A man was outside his apartment complex in Atlanta, Georgia, when he noticed a nearby goose was walking funny. There was something on the goose’s foot, and as the man got closer, he truly couldn’t believe his eyes.
He called up Georgia Wildlife Network
to get the goose some help and tried his best to explain the situation. He'd somehow found a goose with a clam stuck on her foot.
“We have some really strange calls, but this was a first for us,” Heather Thomas, executive director of Georgia Wildlife Network, told The Dodo.
Confused and wanting to confirm the man’s story, the rescue asked him to send a picture. When it came through, they were as shocked as he was. The “clam” actually turned out to be a freshwater mussel, which was just as strange. They’d never seen anything like this before and immediately sent one of their rescue partners, Brandon Sanders from Sanders Wildlife, out to help.
Sanders arrived at the apartment complex, located the goose and began inching towards her. She got a little spooked and tried to fly away — and as soon as she did, the mussel fell off her foot
Both the goose and the mussel were checked out and seemed to be perfectly OK after both their ordeals. It was the strangest incident either rescue had ever been a part of, and they were all just glad everything worked out.
“We’ve never seen another situation like it,” Thomas said. “We handled over 20k cases this year alone, and we have never had another rescue involving a clam or mussel.”
Getting a call about a mussel stuck on a goose’s foot seems like a prank, but it wasn’t. It was very real and just another day in the life of an animal rescuer.
