PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Wildlife rehabilitators in Philadelphia have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure a baby Red-tailed Hawk in their care stays wild. It has been quite the journey for the hawk, as the bird was just two weeks old when he arrived at the Schuylkill Center’s Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic.

Assistant Wildlife Rehabilitator Michele Wellard says that’s a critical time for young animals, when they imprint — bond with, and get their sense of identity from — their caregivers.

“The most important thing was teaching him not to associate humans with food, so that he did not become imprinted, because if he became imprinted, he would be non-releasable,” Wellard said.

So they got creative.

“A volunteer made a puppet to feed him with that looks like a Red-tailed Hawk,” she says. “Whenever anyone looked at him or did anything with him, we’d wear a welder’s mask, and gloves on our hands, so he couldn’t see any of our human parts.”

Wellard says the goal isn’t to make pets of their wild patients — it’s to set them free.

“We believe it’s our job to uninterfere, and put wildlife back to the state it was before human beings interfered with them.”