Written by Vasiliki A. Ntavlourou, BVM, MRCVS, GPCert(ExAP).
It's a Greek proverb that.........."the smart bird is caught by the beak" and I guess who said it first...........definitely had something in mind!
In the successful story of our......."FLYING" friend this time, the proverb seems to have come true, but luckily enough........only temporarily!!!!!!!!!
Our beautiful seagull was saved thanks to the kindness of two very responsible citizens of our city!
His very unpleasant and painful adventure started.........we don't really know exactly when, but our friend was found in the area of FAROS (lighthouse) at the port of our city, desperately fighting against several "nasty" looking fishhooks that had literally penetrated his beak, his mouth, his chest and his left wing.
The efforts of the two friends who tried to help him were unfortunately unsuccessful! The hooks were so well stuck in his body that it was impossible to remove them.
It sounds like our seagull was deceived by the appearance of this "smart" looking bait!
I guess it does look like a real "fish" from..................high above!!!
The hooks were several and in triple sets!
Trapped as he was and in a lot of pain, unable to escape, he was walking around the area and despite the fact that it was the 'HUMAN MISCHIEF" that brought him there..........he showed trust and faith in the two...........HUMANS who approached him and tried to help him!
........and his savers, carried him to our clinic!
At first glance, his wounds looked terrible and we got quite dissapointed!
Any attempt to remove the hooks seemed absolutely impossible with the bird in an awake state!
We had to anesthetize him!.......and so we did! .................................and that was BRAVE!!!!
We created an anesthetic mask out of a small plastic water bottle, we administered oxygen and anesthetic gas and he.............fell asleep! Of course, we had to add some intravenous anesthetic in order to keep him asleep and open his mouth to remove the hooks!
We also had to use various "practical" tools, such as........pincers, cutters, etc, etc but the result was rewarding!!! We managed to remove every single hook out of his body, without causing any further injuries.
We were delighted to see on the xray that he had not suffered any fractures or other serious injuries.
.....and then we moved him into our kennels and waited for him to recover from the anesthetic!
.....and he had an uneventful recovery! and he started jumping and trying to.............TAKE OFF, almost straight away!.
We kept him overnight and the next morning, after we checked his wounds once again and we gave him his medications, we decided there was nothing else to do but to return him to his...........CREATOR!
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