to know what the incarcerated women are doing right.
“We take time. We have time. We are prideful in what we do,” Bush said.
Meanwhile, while the women save the rabbits, the rabbits help the women learn important lessons.
Bush, who has a son, said that raising rabbits has strengthened her motherly instinct.
“It's taught me my worth. It's taught me how to stay on my game,” Bush said. “When I leave, this is gonna be a big part of me.”
Bush said the rabbits also give her and the other women a purpose. That’s something that the women don’t necessarily have outside the prison, she said.
Emily Stahl, energy and conservation sustainability administrator for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) said the partnership with Ohio Wildlife Center teaches empathy.
“There's a lot of similarities between these animals and our incarcerated population. And so, there's a lot healing that goes on in this program,” Stahl said.
The program also teaches real skills that people can use once they leave prison. Stahl said that ODRC is rolling out a rehabilitator certification program through the Ohio Wildlife Rehabilitators Association in the next month or so. Bush will be able to get certified before she’s set to be released in early 2027.
Soon, the prisons that care for animals will also have two-year animal rehabilitation apprenticeship programs with the Ohio Department of Labor, Stahl said.
“When they walk out, they can have that apprenticeship and they can essentially go to any, you know, vet clinic or rehab or even a zoo,” Stahl said.
Bush plans to pursue a career in animal rehabilitation. She also has an idea for a side-hustle. It turns out there’s money in mealworms.
“I literally told my grandmother I was turning the barn into a mealworm factory. She said, ‘You're what?’ I said, ‘This is what I'm gonna do when I come home.’ On top of the rabbits and this, this is my new future right here,” Bush said.