Mike called me from work around 5 pm to say, “I am probably going to regret this, but… do you want to rescue an injured duck?” Well duh. I got directions to the location of said duck, threw on some duck-catching clothes, and off I went.

(In case you didn’t know this about me: I have a St. Francis of Assisi thing going on. Lost and injured animals are attracted to me. They find me so I can help them, I swear. It runs in the family – the same thing has always happened to my mom, and her dad before that. Apparently this has now spilled over to Mike. Ooooh, poor Mike. It only gets worse.)

Anyway, ten minutes later, Mike and I were mucking around beneath a bridge, trying to catch a young female mallard who quite obviously had a problem with her left leg/foot. She didn’t do well on land, but managed to flap into a creepy puddle with unidentifiable swimming things (I’m 99.9% sure I saw leeches), which I was not about to go wading into. Fortunately, we were able to herd her out and catch her. 

Turns out the duck had a nasty open fracture above her left ankle. There was about 1/3 of an inch of bone protruding – it wasn’t bleeding and looked pretty dirty, so I couldn’t really tell how old the wound was. Other than that, she was quite lively and not very pleased to be in captivity. Driving home one-handed while delicately holding a pissed off mallard under my arm was interesting. 

Once home, I put her in a box with a towel over the top and set about finding somebody within a two-state radius who actually cares about a wounded wild duck. There’s a vet in town who does wildlife rescue – the office was already closed, but I called the number anyway. I got the answering service. I started to explain that “I found a wild duck with…” and was interrupted with a shrieking ”IS THIS AN EMERGENCY!?” Cheese and crackers, lady, I was unaware I called Animal 911. I explained the duck has a broken leg and cannot live in my bathtub so yeah, it kinda is, but she didn’t seem to understand the practice flipping does wildlife rescue and instead referred me to Washington State University’s teaching hospital. Okay, fine. 

I called over to WSU and after a little phone tag with the receptionist and a vet student and the doctor, they said to bring her on in. Now, Artemis (the lab) had been in her kennel this whole time, and you better believe she thought this was just the icing on her woe-is-me cake. There was a bird in her house and it was hot today, did I mention that and why am I not letting her catch the duck!? Poor pup. 

Anyway, off ducky and I went to WSU. They had a form for me to fill out, and that was pretty much that. I actually feel better leaving her at a teaching hospital than I would with a vet who does wildlife rescue on the side… Hopefully, they’ll be less concerned about the bottom line and more interested in the educational value of the experience. 

I took pictures, for posterity. The first one is my “Here I go again, rescuing things” face: 

And, DUCK! 

I tried to get one of her injury but it didn’t really turn out well with the camera phone.

During the course of this whole thing, somebody mentioned that WSU will accept wild animals from across the state line, with the exception of deer. I wonder what the deal with that is? And if you have an injured deer, what in the hell are you supposed to do with it?

As I explained to Mike, my philosophy on wildlife rescue is that the sporting thing to do is help injured animals so they can live to breed, exist, and maybe be fairly hunted another day. I’d like to think we’re a little more evolved as predators than those that just prey on the weakest members of the herd. This is why I like organizations like Ducks Unlimited, which value both conservation and hunting. 

Ha – put that in your pipe and smoke it, hippies!

Last Modified: Monday, June 30th, 2008 @ 19:28

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