Duckling rescued from plastic

Melissa Fischer and her daycare kids love to come to the pond to feed the geese and ducks. One day they realized something wasn’t right with one of the little ducklings.

“One of the older girls I care for noticed one of them had plastic around its wings so we tried to feed it corn and bring it up on shore so we could help it,” said Fischer.

But nothing worked so one of the moms in the neighbourhood called the City of Burlington and the Humane Society. Neither was able to help. Eventually they heard about Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control, who volunteered their services for the rescue.
“As the bird is going to grow the plastic is going to get tighter and tighter and it wont be able to feed and wont be able to fly,” said Bill Dowd of Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control.

In 2008, the Ocean Conservatory Group picked up 3.7 million pounds of trash from 9,000 miles of ocean shoreline in one day alone. Every year thousands of birds, turtles and marine mammals die from getting tangled in plastic six pack rings.

“It’s something homeowners should be aware of with their recycling. I know nowadays its something the kids are taught in school to cut those six rings of plastic as part of the recycling program,” said Dowd.

And that one simple step could have kept this duckling from becoming entangled. The team from Skedaddle spent hours trying to catch and free her, and finally had success.

“I did a bit of a leap through the air and was able to land with the net right over top of the duckling and it was a clean capture. The bird wasn’t injured,” said Corey Lewis, also of Skedaddle.

Now she’s plastic-free and reunited with her family.