Friday, October 2, 2009

Sanctuary from WHOM?

I wrote in my last blog that I would revisit a certain topic, specifically that of the birds in the local bird sanctuary. My friend and I went to see the birds, and to feed them big bags of bread crumbs. The sanctuary is a fairy large, fenced enclosure, with walkways, lots of trees, a nice big pond with fake waterfall, a very nice, supposedly peaceful place to go, see the birds who happen to have landed at that particular moment in the season.
The problem with this particular trip is that there were a lot of birds with very gruesome injuries that day. There were lots of Canada geese with broken wings, at least one with a broken ankle. The same was seen in some huge, gorgeous, white swans. The ducks seemed okay, as did the grumpy looking, sleepy pelican. But these poor geese and swans. The first one I saw, I thought maybe he was the runt or something, and the others had attacked him. But then there were more, and more, and MORE...and we noticed that the angles of these broken wings and ankle were all the same, all very...odd. Not the kind of breaks you would expect from birds attacking birds. And definitely not in that large a number.
My guess is that some stupid people, be they drunk, stoned, or just plain rotten, went into this supposedly safe place for the birds, and thought it would be funny to catch them and purposefully break their wings. It wasn't funny, whoever you are. It was horrible, it was mean, it was criminal, it was torture, and will continue to be torture for all those poor birds. Now they will never heal because of the angles of those breaks, now they will never be able to fly again, and therefore they will die when winter comes. What hard-hearted, selfish monsters do that to animals?
And what about the parents with young children who went in there to have a fun day with the kids, to show them the nice birds, and then have to try to explain the scene worthy of a horror movie to these little kids, who, as all kids do, start asking questions about why that bird is holding its arm out and up and pointing that way, and what about that one and that one and that one and so on?
I took my friend there to show her what a neat place it was, but we ended up leaving sad, angry, and horrified.
I really hope the city has some sort of resource to help these poor birds that have suffered this horrible fate....but unfortunately, I kind of doubt it.