When I'm not writing, photographing bears or flying a plane, I can be found helping out with sick or injured wildlife. Below is a story I hope you'll enjoy about what my job entails.
There are always certain memories that stand out above the rest, and few will compare to my wild goose chase in San Francisco!!!
It was November of 2007, and the Cosco Busan had just spilled 85,000 gallons of oil into the bay. Wildlife would be dying en masse, especially the sea birds. Having been specially trained in bird handling and also in hazardous waste response, I’d been contracted to assist with bird collection. I drove north from L.A., and nestled in with extended family in the area.
When a pelagic (sea) bird gets oil on its feathers, it stops being waterproof and will succumb to hypothermia. To keep warm, they come onshore and can be seen preening obsessively to get the offending substance off. Then, they ingest it and are poisoned. :-(.
The main way we capture them is to sneak up on them while they’re on the beach at LOW tide, by positioning ourselves between the bird and the water, and catch them in our nets as they try to escape. At night, we use high-powered spotlights to invoke the “deer-in-headlights” confusion and mask our approach. Then they get placed in pillowcases for easy carriage, and labeled as per the species, date, time, where it was found and by whom. If we are able, as in: there are no other birds around, we take GPS coordinates as well.
When convenient, the birds/their info get placed in/on a cardboard cat carrier for transport. Once they reach a facility, for which we have volunteer transporters, they are tube fed Pedialyte, their temperature is taken, their blood tested….. After a few strength-building days, they are washed in Dawn dish detergent and placed in small, enclosed pools to convalesce amongst their friends. Typically an oiled bird will stay at a rehab center for weeks to build strength before release. Not all survive.
I was fraught with feelings of appreciation for being able to help and a deep sense of grief for every bird that had escaped my best attempts. Instinct drives them to run TO the water when you approach, even if you are standing in front of the water - and if a bird gets past a rescuer, they will surely die before the tide gives us a second chance. For me, a sentimental soul, every missed bird brings a heavy heart.
So, it was a moonless night, but the stars were twinkling above the low tide. LOTS of stars, and they reflected off the wet, muddy sand. Four of us rescuers, two men and two women, had been given a route among some brush, across a beach and then through a marsh before coming to the mud flats. We were two teams of two, wearing rubber boots and carrying twelve-foot nets, each.
Reports had been coming in regarding a white-fronted goose that apparently – by its behavior if not outright appearance – had contacted oil. Nobody really thought we’d catch it, but there it was…silhouetted against the pooled seawater in the receding wave marks a quarter of a mile ahead.
Suddenly, we were holding high-powered flashlights on it to hide our approach and running like children, careful to stay out of the backlight cast by our beams. We were running as hard as any human could, and the goose, for his part, started running as fast as he was able toward the prohibitively gooey mud and ultimately, the sea. He’d zig left and we’d zag right behind.
The rehabber I’d been mentoring under, my partner, had previously said he envisions himself catching a bird before he attempts to encircle it in his net, so as I struggled against the mud with all of the awkward gear in tow, I imagined my net around this gigantic goose. One of the guys said, “We’ll never get him,” but I knew we would.
We kept running, the bird and all four of us, and we started gaining. The cityscape of San Francisco twinkled across the bay, the stars adding to the splendor above. The wind was cool and fresh. Thankfully, the mud in this particular area was hard enough to allow our boots to pull free with each hasty step, though mud splattered behind, re-coloring our pants and backs. We were closing in.
Soon the goose was only twenty feet ahead. Again I envisioned my net around its sizeable form. I was gasping for air, but for those negligible minutes there was nothing I wanted more than to catch that bird, to save it from suffering a cold, miserable, poisoned death.
Fifteen feet…then ten…and just as quickly, three of our nets enfolded the goose, mine third. The other girl in our group was slightly behind, and she huffed and puffed out, “Wait, I want to put my net on it, too!” We all laughed, as we struggled for air, jubilant.
Despite wonderful care at our main center, there was no guarantee that this goose would survive the poisoning. What I can definitively say is that without our dogged attempt he would surely have perished. We gave this creature a chance to survive, and I will forever remember him, wild and free on that beautiful beach, leading our majestic chase.
happy
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