Earlier this week, a medical worker named Nicole was cleaning out a patient’s room at a Georgia clinic when she noticed an animal in distress in a swampy open space behind the building.
“[I] just happened
to look out from the second story,” Nicole told The Dodo. “I thought I saw a bird, but couldn’t make it out clearly.”
Nicole called out to her colleague, Ashley, who used her phone’s camera to zoom in for a closer look.
“That’s what verified for us that it was a stuck bird,” Nicole said.
Once they had finished tending to their remaining patients, Nicole and Ashley sprang into action.
“We were frantically trying to tend to the last few patients and gather supplies from our office to go out there and try to get to her,” Nicole said. “The problem was the mud was so deep we kept sinking, almost up to our knees.”
Another colleague then found just what they needed — several pieces of plexiglass that happened to be lying around the office.
“We laid those out to distribute our weight and reach her,” Nicole said.
Thankfully, they reached the bird — an osprey — in time.
“She definitely had a lot of fight left,” Nicole said. “She was trying to get up but was so bogged down she couldn’t move. She was so gentle when I got to her and slowly picked her up. [We] were ecstatic.”
Nicole placed the mud-covered bird into a cardboard box.
From there, the osprey was transferred to Bells Ferry Veterinary Hospital for treatment.
Her body was so caked in mud that she was hard to even recognize as a bird.
The bird was bathed, her nostrils were cleared of mud, and she was medicated. But despite the ordeal she’d experienced, her spirit remained strong.
After she was transferred to the care of Chattahoochee Nature Center Wildlife Rehabilitation, her caretakers noted: “She has good weight, and is actually a bit fat, so she had been fishing well.”
With any luck, the osprey will continue regaining her strength until she’s ready to return to the wild. Nicole, whose chance discovery out the window at work led to the bird’s rescue, is rooting for her still.
“I am thanking God she’s doing so well now!” Nicole said. “I am amazed that so many hands played a part in her rescue. What a blessing that so many people cared!”
