Pelican on the lure
Life has been very busy at Bohollow, we are amidst the calls of various baby birds resonating throughout the household. Numbers coming through the shelter at this time of year are high and the recent winds and storms added to the number of patients.
Although it’s a time we see amazing little critter grow before our eyes, it’s also a time of high demand for our resources, time and energy, the days are long and the fatigue is real.
It can sometimes be tough not to have a love/hate relationship with our busiest time of the year.
What keeps me going, what drives me to attend the next rescue, is always the thought of an animal in trouble who needs our help. Rescues can take up a lot of my time. Precious time away from the many patients at the shelter who need special care and attention. Without the help of my family, I could not spend so much time out on the road, going from rescue to rescue, pick up to pick up. They hold down the fort while I am out in the field. It’s still quite the juggling act though, especially when more than one of us is needed for a rescue.
If you call us for help and I sound tired, it’s likely that I am. If we cannot get to you straight away, we will, when we are able. If you are able to transport to one of our shelters, or even meet us halfway if an animal is already contained, that helps us out a lot.
I was called to a pelican last week who had become snared on a fishing lure and line at the Acardia Fish Hatchery. Poor Peli had the tip of his big bill hooked on a large lure which had four barbed hooks at each end. When a bird gets a lure stuck in its bill this causes all sorts of damage, particularly when the lure has hooks on both ends. When the bird preens itself, the barbed hooks then get snared on wings and/or body. The bird may rip them out in the attempt to free itself but even so, they will continue to get hooked and often they cannot get free at all.
In this case, the pelican had the other end of the lure stuck fast in his body, just under his wing. This caused his head and neck to be stuck at a peculiar angle and when we arrived, he was struggling to keep his head above the water, for a moment I thought he had already drowned...until I saw movement.
The lure was attached to a line of about five or six metres which was stuck fast to the bottom of the dam and the bird was out in deeper water, not reachable by shore
At least it was not a bitterly cold winter’s day as a swim was necessary.
Taking the plunge, I swam out to the bird, who still had enough energy to attempt to flee from me, flapping those huge wings frantically to power away. We played a short game of cat and mouse until I was able to get close enough to grab him. I took him back to water which was just within my depth to give me a breather before I decided how to retrieve the line. I did not want to cut the line just yet and lose it in the water for something else to get stuck in. As I only possess one pair of hands, I was contemplating swimming with the pelican back to the source of the stuck line, somehow reaching down and cutting it as short as I could to the bottom of the dam without drowning both myself and the pelican, then head back to shore with the bird to remove the lure and line.
To my surprise, suddenly there was someone beside me in the water! One of the construction workers who had been standing on shore watching the rescue had decided to take the plunge to lend me a hand, boots and all! Asking what he could do to help, I transferred the bird to his hands which left me free to follow the line back into deeper water and cut it as low as I could get to the muddy bottom. I swam back, took the bird off his hands and made our way back to shore.
Once on dry land, I was able to remove each hook, eight in total, from the bill and body without doing any more damage. We always cut the hooks below the barb so the rest of the hook can be pulled out without harm. The pelican was taken back to Bohollow where his wounds are healing nicely and I hope to release him in the next few days if all continues to go well.
I would like to give a massive shout out to the construction crew who rang for help and who also went above and beyond to assist where they could in the rescue. They knew the poor pelican needed help, knew he was in very real danger of drowning and they refused to accept the reaction of the manager of the fishery when they reported it to him. They were promptly told that it was not the fishery’s responsibility and all they would do was put the bird out of its misery if they were to do anything at all.
The men working as contractors on site took it upon themselves to call us for help, kept everyone away from the distressed bird to reduce its panic and helped make the entire rescue, including the removal of the lure and line, go as smoothly as possible.
They helped save a life and all it took was having compassion and a heart, one thing all our native critters deserve.
