Dave Montanile came home after a long day of running his landscaping company on Nantucket, Massachusetts, looking forward to relaxing. But moments after walking through the door, he glanced out the window overlooking Miacomet Pond and noticed something
amiss.
“Something caught my eye across the pond,” Montanile told The Dodo. “I was like, ‘What's in that tree?’ So I got my binoculars out.”
Scanning the water, Montanile saw a flash of black and white feathers belonging to one of the black-crowned night herons who visit the pond.
The sun was just setting in the June sky, and though the herons are typically less active during the day and forage for food at night, he could tell this one was in trouble. “The bird was kind of suspended, then all of a sudden started flailing,” Montanile said. “I hopped in my truck and drove around to the other side of the pond.”
As he approached, Montanile saw that one of the herons was tragically entangled in fishing line.
“The bird was attached to two trees, probably 30 feet apart,” he said. “It was a doozy.”
Luckily, Montanile knew what to do. He volunteers for Nantucket Animal Rescue, saving sick and injured wildlife on the island.
Montanile grabbed tools from his landscaping truck, jumped in the water and got to work cutting all the fishing line. “You just go into rescue mode,” Montanile said. “You kind of go, ‘Let’s fix this.’”
He freed the bird from the trees, but the fishing line was a bigger problem than he initially anticipated. “There was a lot of line wrapped around the wing,” Montanile said.
Montanile wrapped the struggling bird in a towel and placed him in a crate until the rescue’s cofounders, Rain Harbison and her husband, Blair Perkins, could come over to help.
“When I saw the bird, I teared up,” Harbison told The Dodo. “It was horrifying.”
The trio got to work removing the remaining fishing line.
“We had to be meticulous on the way we disentangle it, cutting the line,” Perkins told The Dodo. “Sometimes finding the line is the hardest part, because it will get buried under the feathers. You think you've got it all and all of a sudden, there's another strand there.”
Finally, after all their efforts, the bird was free.
The bird, suffering from trauma caused by the fishing line, needed medical help. Since there’s no wildlife rehabilitation center on Nantucket, the rescue group transfers injured animals to rehabbers on the Cape Cod mainland viaHy-Line Cruises, which ferries the animals for free.
That’s where the team from Wild Care Cape Cod took in the heron, who turned out to have a fractured clavicle and was dehydrated.
But after a couple of weeks of cage rest, bandage changes and physical therapy, rescuers hope to release the bird back on Nantucket, where there may be a mate waiting.
All the rescuers urge people to clean up their fishing line — leaving it behind can be dangerous, even deadly for wildlife.
But in this case, thankfully, Montanile happened to be in the right place at the right time, and teamwork saved this bird’s life.
“It’s a great feeling when it's all said and done,” Montanile said. “I just did what I felt needed to be done, and I’m happy that I’m able to.”
