A Christmas Rescue

After 35 years of marriage, we don't celebrate Christmas the way most people do.  Having most of what we want, and all of what we need, we don't give each other presents—we just plan for a quiet day together.  As vegetarians, we even skip the traditional feast, instead opting for Chinese food at the local buffet.  It's one of the only restaurants open.

But always first on my list of things to do is a walk on the road with our new Border Collie, Happy.  Happy has lost much of his wildness and has come to be pretty tame.  He still chases our cats, though, so we constantly keep an eye on him.  The morning walks are a way of burning off a little energy.

This Christmas day Happy and I had hardly stepped onto the road when we were approached by another walker.  He said he didn't have a cell phone or he would call a local seabird rescue group to help a bird he had seen on the beach in front of our house.  He called it a duck.  I told him we would call, and Happy and I went out on the beach to check out the little creature.

Sure enough, there it was at the high water line, lying on the sand.  It appeared healthy, but wasn't walking or flying.  Its head was erect, and it was looking around, apparently alert.

Happy and I left him there and went back to the house to tell Charlene, the real rescuer in our family.  We'd been through these problems before, so I got out a ladder and climbed up to get down a good sized animal carrier hanging from a hook in the garage ceiling.  Charlene got a beach towel--ideal for picking up and moving a larger bird.  We picked our way through the bushes at the edge of the beach and approached the bird.  Charlene took over and had the bird in the carrier in no time.  She tried to call the wildlife rescuers, but couldn't get past a menu of messages.  "I guess I'll take him to the emergency animal veterinarian," and soon she and the bird were in her car and going up the road.

Happy got the rest of his walk while Charlene was at the vet office.  They told her that Wildlife Rescue of Venice would pick up the bird, and in the meantime, they would stabilize and hydrate the bird.  We figured we'd call the next day to find out how the bird was doing.

Christmas afternoon found us eating at the Chinese buffet, and afterwards we arrived home.  The first order of business when we return from being away is to let the dogs out into our fenced back yard.  Peachy, our Golden Doodle has trouble with steps down into our back yard, so I took her on a leash for a walk on the road.  Peachy's infallible nose led us into my neighbor's yard to the base of a tree, where I spied a little brown squirrel, clearly alive, seemingly intact, but not moving away from us.

"Not again," I said to myself once I was sure he was alive, but I couldn't deny it, I had been presented with an injured wild animal twice in one Christmas day.  I led Peachy home and roused Charlene from whatever she was doing.

At least this time I didn't have to climb a ladder to get a carrier—we hadn't yet put it away.  So Charlene used the same towel to pick up the squirrel and transferred him to the carrier and took him to Wildlife Rescue of Venice.

We were told the wildlife rescue people picked up the bird from the emergency vet's place within an hour of when we dropped him off.  They said it wasn't a duck, it was a loon.  The following day—today as I write this—the loon was reported to be recuperating.

And so, on a Christmas day, when we didn't expect to get any presents, we got two.  Charlene often says, "Never be too busy to stop and help an animal in distress."  The way she looks at things, the opportunities to help those little guys were nature's Christmas presents to us.

Les Inglis