You Stole My Breakfast

It was 7AM Wednesday morning, and as always the sun was shining again on another beautiful day in paradise. A call came into the center, from a woman living in Tampa, whose back yard backs up to a pond on a golf course. Looking out her kitchen window, she watched what she perceived as strange behavior for a stork she usually watched feed in the pond everyday. As she walked to the ponds' edge she watched the stork struggling to reach the shore to no avail and was slowly going under the water. She thought maybe he caught his foot on a log or rock, however, the more he struggled the deeper he got. She took action and grabbed his bill and started to tug gently at first to free the birds' foot. After some gentle tugging and the bird still not being freed, she gave a gentle yank. With that she could feel the foot being freed she thought. Then to her surprise, the foot came to the surface of the water with a turtle attached to it. Dragging the weakened bird to the shoreline she tried to pry the turtles mouth open. No success! Pulling the exhausted bird further on the grassy area, she ran to her garage and got a hammer. Striking the turtle, but not injuring him, he let go of the foot and swam away.

The woman and I made arrangements to meet half way to save time because the foot was bleeding very badly. Before I left I notified our vets of the pending emergency operation they would have to start their day with. I picked up the bird and drove him directly to the vets where on examination we could see all the skin on all digest' had been torn back and one of his digest' was fractured. Dr. Eldridge and Dr. Bingham made sewing the skin in place and putting a pin in the broken toe look easy. Without their expertise the bird would not have made it. We are proud to say that after 8 weeks of rehab we released the stork back to the same pond his adventure started.