I've seen several injured ducks since we've lived here. Almost every day when we walk the lake there will be a duck limping or a coot having a problem.
Luckily Mike saw this coot in trouble and scooped it up to help it. We used my jacket to contain him as he was not liking our help in the beginning. There was fishing line wrapped several times around his foot and also we think he swallowed the part of the line with a hook in it.
We had nothing to cut the line with but luckily a guy fishing nearby had a pocket knife. Took about 5 minutes of careful cutting (it was so tight it would eventually make the foot useless or dead cutting off the circulation)) and we were able to free him. The only thing we could do to the line in his mouth was cut it very close and hope that the hook didn't injured him further - we never did see the hook - only assume it was in there because we tried and couldn't pull the line out and he did not like that.
As soon as he was free he was off swimming with the other coots.
all in all he was pretty calm - even when i took the knife close to his "toes" and had to do a saw type movement.
he was about free by now.
Luckily Mike saw this coot in trouble and scooped it up to help it. We used my jacket to contain him as he was not liking our help in the beginning. There was fishing line wrapped several times around his foot and also we think he swallowed the part of the line with a hook in it.
We had nothing to cut the line with but luckily a guy fishing nearby had a pocket knife. Took about 5 minutes of careful cutting (it was so tight it would eventually make the foot useless or dead cutting off the circulation)) and we were able to free him. The only thing we could do to the line in his mouth was cut it very close and hope that the hook didn't injured him further - we never did see the hook - only assume it was in there because we tried and couldn't pull the line out and he did not like that.
As soon as he was free he was off swimming with the other coots.
he was about free by now.
2 comments:
Poor old coot! We had a similar thing happen with a seagull on the Avila pier and rescued it. Had to find someone to borrow a knife from to free the bird from the line ... it was so sad...but we were able to remove it and he was able to fly off!
Wow Sandy, I've been missing so much. Only just got back to this blog.
This is such a poignant post and beautifully presented.
We have the same problem over here with bits of fishing line etc being discarded.
Post a Comment